Budapest and the Rest

Path

2005-05-12T12:56:00.000+02:00

Top Ten Reasons Why My New Flat/Neighborhood is Awesome:

1. If I'm heading west or south, then I always see Imre Varga's silvery weeping willow sculpture commemorating the Jewish victims of the Holocaust in back of the Synagogue. At night and lit up, it is especially alluring and captivating. It's shiny grace always gives me a perk.

2. I'm in the same neighborhood with my homies, the Jews! I feel right at home.

3. One of the saddest buildings in Budapest is opposite my bedroom window. It's basically an unrelieved brick wall. But this means that I get to walk around naked with no worries. Also, the red brick geometry of the facade makes a beautiful abstract statement against the airy blue sky when I wake up in the morning and turn my head back to look outside.

4. It's my OWN flat!!!! I can decorate it as I please. It's mine. Food tastes better in your own flat. You sleep more soundly in your own flat.

5. This reason may be an effect of the latter reason: but I notice that I really like cooking in this flat, and have already had friends over for dinner several times. And this may be a commentary on the former flat too-- the fact that it always felt so uncomfortable and museum-like to me. This one, though not lined in silk and beautiful oil paintings and antiques, is very COMFORTABLE and FRIENDLY.

6. I LOVE my "local." You may remember that I complained bitterly about my formal local "Beckett's." Now my local is Szoda, rough and studenty, just my cup of tea (or beer, as is more often the case).

7. I am in Kertek Heaven! The seventh district is where most of the kertek are, maybe the coolest thing in any city, in my opinion.

8. The little Gypsy boy who plays the accordion near my house. He is about eight years old I think, and whenever I see him, I drop some change into his paper cup. He always rewards me with a little wink, and I think we are destined to be friends.

9. Much better cable. At this flat, not only do I have America-is-the-Only-Country-That-Exists-CNN, but I also have BBC World! I have already seen a great program about my favorite sense, smell, on the BBC. Also, my TV5 does NOT rudely transmogrify into the the porn Gold channel in the middle of a Truffaut film that I am watching. I do not have anything against porn, but when I am in the middle of watching something on the French channel that is interesting, it sucks to have it interrupted. I have tried to watch the Gold Channel, but I notice that I get very distracted by the hideous sofas and art on the walls that comprise the typical porn setting. I think it's safe to say that the whole point of it is therefore lost on me.

10. It's easy-access to every part of the city that I visit. Andrassy is just a tad north, the kertek are east, and Ferenciek tere is just a bit west.

So, I am in a good place, both physically and mentally, after what some might consider a bit of an ordeal. It is at this place that I am going to discontinue Budapest and the Rest:

I feel that now is a time for serious study. I have long flirted with the Lord Buddha, but more and more I am coming to believe that this is my proper path. I don't know if keeping a blog and following this path are necessarily in conflict--probably not-- I could maybe even start a new blog: "Buddha and the Rest"-- but I sense that it would somehow be a hindrance to me, that it would pose an unnecessary difficulty. And an implicit part of Buddhism are that words are insufficient means to convey enlightenment.

I have always been fascinated by those who left the world for a while to pursue something else, be it the philospher's stone or Art or spiritual growth. Rimbaud, Proust, and the Lord Buddha himself come to mind. This is my time. I am not leaving the world altogether-- not all schools of Buddhism require this. There is a even a place for a sensualist such as myself within Buddhism-- but I have a lot of learning and a lot of work to do, and it's best if I can fully dedicate myself to this with the time that I have right now.

If you have read this blog, I thank you. For someone to read my words feels like such an amazing gift. Thank you for that. Thank you for your comments. They have been wholly beneficial and encouraging to me. I hope that all of you find a path that feels right for you, and I wish you the best as you follow that path. And, of course, I wish you Love and Compassion.

Freedom in Exile

2005-05-03T15:31:00.000+02:00

Basta with the poor-me routine!! It's a bunch of rubbish! I've never felt so happy and strong in my entire life! Only a couple days ago did I notice that the title of the book I'm reading is something that describes my own state of affairs: Freedom in Exile. I am not comparing my recent experiences to that of the His Holiness the Dalai Lama, but I have been exiled, and I am consequently enjoying a feeling of freedom. According to the Lord Buddha and the yoga sutras, you should welcome a so-called enemy, because he can potentially fortify you. Encountering an enemy is an opportunity to strengthen. And right about now I feel myself a powerhouse.

So, turning my focus back to the subject of this bloggy, Budapest, here are some of my favorite shops:

1. Feyerzsuzsa on Kiraly Pal utca. This shop sells handbags and little silk whats-its all designed by a local gal. Fun fabrics and colors and ingenious designs. One style features two handbags that snap together, depending on how much stuff you're going to be toting.

2. Red Bus Bookstore on Semmelweis utca 14. This tiny shop on probably my favorite street in Bp sells second-hand English books. There's loads of rubbish, but an ample "classics" section insures you'll find something worth your 450 forints or so. I recently bought Cheri by Colette and a book by Jean Rhys, also set in Paris.

3. Magma on Petöfi Sandar utca 11. This store sells the work of local artists and artisans. Ceramics, bedding, clothes, handbags, and jewelry. I love these kinds of stores! Why would you want some bland Louis Vuitton bag that the whole world has when you could have a one-of-a-kind bag that reminds you of a fabulous city?

4. Vasseva on Paulay Ede utca near Liszt Ferenc terrace. Hungarian designer Eva's shop features her flowing designs in sumptuous fabrics. She will also design something specifically for you (clothing or home design). I got a long straight skirt in a light-mauve linen. It has a zipper down the back that Eva has made into a design-feature, as it is framed in a white cotton.

Hmmm,...it seems that I have something that HE needs,...do I use it as a bargaining chip to get the rest of my stuff back, or do I not even bother? It's very very tempting to make things difficult for him, but I could have done that at any point, in much more devastating and creative ways. It just strikes me that he's not even worth it. I don't even like to waste my thoughts on him. Much better to use that energy and inspiration to cast him as the villain in my novel.

Walking Cliche

2005-04-28T13:28:00.000+02:00

I am a walking cliche. I got my hair cut this morning at Zsidro on Andrassy ut. But it must be done. You have to cut your hair when you get free of a bad man. It's not as short as my 2003 Frodo the Hobbit hairdo, but definitely a lot shorter. Less flouncy/curvilinear, more jaggedy/Joan Jett. Maybe my new hair cut will allow me to tap into her punk rockedness. My Uncle Tom who lives in Birmingham, Alabama, despite his political conservatism, has always had an affinity for Joan Jett for as long as I can remember. Once I asked him why he liked her so much, and he replied, "I'm not sure. I just think she looks like she might break off the end of a beer bottle, and come at ya with it."

I was walking down Andrassy, and I started crying for the first time during this whole business. I don't know why I haven't cried before. Maybe it's been an adrenalin thing. I knew my survival was at stake or something. But now that I am safe, everything came pouring out. I was thinking of what Jamie would think. He would be so sad and so disappointed in who I chose to spend these last few years of my life with. How could I go from the gentlest, sweetest boy in the world to an irrational, violent monster? Badly done. How will I be able to trust my own judgment in the future? Maybe I have answered my own question though: maybe I should just think of what Jamie would think.

I did get most of my belongings back. I am very happy about this. It felt like a Christmas windfall, because I really thought everything was gone forever. There was absolutely no chance of me contacting him in an attempt to get my stuff back. (I will never speak with him again.) Some things are missing, some drawings are torn, but I got back: my computer, my Dutch pencil set, my photograph of Whitman (my cat who died about a year ago), my grandmother's evening clutch she got in India in the 50's, my silk dress from Liberty that I bought with Shani, my Miller Harris perfume, most of my books, and most of my clothes. Before I left for London, I had bought him some daffodils from my gypsy friend on Szent Istvan korut and a Francia kremes as a peace offering. At that point, I still had hopes for some sort of amicable resolution. He put the rotted daffodils and the Francia kremes in my suitcase. My mom said it was "a nice touch." I wonder if he was trying to tell me something?

Last night I made dinner for Zsolti to thank him for being so kind and helpful to me throughout this. I made penne with green peppercorns, zucchini, and fresh mint. It's a nice thing to eat for the spring.

I was at the big market yesterday, and nearly every fruit/vegetable vendor had beautiful feher sparga, or white asparagus. I bought a kilo, and I have some idea of how I'm going to prepare it, but if anyone has any white asparagus recipes, I would really appreciate your sharing them with me. I'm going to have to cook a lot more than I have in the past in order to save money, and I am definitely going to have to curb my Cafe Kor habit.

I am off to buy a coffee maker and some bed linens.

Back in Bp

2005-04-25T13:55:00.000+02:00

I am back in Budapest. And I am not leaving Budapest. Because then he would win. My first instinct was to go back to the US and into the safety net of my family. But I have a life here. I am not going to run away.

Less than making me think about how much I have lost, this has made me realize what I have, and that is: amazing friends. L insisted that I stay at his house, but I think it's important for me to be as independent as possible right now. Zsolti miraculously found a flat for me on very short notice. It's near the synagogue. It's too big for me, but I am grateful to even have a bed to sleep in. There is a little sign on the bathroom door that says, "Bad." German for "bath," but my first instinct was that it was an adjective for me. I must be bad, and that's why this is happening.

I know now that he cannot ruin my career. That is the main thing. He wrote a letter rescinding a letter of recommendation that he had written for me to an organization that had chosen me to work for them in Paris for a few months in the fall. But I have contacted the director, and he has assured me that no letter he could write would threaten my position with them.

I have a lead on where my belongings might be, though I still don't know if it will be possible to get them back. I will find out more tommorrow.

I am thinking of enrolling in a TEFL course that begins in May, so that I can be productive until it's time for me to go to Paris.

This post is lackluster. I am just so tired. But thank you for your sweet comments and e-mails. They have made all the difference.

Puttanesca

2005-04-22T17:45:00.000+02:00

If life gives you lemons, make lemonade. If someone calls you a whore, make whore sauce. That's what Shani and I are doing tonight with our girlfriends. Making a beautiful puttanesca.

Last night I was walking to yoga in Primrose Hill. I got a phone call. It seems that I am homeless, jobless, and that most of my belongings are now irretrievable. I remember a repetitive hissing of "whore" and "cunt" and something about ruining my career, and I heard something drop onto the sidewalk. It was the phone. Something else dropped. It was me.

Shani picked me up. I was shaking and slumped. I thought she couldn't be serious, but she insisted that we still go to yoga.

She was right.

The yoga teacher is writing a book about bad boyfriends, and boy-have-I-got-something-for-you. He wants to use my story.

In class, he said to "let go."

"Whatever it is, let go of it." I let go of "whore" and "cunt." I let go of my career. I let go of my home. My beautiful things. My laptop. I am only me now.

Me.

This morning over coffee Shani made me swear that I would not answer my phone, as she thinks that he will call again to get some sort of closure. "But why would he call me again? He got to call me every name in the book,..."

"No, only two!" Shani said.

So we came up with a plan to "celebrate," and that is to make whore sauce, or puttanesca. So I did my thing on Portabello Road today. I bought the usual suspects for the puttanesca: some lovely anchovies, plum tomatoes, capers, Italian parsley, some beautiful black olives from Spain I've never seen before. And then some antipasti too from the man with all those big gorgeous brown ceramic pots full of delicacies: marinated mushrooms, gorgeous fresh slabs of feta, and some fennel to slice and roast.

Do I have bad karma? Is this a punishment? It could be. So I will not return poison with poison. My path is to be even kinder and more generous to the people around me. The food that I bought is not just for my girlfriends-- it's my offering to the world. I am letting go. I found myself grinning broadly. I bought grapes from a man who called me "darling" forty times, and I laughed and called him "darling" back. I joked with the man in the Spanish food store about the difficulty of switching amongst languages. I found a little booth where two women were having a sale on cheap frothy floral silk things from India. As I need clothes now, and I cannot afford to replace my beautiful things, I'll be doing the gypsy chic thing this season. I bought a dress, a blouse, and a tunic for 40 quid. But then why did I feel happier rummaging in the 10 quid pile than I have in a couture boutique? Maybe because I am light now. I have let go. The further I went, the more I smiled, the happier I was.

It's only me now.

Refugee

2005-04-18T15:38:00.000+02:00

I had to leave Budapest quite suddenly. I am in London with friends until it is safe for me to return. This will be in about a week or so. Do not mean to be cryptic or alarming. I am fine. I will be fine. More than fine.

I simply have an utterly irrational and hateful ex-boyfriend who attempted to ambush me. Who does not want to let me go.

Shani is trying to kill me with yoga. Serious ass-kicking yoga. It's very good for me. And I go shopping at the Portabello Road Market during the day and cook at night. And art, art, art. So don't cry for me Argentina.

Boldog Születésnapot Attila!

2005-04-11T20:07:00.000+02:00

Boldog születésnapot Attila! On this day, 100 years ago, the great poet Attila József was born in Budapest. Notice I did not say, "great Hungarian poet." I believe that in time he will come to be recognized as one of the greatest poets of the 20th century.

Attila had a painful existence: his childhood was marked by poverty and tragedy, and his adulthood was plagued by depression and psychological instability. At the age of 32, Attila committed suicide by throwing himself under the wheels of a freight train.

But I do not want to focus on his death; rather, I would like to focus on the way that he is still living, and that is through his powerful poetry. The poem for which he is best known is "A Dunánál," or "By the Danube." It was with this poem in mind that the Attila József sculpture was created beside the Parliament building. A large marble plaque features two lines of this famous poem:

And just like my heart's high tide
the Danube was murky, wise, wide.

Every Hungarian is well-acquainted with his life and his poems, and most of them seem to know one or two of his poems by heart, having been required to memorize his verse as part of their education. I sense a certain tenderness in the hearts of Hungarians, young and old, when I speak to them about Attila. This tenderness is contagious, and his words are now dear to me. I wanted to have a 100 birthday party for him tonight, at which everyone would read aloud their favorite poem-- but I have been ambushed by an unexpected visitor, so the birthday party must be delayed.

Another famous poem is "Tiszta Szívvel," or "With a Pure Heart":

I am fatherless, motherless,
godless and countryless,
have no cradle, no funeral shroud,
and no lover to kiss me proud.

For the third day I have had
no food, not a piece of bread.
My strength is my twenty years--
I will sell these twenty years.

And if no one heeds my cry,
the devil may choose to buy.
My heart's pure, I'll burn and loot,
if I must, I'll even shoot.

They will catch me and string me up,
with the good earth cover me up,
and death-bringing grass will start
growing from my beautiful, pure heart.

Attila was forced to leave school, the University of Szeged, because of this poem. Years later in Attila's "Birthday Poem," he remembers the words of the dean who expelled him:

"You sir, as long as I am competent,
will not teach on this continent,"
he blustered,
flustered.

But Professor Horger, if it gives you cheer
that this poet is not a grammar teacher,
control
your joy--

I shall instruct a whole nation,
not only the high school population,
you'll see
you'll see.

Yes Attila, and not only a whole nation, but beyond that. Would you have known that your words would be in the heart of a woman born in Birmingham, Alabama? Would you have known that she would grip your poems in the crook of her arm as she slept? You are in many hearts, in many shades of purity, your words are buried in the dark places and they are still on the tips of tongues. You are living still. You were not alone in your suffering or separated by your time. You are here, Attila.

Quotes from By the Danube: Selected Poems of Attila József, a bilingual edition. Translated by John Bátki. Published in 2002 by Corvina Books Ltd.

Our Zsolti, Our Sherpa

2005-04-10T12:25:00.000+02:00

Yesterday, Zsolti, Anita, and I went to Vienna to do some shopping. (Budapest is not exactly a shopping mecca). We shopped hard in the morning, and Anita and I could have kept going, but poor Zsolti needed sustenance by about 2 pm. As one of my talents is restaurant selection, Z & A deferred to me. I brought them to the Palmenhaus in the Burggarten, a Jugendstil ferro-vitreous building. Sometimes my restaurant selections are somewhat compromised by my building fetish, but in this instance the food is almost as fabulous as the building.

I had mussels cooked in Pernod, Zsolti had a sea bass that was one of the best cooked fishes we had ever tasted, and Anita got guinea fowl with gnocchi. Z & A were very tolerant as usual as I ogled up at the ceiling and cooed about how how beautiful it was.

When we left, Zsolti reassumed his role as our personal sherpa. How sweet is he?! He doesn't look happy about being our sherpa in this picture, but inside he's singing! But Zsolti is amazing not just for his extreme shopping and toting endurance: he is amazing and wonderful for so many other reasons as well. He has astonishing powers of empathy, for example. He always knows what I'm thinking, even if I try to hide it from him. Even though I was laughing and smiling when D said that I am a pija, he knew that it bothered me. (As an addendum: the last thing D said before he got on the plane for Spain was to tell Audra that "pija" is not a bad thing) And he is interested and curious about absolutely everything, the way that I am, so we talk about everything: Robert Mugabe, linguistics, coffee, poetry, history, relationships, food, butterflies, and of course, my imaginary gypsy lover, "Gazsi." And he is sweet, sweet, as sweet as the Sacher torte that the three of us ate yesterday before heading back to Bp.

And today is his name day: Boldog névnapot, Zsolti!

Mantra

2005-04-08T00:28:00.000+02:00

Creativity is more important than boys. Creativity is more important than boys. Creativity is more important than boys. Creativity is more important than boys. Creativity is more important than boys. Creativity is more important than boys. Creativity is more important than boys. Creativity is more important than boys. Creativity is more important than boys. Creativity is more important than boys. Creativity is more important than boys.

Queen of the Pijas

2005-04-05T11:27:00.000+02:00

Our Spanish friend D, from Valencia, was in town the past few days. He let us stay in his family's weekend house and also in his flat in Valencia last August. That's when he first told me that I am a pija. I don't know how to spell this word, so I could use some help from you Spanish speakers out there. But it is pronounced something like "pee-kha."

Here is what I know about pijas: a pija is prissy. A pija has sort of exaggerated and dramatic reactions. Boy pijas exist, but pijas are primarily female. Pijas are very polite, but I inferred that it is a sort of artificial politeness. And I think they are extremely girly and like to go shopping. D also mentioned the quality of my voice: it is high and quite sing-songy at times. I wasn't happy about being a pija in August, and I'm not happy about it now, though D insists that it's not a bad thing.

Last night, D declared me "Queen of the Pihas." I laughed at the time, and I still think it's funny. But I am also ferociously hormonal right now, and it hurt my feelings a little bit. I guess that I just want to be Audra, and not a pija. Zsolti, as always, is so sweet to me, and he looks at me a bit sadly, and says, "Well, I like pijas."

I am too sensitive. But I am in the midst of an Ugly Shoes episode, and I just can't help it. Ugly Shoes is a term that The Economist and I developed in undergrad. It works like this: when you've got PMS, one small thing snowballs so that the whole world sucks, so that even when you look down at your feet, you think, "...and I have ugly shoes!" It is completely irrational and not at all how I want to be, but there it is: a feeling in my chest, anxiety in my belly, a lump in my throat, a torrent of tears, and nothing can alleviate it but time.

Fat = Flavor

2005-04-03T23:08:00.000+02:00

I figure there is enough commentary on the Pope out there, but not so much commentary on lard. That's where I come in. See the gleeful girl holding the brick o' lard with a veritable bricked wall of lard behind her? That's me. Zsolti and I went shopping yesterday to buy everything to make a beautiful goulash. And one of the essential ingredients is sértészsír, or pig fat. As my old sculpture professor used to say, "Fat = Flavor," and the Hungarians would heartily concur. The color and flavor of Hungary's national spice, paprika, is released into hot fat. If you see people sprinkling paprika on an already cooked dish, this is really just giving the dish a visual garnish, and not imparting the real flavor of the paprika.

I recently found a new cukrászda that I love in the XIIIth district (on the Pest side, north of Szent István Körút). Zsolti says that the Vanillin Cukrászda is a chain, but that doesn't bother me at all, and nor does its non-traditional cukrászda decor-- I'm in it for the cakes and the cookies that I take home with me, the way that Gollum might retreat into a cave with "the Precious." Their Sacher is fresh and fab, and they have a diós baklava (a nutty baklava) that kicks ass. It's also a good place to go if you don't feel like taking pictures for German tourists posing with their dobos tortas*-- the Vanillin in the XIIIth district has an almost exclusively Hungarian patronage. There is a constant stream of pogásca mouth-stuffing, ice cream cone-toting, cake-hording folks coming out of the Vanillin doors. (I'm in the latter category).

*I seriously like taking pictures for tourists, though. And the German ones are so tickled when I count to three in my primitive German. It's an easy way to do something nice for people, and even nicer if you don't act put out by it-- and ham it up a bit for them.

Apokolipszis – Frisson

2005-04-01T17:17:00.000+02:00

Last night was the premier of Pal Frénak's Apokalipszis - Frisson piece at Trafó, part of the Budapest Spring Festival. I've written about Frénak's work before at B and the R, after I saw Fiúk. Frénak is one of the most interesting, talented contemporary choreographers in the world, in my estimation, and this latest work of his is as provocative and important as I could have hoped.

A low, inclined platform took up about 85% of the stage, creating a sort of stage within a stage. The piece opened with a film projection of a sky with moving clouds on top of the platform. Several ropes, which are signature elements in Frenak's work, were positioned in parallel both with the back edge of the platform and with the left edge. A woman in a short white satin slip wrestles violently, twitchingly, with the ropes, becoming more and more entwined. The ropes here are surely metaphors for struggle, but is she struggling with herself or with the world?

Three other dancers eventually emerged: two men and one other woman. Their costumes sometimes consisted of a black suit jacket with nothing else but briefs, their bare chests fleetingly evident beneath their jackets. We may dress up in coat and tie, but underneath we are the same: primitive muscle, flesh, bodies that move and writhe and despair.

In one segment, the two male dancers take off their jackets and underwear and are wearing only gas masks. They kneel on all fours facing the stage, while the two women dancers appear behind them, donning gloves, grasping between their legs. The hoses attached to their gas masks lengthen and the two men writhe on the floor with one another, a tangle of man-body and gas mask hose. From stage left, one of the woman dancers appears in an afro wig, big sunglasses, red-heart pasties on her breasts: she prances toward the squirming men, gathers up the gas mask hose as if gathering up a feather boa, and then leads them, as if walking two dogs, off the stage.

This juxtaposition of horror and absurdity is again demonstrated at the end of the piece. The same dancer who wrestled with the ropes at the beginning again appears in her short white satin slip. She has extremely long hair and she dips it in "blood", then flings her hair onto the platform, where the red spashes violently across the pristine whiteness. She makes her way around toward the back, splashing more and more, her white satin now alarmingly stained and soaked. The platform itself is soaked, and she begins a struggle to stay standing on it, but repeatedly slips, falls, tumbles. Then: the other three dancers emerge behind the platform in their suit jackets. A samba. They dance, they smile, all the while the bloody drama is playing out in front of their eyes. They must see her, but they do not react to her. This is the end.

I don't want to reduce Apokolipszis - Frisson to a "message," because a message would never communicate what the bodies of those four dancers and the art of Frenak do-- otherwise, he would have written an essay. But his work is so rich with meaning, that without reducing it to one thing, I would like to note that he successfully fuses his own idiom with a universal one that reflects the human condition in general: defined by struggle, violence, frivolity, beauty, which combine in endless, sometimes fascinating, sometimes disturbing ways.

There is both absurdity and horror, things apparently impossible to reconcile. For me, I have decided that I will not stop dancing because there is Injustice, but I hope that I will see it. I hope I won't look past, and I hope that I will spend some of my non-dancing time in a way that might mend it.

Buli, Puli

2005-03-29T19:02:00.000+02:00

Haven't been feeling very bloggy lately. But I have been feeling very convivial. Last Friday night at Old Amsterdam Pub Anita looked at me across the table and said, "Audra, we are going to dance on the tables later." I thought she might be teasing me as she knows that I am fond of extreme dancing. I will not doubt her again. This girl means business. Not less than an hour later we were dancing on the bar at the Irish Cat Pub, which is not exactly my sort of scene, but any place that is OK with me dancing on the furniture is really OK by me. Anita on the left, lovely Hungarian gal whose name I don't remember on the right, me on top of the bar two minutes after this pic was taken. I have some nasty bruises around my ankles, but I rather regard these bar dancing-induced injuries as badges of honor.

Then Laci came back from Switzerland, and we had Easter dinner together at Zsolti and Anita's. Missed him. Sweet sweet lovely boy. We ended up at Fat Mo's where there was a ______ buli. I am such a bad Hungarian student. The word I'm looking for starts with an "l" and it means pouring cologne water on the girls' heads for Easter. Buli just means "party." I don't understand why they pour cologne water on girls' heads, but there it is, and there I was, engaged in cologne water warfare with plastic squirt guns all evening with my Hungarian sisters. I was completely soaked as some sort of commando demon took over my normally genteel mien. I guess that's the scrappy bitch in me.

Eventually everyone dispersed again except for Laci and me. Again we ended up at Extra. Why do they put up with us? We act like such turkeys. At one point, I was struck by the crystalline quality of sugar cubes, and I gathered an entire bowl and placed sugar cubes all over the place in what I believed at the time to be an artful arrangement. On paintings, on window sash, on the turntable for godsakes. Sorry Z. We didn't get home until seven in the morning. I don't like so much seeing the sun come up. I get not-altogether-pleasant flashbacks of being an art student. But the next few hours were extremely pleasant,...

Above is one of my neighbors. Isn't she darling? I see her and her brother and sister with their dad at the posta, in the park, about town quite a lot.

And there might be an addition to,...to the flat soon. Someone needs a home. Someone with a cute little brown nose and white curly hair was abandoned and tied up in the woods outside Budapest. Maybe. Maybe. It would be a real mitzvah, but it's also a big responsibility.

And maybe maybe Toscana and then Prague in April,...stay tuned.

It has recently come to my attention that someone whose Budapest restaurant recommendations I have come to rely on actually reads me olde blogge, so I would like to give him a shout out. Szia, E. I wish you sok gomboc of sargadinnye fagylalt.

2005-03-21T19:13:00.000+01:00

The Garden

Good Carp!

2005-03-21T14:18:00.000+01:00

Hey, I just said, "Jonapot kivanok," with eye contact, to some man in the stairwell, and he said nothing back to me! What the hell? Az nem jo! Probably because instead of saying "Good day," I said something like, "Good carp!" without realizing it. And he probably thought it best to ignore the crazy lady.

I am doubting even the soundness of my Hungarian greetings, because I just had lunch at the Turkish place, and I was trying to order my felafel with spicy sauce, but instead I ordered it with shoes.

Sigh. When will the humiliation end?

Actually, I would dig a one-stop shop felafel and shoe store.

I was also in the Turkish place when I noticed that motherhood looks like a real pain in the ass. There was this poor woman struggling with her child and this big contraption stroller thing, and then all these other bags and coats and stuff. How do women do that? Why do they want to do that? You can't tell me that doesn't suck. If I had a kid, I would lose it. I've lost three pairs of mittens and two scarves this winter. I don't know how I haven't lost my little knit cap, but I have dropped it 800 times, and strangers have been kind enough to alert me and pick it up for me. If it's not attached to my body in some substantial way-- you know, like pants-- then I will leave it somewhere. So that's why I can't have a kid: I would lose it.

And maybe that's another reason I shouldn't have a kid: tendency to refer to children as "it."

Firecracker in my Pants

2005-03-19T23:03:00.000+01:00

What is it about 5:43 am, and me, and Laci? We keep ending up at Extra lately, emphasis on lately. I suppose because it's one of the few places open at these morning hours, and because they welcome us so warmly: they seem to think it's just great that Laci and I are dancing on every imaginable surface, making shadow puppets with the projection screen downstairs, and playing football with rolled-up newspapers. Bless them. And their Dreher.

But this morning was different. I had to wake up at 9am to go over to the Buda side for a tango workshop. It wasn't easy, but I said that I would show up, and as I'm working on this whole do-what-you-say-you're-going-to-do-thing, I had to go. The way that I did it was by pretending that it was just a continuation of my earlier revelry. Like I had just sat out a few songs. And it worked.

The instructor was Jorge, an Argentinean teacher who now lives in Vienna, and he is one of the ten sexiest men I have ever encountered in my life. You're probably thinking of some slicked-back Antonio Banderas character, but that's not Jorge at all. He is young, sort of slight but lithe, wears slouchy jeans, sneakers, short shaggy hair. Moves like he's walking on butter. I'm starting a Jorge cult because he needs to be worshipped. When he danced with me, all those cliches happened to my body, but the shorthand I like to use to indicate these physiological phenomena is: "firecracker in my pants."

In the last month, a seventeen-year old boy seems to have invaded my body. I find it very distracting. It's not dignified for a 29 year old woman to behave like a seventeen year old boy. I need help. I need to get a grip. I need to get the blood flowing to the brain and not so much to the loins. The Economist had this to say about my current state:

I don't have any advice, but this urge is what I really think the biological clock is--FUCK ME, FUCK ME, FUCK ME!-- which, before the age of the pill, was sufficient to get every woman knocked up a few times before she was forty. Hell, pregnancy was the only way men could keep us from chasing them around--I love the cartoon from the 40s, "I NEED A MA-AN!" The rest of that nurturing bullshit is just socialized; the maternal instinct is, in my humble opinion, the instinct to get it on.

Have I mentioned that I love and adore the Economist? I would also like to say that I like any use of the phrases, "nurturing bullshit," and "instinct to get it on."

OK, I have to go cast a bronze Jorge now.

Frau von Taussig

2005-03-18T18:44:00.000+01:00

From Joseph Roth's The Radetzky March: *

But age grew nearer with cruel and silent tread, and oftentimes in treacherous disguise. She counted the days that ran past her, and each morning the delicate wrinkles-- the hair-fine mesh that old age spun overnight round her innocently sleeping eyes. All the while her heart remained the heart of a sixteen-year-old girl. Blessed with everlasting youth, it dwelt within an ageing body, a beautiful secret in a crumbling castle. Every young man whom Frau von Taussig received in her arms was the long-awaited guest. To her chagrin, he didn't go in beyond the antechamber. She didn't live; all she did was wait! One after the other, she watched them go, with troubled, dissatisfied, embittered expressions. Gradually, she got used to seeing men come and go, the race of infantile giants, like foolish oversized insects, at once fleeting and ponderous; an army of crass idiots who tried to flap their leaden wings; warriors who imagined themselves victorious when they were held in contempt, possessors when they were laughed at , gourmets when they had barely had a taste; a horde of barbarians that you nevertheless spent all your time waiting for. Maybe, maybe, one individual might just arise out of the confused and undistinguished mass of them, light and shining, a prince with blessed hands. But he didn't come! You waited, and he didn't come! You were growing old, and he didn't come! Frau von Taussig set up barriers of young men like dams against encroaching age. Afraid of her own illusionless vision, she walked into every one of her so-called adventures with eyes tightly shut. And with her own needs, she transfigured the foolish men for her use. Unfortunately, they failed to notice. And they were not in the least transfigured.

*translated by Michael Hoffman, 2002. Granta Publications.

Juggling à la Compagnie Non Nova

2005-03-17T12:02:00.000+01:00

Last night I wanted my Hungarian friends to experience Budapest à la Audra. So I brought them to the Trafó, of course, my favorite venue in all the world, a place where I go at least once a week, an electric (literally and figuratively) place I have mentioned often at B & tR, either directly or obliquely.

Last night at the Trafó: Compagnie Non Nova from France presented a juggling act of sorts. "Zapptime" featured sketch-like pieces in which Philippe Ménard and Franck Tenot juggle small white balls, plastic floaty things, and colorful rubbish bags. The stage is set with video and film projections of their own performance and of TV talking heads. Two stern, dark-suited personages lurk and patrol the stage. "Zapptime" should be read as a poem, and not as a novel. It evokes, it does not tell a traditional narrative. The juggling could suggest all the sundry juggling we do in our own lives: the juggling of media influences, the juggling of personal and professional life, the juggling of relationships, the juggling of work and play, the juggling of art and life. The suited men could be a variety of different inhibiting mechanisms. I interpreted them as embodiments of disaproval. Censors of play and frivolity. At one point, one of the performers rushes onto the stage in a long-haired wig, sunglasses, and a hula-hoop. He gyrates, grinning broadly, and then a few moments later one of the suited men roughly escorts him off the stage.

After the performance, Ménard thanked the audience warmly, and said that he would have a shower, and then have a beer with everyone. (Cute! Cute!) One of my friends was very hungry, so I did not get to share a beer with him, but I did get to tell him, "merci beaucoup," before we left, something that's become a bit of a rule with me, grateful as I am to the hard work that goes into all the beauty that I consume.

The Courtship

2005-03-12T18:21:00.000+01:00

I think that a man is--like-- courting me or something. What ever happened to the good old days when you just shagged someone after a few beers? oh wait,..those weren't such good days. I keep forgetting.

It's been a really long time since a boy gave me a gift. And it was the last millenium when a boy actually wrapped a gift for me.

Something crappy has to happen next, right?

Captain & Tennille, Death & Destruction

2005-03-11T21:20:00.000+01:00

Che schifo! I just saw/heard the most schifoso thing ever while walking through the Nyugati underground: Gypsies on synthesizers! EEW! Dear God, why? It was like Gypsies meet Captain & Tennille. I was already sick from too much wine, babgulya (code word for those funny cigarettes), and beer last night, and now this. I wanted to take a picture because it was too disgusting to be believed, but Zsolti has my camera right now. Why ignore your people's rich musical heritage and do something so,...synthesized? But is this like assuming that all black people are good basketball players? Maybe. (For the record, I love my Gypsy brothers and sisters.)

Today I did something BIG. It was painful and scary, but it was the right thing to do. I got free of someone. If I didn't feel so crappy, I would feel great.

Why is it so hard to extricate ourselves from bad relationships? Why does it feel like it requires every bit of courage you have and then some that you don't have-- courage that you have to trust will just show up. I see my girlfriends who have left relationships and my heart wells up with admiration at how brave they had to be. The Economist (not the totally awesome political magazine, but the totally awesome political girlfriend) calls the initial real dirty break-up stuff "Death & Destruction." It's nasty business.

But it also opens the door for possibility.

I don't know what my possibilities are. But I know a few certainties: I'm going to check my bag, even though it's qualified as a carry-on, even though I have to wait a few minutes at baggage claim, because I don't like schlepping it through the airport and on the plane with me. I'm going to wear wrinkled pants from time to time. I'm not going to date any three-year olds who are in disguise as fifty-eight year olds. I'm not going to date someone who cannot remember the names of my best friends. I'm not going to drive in a car when the whole reason why I moved to cities like Savannah and Budapest is so I could walk. I'm going to sleep as late as I want to when I'm on holiday and not feel bad about it. I'm going to order dessert from room service, even though it's more expensive, because eating cake in bed in a hotel is fun.

The Broad with the Dog on her Lap

2005-03-09T16:51:00.000+01:00

Köszönöm szépen, Indeterminacy! I LOVE IT.

Vidám, Világos

2005-03-07T21:06:00.000+01:00

Things appear different after a night of dancing all night long. Or maybe it's because I am so very rarely up at 6 am. A hired driver took over the wheel for L, and we sat in the back of his car and drove northwards through Pest at that early hour. Buda opened up to us like a dream from across the river. L asked the driver to stop, and we both gazed out at the Chain Bridge and the varied roof shapes of Buda, stunned by the beauty of time and place.

Back at home, I ascended the same stairs that I climb every day. But bathed with morning haze and the sweetness of hand-holding still on me, like the insistent stickiness of honey, my stairs seemed more beautiful to me than ever.

I've always meant to take a picture of the shadows on the stairwell wall, but only Sunday morning at 6 am did I actually take that picture.

And then, at the top of the stairs, looking down into my courtyard from the balcony, I saw someone else had been dancing.

I gazed across the courtyard, sighed, thought dreamily: "This is my home." And decided I ought to pose one day like a Hellenistic sculpture in that niche across the way.

Waking up at 11:42 am, (without the benefit of my required nine hours), the world is blurry, but very bright.

Put in a Sock!

2005-03-04T23:23:00.000+01:00

"Put a sock in it!" This is what I would say to the Nasty Troll that lives in the flat above me, if I could. Maybe: "Betesz egy szoknya!" But I think this is "put in a sock!" and what if such a sartorial idiomatic expression does not even exist in Hungarian? In fact, I'm sure it doesn't.

So you see, it's me with the sock stuck in her mouth. Stymied by my inept Hungarian. I do know how to say "shut up!" : "csend legyen!" pronounced "chend ledyen," but how could I stop there? I want to say so many things to the Nasty Troll Husband. I want to convey some imaginative suggestions about where he should go and about what he should do with himself. But instead I am made dumb by my ignorance of his language. How many times have I put on my coat and my shoes determined to intervene in the horrible yelling and fighting that goes on above me? I stand in my bedroom, looking in the mirror, fists clenched, getting ready for a fight. No apathetic bystander am I. I was born a scrappy little bitch and a scrappy little bitch I remain.

But then I think, "Audra, what would the Dalai Lama do?" and then my resolve to rumble falters, and I take off my coat once more. The D.L. would do something, I'm sure, but he wouldn't get in a fight. But unfortunately, I'm not clever enough to know what it is.

I haven't always been so aware of the Nasty Troll Huband. He hasn't always been like this, and it's not every day, but it has gotten progressively worse. The nadir was when I had the flu about a month ago: every day that I was bed-ridden he was yelling in his guttural troll voice, stomping, slamming doors, heavy things slamming to the ground (maybe his wife). And I with a fever, delirious, tossing, turning, soaking, a phantasmagoria of violent dreams, a noxious combination of the violence raining down on me in the dark and the virus attacking my insides.

I've stood on the stairs outside their door before, ready. Ready for what exactly, I don't know. Maybe I was preparing myself for my own battle.

The violence of yelling is insupportable for me. And yet I have supported it. I will not do that anymore. Such gentle, kind boys I had in my past, and then I allowed my own troll to scream the most hateful things at me. How did I allow this to happen? I do not know. But the important thing is that it won't happen again. I'm putting a stop (sock) to it.

From József Attila’s poem, “Levegőt!” or “A Breath of Air!”

Felnőttem már. Szaporodik fogamban
Az idegen anyag,
Mint szívemben a halál. De jogom van
És lélek vagy agyag
Még nem vagyok nem oly becses az irhám,
Hogy érett fővel szótlanul kibírnám,
Ha nem vagyok szabad!

and in English translation:

Now I have grown up. There is more foreign
matter in my teeth,
more death in my heart. But I still have rights
until I fall apart
into dust and soul, and now that I've grown up
my skin is not so precious that I should put up
with the loss of my freedom.

Expressing the Soil

2005-03-01T23:23:00.000+01:00

I went to a wine tasting tonight given by the Budapest Wine Society at Vörös és Féher ("Red and White") restaurant on Andrassy ut. They had eight wines on offer in a specific order, and I tried all but the rosé. (Though I am no longer imposing an all-out rosé boycott) (but it has to be summer and sticky and outdoors with a lot of other Hungarians drinking rosé) I met an English bloke, a reporter, who has some sort of degree in wine marketing. And thank goodness he was there, because I am not a sophisticated wine drinker. I feel confident about my basic sorting capabilities: ie, "good," and "bad," and that's about it.

R was a fantastic guide through the evening: genuinely knowledgeable without even the tiniest schmidge of pretension or arrogance. I asked why Hungarian wines aren't better known abroad. Even with my modest basic sorting capabilities, I know that some Hungarian wines can be just as beautiful and smoothe as French and Italian wines. I asked why they didn't try to promote them better. He said that the Hungarian wine-makers don't have a lot of money for such promotion, and that all their money goes into the wine-production itself. And apparently there is quite a bit of in-fighting amongst the vinters.

Good years for Hungarian wines: 2000 and 2003 (though the 2003 is still being bottled). Bad year: 2002. But I also learned that ultimately there should not be good and bad years. That the winemaker should be able to exercise control over the grapes despite the variations of weather and temperature, and that it will become easier for the Hungarian winemaker to do this as his/her crop pushes its roots deeper into the ground.

My favorite three wines of the evening are the following:

Gyorgykovacs Furmint 2003 Somló: Somló is a region with which I was not familiar. It is comprised of a vulcanic hill, about 50 km north of Budapest. The mineral-rich vulcanic soil informs the wine of this region. I am normally a red-drinker, but I was captivated by this wine's softness and by the distinctiveness of the region where it is made. R thought perhaps it was a bit too soft (that it didn't reflect the mineral-richness of its provenance adequately), but he did like it very much as well.

Weninger Kékfrankos 2003 Sopron: The Kékfrankos is distinctively Hungarian. This is a deep-colored red. Sopron is in western Hungary, very close to the Austrian border. Aged 14 months in oak barrels. And at 1440 HUF (about 7 dollars US), a veritable steal.

Günzer Cabernet 2002 Villány: At first sip, I wasn't so interested in this Cabernet which contains 50% Cabernet Franc. R tells me that Cabernet Franc is thought to be a somewhat lesser-than sort of grape. But then I continued sipping. I realized that the context of wine tasting was very different from the one in which I normally enjoy wine, with food and friends. And that this wine was very smoothe, a quality which I love in reds. That if I was drinking this wine with dinner and friends, I would be very satified with it.

R said a lot of lovely things, but I remember specifically that he used the phrase "...expressing the soil,.." This is a dangerous thing to let slip from your lips when talking to a Decadent Woman at a wine-tasting. Imaginations will fire, and loins will set aquiver. Expressing the soil. oh my. Yes. I like that idea very, very much.

2005-02-26T00:48:00.000+01:00

Meant to be cleaning,...somehow ended up collaging,...

Is that a Pinot in your yoga mat or are you just happy to see me?

2005-02-25T00:01:00.000+01:00

Remember when I said that London had "big" litter? In the first few minutes of walking in London on my recent mini-break, friends and I happened on the above sneakers. Why? Why perfectly good sneakers in the street? We were walking home from the Lonsdale, a designy bar in Notting Hill. A bit too hip for me, really, but Shani, the birthday gal, (see flailing gal in pink frock above) loves it. As I arrived from Budapest well into cocktail hour, Shani instructed me to take a taxi from Victoria Station directly to the Lonsdale. I arrived, suitcase and yoga mat in hand, and announced to the gentleman manning the cloakroom that I was "feeling lucky tonight." Silly me.

I've got a new trick up my sleeve. Or rather up my yoga mat. Remember I mentioned my Poppins-esque knack for packing? Rolled up in the aforementioned yoga mat was a lovely Hungarian pinot noir for the birthday gal. I've solved a dilemma that has plagued me since my 19th year when I summered in Angers, France: namely, how one is to safely transport wine in one's luggage. It's genius, isn't it?

On Friday after spending the morning recovering from cocktails (I think it was the Rose Petal Martini that did me in), I hustled while Shani was at work. I saw little outside of Notting Hill the last time I visited, and I wanted to take full advantage of my time in London. I was a crazy person, literally running through the tube stations and elbowing hapless Londoners out of the way. I spent the afternoon in Bloomsbury and the British Museum. The latter holds many marvels, and many iliac crests. What is an iliac crest? you ask. The iliac crest is that most lovely curvature that runs from the male pubis out and upwards marking the boundary between leg and torso. Please witness a stunning example below, from the Parthenon's pedimental sculpture (GIVE THE ACROPOLIS MARBLES BACK TO GREECE!). Gorgeous, isn't it? My favorite professor in undergrad, the eminently inspiring Dr. Donna Sadler, once told us that she knew of an art historian who spent her entire life studying and comparing iliac crests. But I have too, in my way. Wink wink.

I also stood in jaw-dropped revery at the sight of a trio of ancient Greek sea nymphs, from what is modern day Turkey. Witness the way in which the sea spray has soaked their drapery. The thin, wet fabric clings to the nymph's ecstatically female body. I myself am thinking of giving up this historic preservation stuff, and becoming a sea nymph instead.

Friday night Shani took me to a teeny Italian corner eatery that she has frequented for many years. So tiny, that people can only be seated around the periphery of the small rectangle that comprises the restaurant. Sometime between my linguine and my pannacotta, I heard James Brown. I got that feeling. It was time for another installment of dancing in alternative spaces. I got up, stood in the center of the restaurant, and shook and gyrated. I normally expect to be received with pointing and laughter, but after a few minutes of dancing, everyone in the restaurant started wildly applauding! English are the last people I would expect to appreciate spontaneous dancing (ok maybe Norwegians or Swiss), so I was very gratified by such an outpouring of appreciation.

Walking home, Shani and I saw the most beautiful thing: a 70-80% off sale at Diane von Furstenberg!

On Saturday there was shopping to be done. Shani and I rendez-voused with the lovely Kate for a glorious afternoon frock-perusing, truffle-eating, and perfume-sniffing. Kate took us to the Jo Malone store, where a very obliging woman introduced me to the wonders of the "Fragrance Testing Booth." The Fragrance Testing Booth is a closed glass cabin where you choose from a menu of available scents, and then your chosen scent, without the alcohol, is wafted into the room via a small aperture. I WAS IN HEAVEN. I need to have a fragrance testing booth in my house. If you know me at all, you know I am ruled by smell. I became very proprietary very quickly with the FTB-- huffing in nutmeg and ginger, mandarin, and lime basil oh my! Witness Shani below caught up in a fever of fig and amber.

After an afternoon meal of crab hash with lemon aioli and baguette with shallots and anchovies in stunning former 1920's car showroom The Wolseley on Piccadilly, it was time to part from the lovely Kate. Here we are standing in front of the Tube map.

On Monday it was back to running through the tube station to see as much as I could. Below is the so-called gherkin, Norman Foster's Swiss Re building, gleaming like a,..like a shiny gherkin in the horizon.

I enjoyed some fabulous views from the Tate Modern: witness below the one taking in Foster's Millenium Bridge.

The Tate Modern is a rehabilitated industrial building with seven floors featuring permanent exhibitions, a floor for temporary exhibitions (currently Joseph Beuys and August Strindberg), and a cafe/restaurant on the glass-enclosed top floor from which you can appreciate the built environment whilst sipping a glass of Sangiovese. The museum also makes good use of the dramatic Turbine Hall below, which is currently animated by a chorus of bouncing and echoeing sound samples chosen and arranged by Bruce Nauman.

I got a much better sense of London this time, but still I've only scratched the surface. London is vast, and there is so much to see and do (and eat and smell). It's much more flash and brass than my tattered beauty, Budapest. Today as I walked to the market, everything Hungarian seemed especially tender to my eyes. Outside the market, two ancient and wizened Hungarian women with scarves around their heads stood in the tram stop median. One held two pitiful home-made bouquets of greenery with blue and pink berries, and the other had a small cardboard box with a hodgepodge of beans and nuts. I bought the sad little bouquets, probably cut from a bush near her home in the countryside, for 500 forints (this is like 2.50 US). And somehow they seem lovelier to me than anything I saw in a London shop window.

Uncool/\Cool

2005-02-16T18:45:00.000+01:00

Here's the Tampon Ceiling!

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

Uncool: Carravaggio exhibition starts the day after I leave London town.
Cool: I'm going to London town.

Uncool: Had to go see a doctor yesterday.
Cool: They had Italian Vogue in the waiting room, and the nurse told me I had "such nice make-up!"

Uncool: Had to have an exam and sonogram which poured "cocktail money down the gurgler," as London galpals Shani and Kate would say.
Cool: Don't have breast cancer.

Uncool: I feel guilty about my insatiable gusto for goose liver. I am encouraging goose-torture with my consumer dollars.
Cool: I am in the premier country for eating goose liver. (Had it today with cranberries at Cafe Kor and a beautiful glass of Cabernet-- was the very picture of decadence.) Their goose liver is so succulent and tender, so light, a goose-liver cloud. It's an entirely different thing from the dense, sickly pates I've had in the past.

Later addendum: I have been thinking and doing a little reading, and I have decided that I can't eat goose liver anymore. Please don't send me any PETA links or anything like that.

Uncool: Got turned away at the Italian Institute of Culture tonight when I went to go see the film Il Gattopardo, or The Leopard, a film based on the classic novel set in Sicily during the Risorgimento-- apparently the screening room was already full.
Cool: Called the Italian Institute of Culture and had a lovely conversation in italiano with a gentleman who promised me I could borrow the DVD from them. So nice to speak a foreign language that doesn't make me feel like a complete ass.

Uncool: I have bruised a couple ribs and the pain is excruciating, so much so that I can't do yoga.
Cool: I don't know,...that they're not broken?

Uncool: Haven't packed yet for London.
Cool: I've got a knack for packing. It's my talent. Some folks can sing. Some can dance. I can pack. Remember when Mary Poppins pulled out a flat's worth of contents from her carpet bag? Instead of Victorian lampshades, I typically pack shoes and clothes, but Jane and Michael would still be impressed.

Uncool: No one guessed at my favorite Mary Poppins scene.
Cool: It's the scene where they visit Uncle Albert who is stuck at the top of the ceiling due to the levity of his laughter. I loved this when I was little. I love it now. It makes me very, very happy, that scene.

Uncool: I never really know where to go in this town to buy greeting cards. I'm quite picky about my cards-- I like letter-pressed ones or I at least like them to be beautiful and original.
Cool: Any Hungarian-language card I buy is sort of fun for non-Hungarians because they can look at it and say, "wow, this language is really weird." Also, it's good fun to make up alternatives for what the card might say, in the vein of Indeterminacy.

So, off to London, then. Will try to keep snogging in the streets to a minimum and appreciation of the built environment to a maximum. (Can't wait to see Norman Foster's gherkin!) (oh dear that wasn't a metaphor for his ween, I meant the controversial Swiss Re building he designed, you sluts.)

Bilious Budapest

2005-02-14T16:03:00.000+01:00

My incontinent love for this city (my boyfriend)(Happy Valentine's Day BP!) should be balanced with a little bile. Love without registered antipathy means nothing, if you subscribe to the Unity of Opposites, which I do. (I get it weekly). I would like to direct my bile at the panicked notion that my neighborhood is going to the dogs. I don't mean that Pulis and Komondors have taken over. No, I mean that there are an increasing number of irritants within a 100 meter radius of my flat.

So, Irritant number 1: I came back from the States in December to find that my corner store had turned into a store selling musical instruments. Now, it's true that the corner store sold milk that was bad before I bought it. The tampons were kept in a cabinet like precious jewels, and then the boxes were dusty. The clerks were surly and stingy with the plastic bags. But it was my corner store. I loved it, though I hated it. What am I to do with a musical instrument store? I can't very well pour a drum set on my cereal, now can I? A flute won't do me much good when I run out of 'pons, now will it? Unfortunately, my corner store is just one of the most recent casualties in a well-established trend. The corner stores in Budapest are disappearing. (Site of my former wretched corner store-turned-useless-musical-instrument-store below).

Irritant number 2: the accursed "Becketts." I know what you're thinking-- any place named for the acclaimed playwright couldn't be that stinky. Well, you're dead wrong, my friend, and you just might be dead with pilsner shrapnel in your head if you chance to go to this fatneck establishment. (Wait-a-second--actually, there are tons of fatneck or white cap-fraternity bars named for great writers! A James Joyce Pub in Ybor City, a Sloppy Joe's in Key West, FL that slaps Old Hem's image all over its Hard Rock-inspired merch. Hideous. Why don't they just go and make wall calendars and refrigerator magnets from the great Impressionists' paintings! Oh wait, they've done that already. Che bastardi.)

Becketts is on the corner of my street, one building over. It was Bp's first large-scale expat hangout. I have to pass it every day. Inside, it's actually pretty attractive. Dark wood panelling, intimate lighting scheme, spacious, et cetera. But I have several times come home to see ambulances parked outside because some Brits got in a row over a bloody football match (Becketts has UK cable) and started throwing beer glasses at one another. I don't understand this behavior, and I don't really care to either. Just keep out of my way, crazy footballers.

Irritant number 3: On the ground level of my building, there used to be an Indian tandoori restaurant. Little hole in the wall. Delicious food. The owners were my friends. Or at least neighborhood acquaintances. If I wasn't actually eating there, I would stop by occasionally for some tea and chat with Vajji (sp?), who, to be sure, said some abominable things about wanting to join the Indian army to kill Pakistanis, but we did have some less-offensive conversations as well. The guys gave me the biggest smiles whenever I passed by. I loved their oven. I loved their chana masala. They were "my guys." It was "my Indian place." But I came back from the United States to find that it closed up, and then recently, a banner appeared, reading: "Hamarosan Nyitunk! Pastamia Gyors-Etterem," which means, "Before long we are opening! Pastamia Fast-Restaurant." Just look at that flimsy cheap banner smothering MY quaint little tandoori sign. Sigh.

Miért Tabu?

2005-02-11T19:18:00.000+01:00

Hey, what's the big idea stealing my angry feminist undergrad sculpture project?!!! Imagine my surprise when I was walking down Kálmán Imre utca and I saw a ceiling of hanging tampons! No, this was not a crude and desperate attempt to remedy the fallout from a roof leak. Turned out to be an exhibition. An exhibition and quite a collection of menstrual blood gathering/absorbing mechanisms. The postcard for the show reads, "az ismert és a meg nem ismert betétekről és tamponokról a világban," which means something like "the known and the still unknown about pads and tampons in the world," (I'd welcome any translation help from my Hungarian brother and sisters).

The title of the show is "miért tabu" or "why taboo?" Damn fine question. One I have been asking for some time. I have little patience for expressions of squeamishness when the subject of menstruation comes up. People ask about the weather you're having, but they don't ask about the period you're having. Why the hell not? If the weather is an interesting enough subject for small talk-- with its fluctuations and the way that it affects us, then so should our periods be suitable conversation fodder too.

I'm not as progressive as the Dutch, who drop their cycle status on you like the time of day, but neither do I want to feel like I shouldn't talk about something that affects me so profoundly and so frequently. Luckily, I had a mom who was instrumental in forming my healthy attitude towards periods. I got it for the first time one summer when I was away from home, and when I got back and told her about it, she greeted the news with such joy and excitement such as I will never forget. That was a formative moment. I have permanently associated my period with a feeling of pride and accomplishment. Thanks, Mom.

I think that we gave that gift to my sister as well. We had a little celebration at the house. I showed my sister how to insert a tampon. My brother even gave her a hug and told her "mazel tov." (Hello??!! Have you heard of a sweeter brother?) Neighbors called to say "mazel tov" as well.

I would like to plea with the men and the boys out there to please not react with disgust or make faces or roll your eyes when the subject of periods comes up. It will come up. That's what periods do. Once a month if you've got the average cycle. You'll earn a lot of points and maybe learn something about women if you just listen. Ask some questions. You don't have to be as cool as Vinnie. (Vinnie, you make menstruating FUN!) I'm sure it's difficult to empathize, but it also wouldn't hurt to just try imagining what it might be like to have a period. If you can't do that, then proffering a back rub would be almost as good. And in case there's any confusion: tampons go in vaginas, not on ceilings.

What I Sat on for Art

2005-02-07T23:02:00.000+01:00

And where I went. Good Lord. Yes, I am an iredeemable dilettante where my own work is concerned, but let no one say that I am lax in supporting others. "Pilgrimage" would be hyperbolic, yes. But I took a train, a bus, a hike through the most shattered tattered darkened industrial area of Budapest. But you know I'm not complaining, not really. I love turn of the century light industrial brick buildings with rolled steel windows. That such a built environment was the setting for a contemporary dance performance was just my cup of pezgő, if you will. Choreographed by an Austrian dancer, Anita Kaya, tonight's performance featured two women who dance apparently independently of one another. Only at the last moment do they gaze at one another across the table while seated in the two chairs that served as the stage's only accoutrements.

Tonight's performance, titled modul 1+1, was a part of the L1 Dance Festival that began in Budapest in 2001. Every year, it has become a tradition to have at least one of the performances at their "home," nestled in this assemblage of old factory buildings.

After the performance, the dancers took questions from the audience. Kaya spoke about the communication that goes on between people in the same space. A communication of rhythm and movement and energy that has nothing to do with words. This is why the two women do not directly interact. They expressed different movements at different times, the way that we in the world do. But still they were dancing "together" in this sense of the subtler communication of shared space. I asked Kaya if she considered the audience an agent in this form of communication, and she said that of course, her performance would mean nothing without the audience and their perceptions.

We, the audience, maybe thirty of us, watched from our perch on some rather crumpled cardboard seating. I had a 3-D design project in undergrad that required creating a seat from cardboard. So I felt right at home, if a little unwieldy. It was all very touching, really. The improvised space, the improvised seating, the expressions of gratitude for merely arriving at the place. Art is possible anywhere, then. And maybe it is a good thing to have to work a little for your art. To traverse the old and dark places of your city to be rewarded in this way at the end. And, if you keep an open eye and an open heart, the old and the dark places might be their own unexpected reward.

I'm American, You're American, Let's be Friends

2005-02-06T13:02:00.000+01:00

Last night I went to the launch party of a new English literary journal, Pilvax, at a little bar called Bejaro next to the big market on Pipa utca. Having creative writing tendencies myself, I was curious and hopeful that maybe I could be a future contributor.

I met one of the two founding editors, both of whom are American. But I spent the bulk of the evening speaking with one of the contributors, A, an American poet who studied poetry at Boston University. A has lived in Budapest for fourteen years. It was interesting to speak to him about how Budapest has changed since then. Having been here since 1991, he has witnessed the full transformation of Budapest from a socialist economy to a market-economy. He and another American expat told me that Hungarians seemed to have had a lot more leisure time in the early days. As the basics of life were provided for by the socialist government, people were not struggling for their survival. T, the other American, said everyone seemed to be "hanging out."

I noticed that A wasn't drinking. He told me that a couple years ago, he became interested in the Bahá’í faith, and that it forbids drinking alcohol. The only thing I knew about Bahá’í was that somehow it was founded on the belief that all religions are basically the same at their roots. He confirmed this. He said that he had arrived at his beliefs through his own experiences, but that when he read Bahá’í texts, he saw these same beliefs spelled out. There is a Bahá’í Center here in Budapest, but only one Bahá’í place of worship per continent, Europe's being in Frankfurt, Germany.

We spoke for a couple hours, mostly about poetry and art. He did a reading of one of his pieces in Pilvax. It's a long poem not yet completed, centering around the life of a Hungarian named Laci. Each line has nine syllables, and each stanza ends with three words. Here is a small excerpt:

and, in one dust-encrusted corner,
a Tesla Preludium shortwave's
desk-sized bulk, clunking buttons, long, strafed
dial like a dog-run, or a punchcard,
wires cut, is altered to a planter:
ATHINA, VILNUS, PRAHA, LEIPZIG,
BANSKA-BYSTRICA, DOBL, overhung
with rubbery, serrated-heart leaves
of Lunaria rediviva--
a once-solid eastern-block voice box
eclipsed by a flowering diva,
on which a saucer of hazelnuts
is flanked by twin, arching crystal rocks,
the vegetable and mineral earth
of wild europa's violent rebirth
whittled down to tabletop display.
Outside, the facing building recounts
another, parallel history,...

Last night was really my first contact with the American expat community. My friends here are Hungarian and one Swiss. I think I have, in a way, willed it that way. I don't like this you're American, I'm American, we're instant friends dynamic. But neither would it be fair to rule out a possible friendship because someone is American.

I just worry about the insulation that other American friends might create. Up until now, my thoughts and impressions of this city and culture have been formed without the influence of other expats. And what would be the point of living in Budapest if I was surrounded by Americans?

My solitude has been my strength. How many of my past experiences would have been diluted to the point of meaninglessness had I not embarked on them alone? Many. It is not that I am fearless. It is the opposite. It is a fear of fear. I must do the thing that I fear. And I have been immeasurably rewarded in nearly every instance. The insulation of familiarity blankets my senses. I cannot smell, taste, or see as vividly as I do when I am alone. What would that December day in Illiers-Combray have meant had I been with someone else? Could I have connected so profoundly with the French woman at the Proust museum? Would we have wept together standing over little Marcel's single bed? No. Of course it would not have been possible.

But I do not fail to see that this rigorous embracing of solitude could actually have the effect of cutting myself off from something worthwhile. But, for now at least, Solitude is my closest companion. And-- oh yeah, Budapest is still my boyfriend.

London Mini-Break

2005-02-04T13:12:00.000+01:00

Booked a flight to London last night on Easy Jet! (Does the name "Easy Jet" make anyone else giggle?) I'm going to be in Notting Hill in two weeks with my lovely lovely girflfriends Shani and Kate. Shani's birthday is on the 17th, and we're going to celebrate with elderflower martinis at the Lonsdale,...yummy yum.

I asked Shani last night if she was going to let me sleep when I was visiting. She said that I had a whole two weeks to sleep, and that I should start taking vitamins. She is a lovely darling, that Shani, but I do not where she gets her energy. She'll be dancing about at 3am cocktail in hand, then next morning at 6 am ready for yoga.

Told her about my squished heart. She says that he's gay.

A: "Shani, just because he doesn't fancy me doesn't mean that he's gay."

S: "No, I'm serious. He's gay."

There was no convincing her.

I am so excited. I could use a mini-break with girlfriends. But now I must be feverishly productive over the next two weeks so I can feel like I've earned my cocktails. And this means rigorous Hungarian language study every day. And no more sleeping until 11, 12 o' clock. And only ale bread to eat.

Starting tommorrow.

Elég, nekem.

2005-01-31T19:55:00.000+01:00

Budapest, you looked beautiful today. You had your wintry face on with the clouds hanging in your eyes, and you Dr. Zhivagoed brilliantly with those perfectly perfect snowflakes timed and sized as if from a cinematic snow machine. Did you see me this afternoon, in Cafe Kör, batting my eyelashes at your neoclassical facades? I was asking myself why I seem to think that you aren't enough for me, why I pine for more. Why I insist on regarding you as merely a comely backdrop for drunken kisses. I know I am vulgar in those moments. Flitting in and out of taxis, hanging round the neck of some boy. But you are not the backdrop. You are the intrigue itself. And I am better outside of the taxis, away from the boy, walking on my own, chin upturned, angling for building belvederes.

Tonight I stomped through the snow of Szabadság Tér. Thick virgin snow. Mine to mark as I would. So I made bold, solid, full-footed prints. No doubt that I was there. No doubt that this girl from Florida was making her way in this great city tonight. Too big for my small body to contain, so much for my feeble furtive consciousness, you are, Budapest. But I am fixed on you, you are a part of me, as your snowflakes melt into my hair.

Budapest is my Boyfriend

2005-01-24T17:41:00.000+01:00

I am sick sick sick. I have a pesky, Pesti funk gurbling in my chest.

Completed unrelated to anything: (although I did take out insurance for the ramblings of my spotty brain when I tacked on "and the Rest," didn't I?) Can you guess what my favorite scene from Mary Poppins is? What's yours?

Oh. And the bloggy is going to start unsucking soon. I promise. But for now, I am in a state, as I went and got my heart squashed. Squish squash. I am a slow learner. If I were a laboratory rat, I would keep walking over the part of the cage that administers electric shocks. But at the moment, I cower, nose twitching, in the corner, the fleshy pads of my hind feet slightly cooked, swearing off further blithe cross-cage romps.

At the moment, I say: Budapest is my boyfriend, and I forsake all others.

3 Honvéd Utca

2005-01-19T17:08:00.000+01:00

Old buildings are the focus of my profession, and yet I don't seem to talk about them much here. That's an egregious omission, because Budapest is overflowing with distinctive and beautiful historic buildings. One of my favorite buildings is this: 3 Honvéd Utca, just a few minutes walk south of my flat and just north of the stone Soviet obelisk that the Hungarians keep around for whatever reason.

My older Hungarian friend A.H. starting ringing buzzers one day until he got hold of a resident of this building who very kindly came downstairs and gave us a tour of its interior. I'm sorry now that I did not use that opportunity to snap some photos inside, as there are Art Nouveau stained glass and wooden wonders within this building such as out of a dream. At least the stuff my dreams are made of, anyway.

On a side note: sometimes I may jest about how dyspeptic the Hungarians are. They are lacking in a Mediterranean brand of joviality, at least. But it's not fair, nor is it accurate, to say that as a people they are cold or unkind. If some stranger rang my flat's buzzer, I don't know if I would come down in the cold to show them around the inside of my building. I might be inclined to tell them to go jump in the frozen Danube. I wish to thank the greying lady at 3 Honvéd Utca who was so gracious to us.

Below are photos of the buildings remarkable wrought iron doors. They are works of art. I stop and smell them when I pass by.

3 Honvéd Utca's Wrought Iron Doors

2005-01-19T17:05:00.000+01:00

Wrought Iron Door Details

2005-01-19T17:04:00.000+01:00

Nobody Locks me Out!

2005-01-15T13:11:00.000+01:00

There's a piece of cinematic crap that I need to address, as it has become somewhat of a leitmotif for me here in Budapest. I've mentioned before that the English-language TV options are pretty sparse, but at 9pm every night the Cartoon Network morphs into Turner Classic Movies, which seems to be a limited version of the TCM I know from American cable. Apparently, it has about six movies in its repertoire, and it just shuffles them in what I have come to think of as a filmic Russian roulette.

The loaded barrel, if you will, is Brainstorm (1983), starring Christopher Walken and Natalie Wood, who died during the 1981 filming. Walken plays Dr. Michael Anthony Grace, who is a brilliant researcher who has developed along with his colleague, Dr. Lillian Reynolds, played by Louise Fletcher, a mechanism which can record people's thoughts, feelings, and memories. Lillian dies from a heart attack while in the lab, and decides at the last minute to record her death via this breakthrough recording device. Federal agents come in and confiscate Mike's research; they want to use the technology for some sort of militaristic brainwashing scheme. Mike is determined, however, to play Lillian's recorded death experience, thereby experiencing "the scariest thing man ever has to face."

A lot of people like this movie. That's great. I like it too, because it's awesomely bad. Take, for example, some of the awesomely bad dialogue:

"This is not the research we're interested in-- this is sick!"

"Why do you have to die to let go?"

"I'm scared, so scared, but the thing is-- I like it! I want more!"

"He's taken my work and turned it into something bad!" (spoken by Walken's character while eating Ruffles potato chips)

"Nobody locks me out! That tape is mine!"

"The production lab has gone crazy!" (in response to lab-mayhem featuring robotic arms running amok and lots of cool "water-activated foam")

This movie is also awesomely bad for all the 80's sci-fi gadgetry: lots of cool shiny spools and lighty-up whats-its. Fun!

There's so much discontinuity in this movie it's just plain trippy. But my brother Aaron and I have a favorite: when Mike's son Chris falls down a giant plot-hole, as Aaron puts it. Mike has just breeched the fed's security, and witnessed their nefarious manipulation of his research in the form of a tape which contains a "Psychotic Episode. Extreme Version." (I LOVE THIS-- "extreme version!" This kills me! "um, hi, yes, I'd like to have the psychotic episode, but just the mild version please. I don't wanna go completely wacko, after all.") While Mike is eating potato chips, his son Chris wonders into his dad's office, puts on the headphones in the midst of playing the psychotic episode (extreme version). Next scene, Mike and his wife Karen are in the hospital waiting room, and a doctor informs them that their son has experienced a "severe psychotic break." You might expect Mike and Karen to be concerned about their son, but not in Brainstorm. Instead, Mike flies off the handle shouting, "Nobody locks me out!" (denies him access to the tape) and disappears in a huff in the elevator. Poor Chris is never heard from again, as Mike and Karen set about transmitting Lillian's death tape to a telephone booth in Kitty Hawk, and re-forging their love for one another.

I'm sure the Wright brothers never dreamed their daring experiments in aviation would someday serve as a symbolic backdrop for this remarkably suck-ass movie, but that is just one of the unlikely surprises that Brainstorm has in store for us. We are apparently supposed to liken the Wright brothers' pioneering exploration of the skies with Mike's pioneering into death. Wow. And he does all this via a public telephone booth. Wow again. And I can't even play a movie trailer properly with my DSL connection. Truly amazing stuff.

I invite you, friends, to experience this mind-boggling precipitation of grey matter, this Brainstorm. Aaron, I would also appreciate any commentary you have to offer on our mutually beloved piece of crap.

A Bad Hand

2005-01-13T22:11:00.000+01:00

I was signing on to hotmail and I saw one of their links to an article, titled "Ladies: in a dating rut?" And I just thought, Fuck you. I hate those stupid patronizing articles. It's utter misery, this looking for love business, and it's no use pretending it's a card game or something.

P.S. Sorry for dropping the F-bomb, Mom.

Food of the Landed Gentry

2005-01-11T09:53:00.000+01:00

A little thing I like to call "Food of the Gods" people. Or at least "Food of the Landed Gentry before the Reds Seized their Property." This little baby here represents a good 22% of my diet. Made by Loesch. The Austrians got it goin' on, y'all.

senza voce

2005-01-06T10:50:00.000+01:00

There are things I want to say. Things I want to say about tragedy and sadness. And then there are things I want to say about whipped cream and Vienna. Then about Gypsy singers and about feeling cool.

But I cannot say those things now. Because there is someone here. Someone sucking the life from me. I must hold off living, and consequently writing, until this someone leaves in a few days. Terrible to live in this suspended way.

But it would be vulgar to complain about a situation that I created. And vulgar to complain when so many cannot complain.

So I only leave here the suggestion of complaint. That complaint is in my heart and riddled through my stomach. That I hope it won't fester there.

Great Big Bubbling Hearts

2005-01-01T19:41:00.000+01:00

You see a young man who has turned in desperation to journalists, and he is sobbing on camera, crying that he has lost his entire family, lost his children. Perhaps a fate worse than losing one's life. He is Indonesian and his skin is brown, but the grief welling in his eyes and the terror in his voice are as immediately recognizable as any word or gesture from your next door neighbor.

Still he seems far away from your world. "Tsunami" has the lilt of the fantastic, and this devastation is nothing that could threaten you.

But continents and oceans are but blips in our ever-more connected earth. If you would lend a hand to your neighbor whose house was on fire, if you are a person who stops to help a person in need, if you believe in a world of community where people work together to help each other in times of disaster, then you can do something.

There are those who talk about how one never knows where the money truly goes when you give to a non-profit. It is true that there are many organizations that are badly managed, and that do not make proper use of the contributions that they receive. In my experience, this argument is most often used by people who want to make themselves feel better about doing nothing. It's like saying that because you can get bad food and bad service at a restaurant, you shouldn't go out to eat. I prefer to do my homework and to seek out a good restaurant.

So you can do the same with non-profits. And there is a great web tool with which to do this called Guidestar, which allows you to examine an organization's financial stats. Just as there are a lot of good people out there who are working very hard to help others, so there are a lot of good organizations.

However, if you want to call Americans "stingy" (though the UN official Jan Egeland's words were misconstrued), well then, we can take this outside. I and my compatriots may suck at geography (it's true most of us can't find France on a world map to save our lives), we may be arrogant, and we may eat disgusting amounts of food, but

we

are

not

stingy.

Americans have great big bubbling hearts. No where else is volunteerism so common, and giving so great. I am proud of that America. I know that it is something that defines us a nation. I know that we are a generous people. That we will give and work to put this part of our world back together again.

Twenty Things

2004-12-29T14:57:00.000+01:00

I remembered/managed to bring lots of good stuff with me from home. Among them: maple syrup, contact lens solution (which is 20 bucks a bottle here and which you can only buy from eyeglass shops), measuring cups and spoons, black cotton "Ramones" knickers, and an assortment of Aveda potions and lotions. But I invariably forget some stuff, or at the last minute deem some things too unwieldy to carry across the ocean with me. Here are twenty things I wish that I had here in Budapest:

1. Scrabble -- though Scrabble seems to be a worldwide phenomenon, so maybe I can get it when I go to London next (though I wonder if a Hungarian Scrabble version, which would require 44 different letters, is available)
2. Uno—I wish I had gotten that special Muppets edition.
3. poker chips
4. marshmallows (for hot chocolate)
5. Bisquick
6. Prescriptives foundation
7. another yoga mat (for visitors)
8. a couple of bottles of decent California wine—to give as a gift or to open at a dinner party—like the Rodney Strong merlot
9. Krispy Kreme t-shirt
10. Dixie Lily hominy grits
11. Italian-English language study books/CD's
12. bagels-- I think I could freeze them and they would make it OK
13. Einstein’s double-whipped cream cheese
14. more Victoria’s Secret faux-fishnets in beige
15. matzah meal for making matzah ball soup (though maybe I can find this in a store near the big synagogue)
16. electric socks
17. a fleece vest
18. Jetstream lipgloss (drugstore brand) in Strawberry Daiquiri
19. potato ricer for making gnocchi
20. Moon Pies (my dear friend SVM once sent me some Moon Pies when I was working at the Guggenheim in Venice. I had a Swedish and a Chinese roommate at the time who were very appreciative of sampling this truly Southern treat.)

Post Script: I know that I must come off as a real ass pining for donut merchandise when perhaps 100,000 people, largely children, have been swallowed up by the earth. But I am not an ass, not most of the time. I am just trying to get by, like any poor slob, and maybe thinking about frivolous things helps a bit. Because I am sad, like anyone who has caught a glimpse of this utterly incomprehensible tragedy.

That More Lonely Courage

2004-12-22T23:51:00.000+01:00

I was reading about the thinker William James in the wonderful book The Metaphysical Club, by Louis Menand, and I came across a most beautiful sentiment that James expressed in a speech dedicating a war memorial on Boston Common. He said

That lonely kind of courage (civic-courage we call it in peace-times) is the kind of valor to which the monuments of nations should most of all be reared, for the survival of the fittest has not bred it into the bone of human beings as it has bred military valor.

James said that a nation is not saved by wars. Rather:

by acts without external picturesqueness; by speaking, writing, voting reasonably; by smiting corruption swiftly; by good temper between parties; by the people knowing true men when they see them, and preferring them as leaders to rabid partisans or empty quacks.

Acts without external picturesqueness. Nevermind the redundancy-- (as "picturesque" by definition refers to the external) it's very beautiful, isn't it?

I hope that in my life I will have the courage and the will to perform many acts without external picturesqueness.

That said, I am very saddened by the attack on the dining hall in Mosul. I think of the soldiers' families, in that cold shock after learning someone you love dearly, desperately, is gone. And how they will experience that awful remembrance of the fact upon waking. I wish I could lessen their pain. I wish I could tell those families that one morning they will wake up, and it will not be the first thing that they think about.

By echoeing James' sentiments, I do not mean to imply that the soldiers in Iraq are not courageous.

Only, it is nice to think of a different sort of courage. And, by James' suggestion, a different sort of monument. Can you imagine a monument in the National Mall or on Pennsylvania Avenue to all the letter-writing, marching, petition-circulating, voices of conscience and dissension that make America great? What would it look like, do you suppose, this monument?

How about some sort of expansive lit sculpture that at night would appear to be a candlelight vigil?

What do you think?

2004-12-21T18:05:00.000+01:00

Fat Party Menu

I am not too frigid.

2004-12-21T17:29:00.000+01:00

"Nem túl hideg vadgok." That is what I said last night at a party to a room full of Hungarians: "I am not too frigid."

And I'm not. But I was trying to say, of course, that I wasn't too cold. This is just the latest installment in my long engagement with international buffoonery. Sadly, I've grown so accustomed to humiliating myself that I now only feel the slightest pulse of embarrassment. These days I just sort of stand-by with a wry smile absorbing the laughter, jeers, and finger-pointing (ok-- there has rarely been actual finger-pointing, but it was implied), while I catalog my most recent faux pas for future telling. I've found that accounts of my humiliation are very amusing for others. So-- have at it, have a good laugh on me.

Said party was at Old Amsterdam, a bar a touch south of Kalvin Ter, where some friends had the place for the night for their second annual "Zsír Zsúr." Zsír Zsúr translates as "Fat Party" or "Lard Party." I was very pleased to be invited to such a party, with its titular promise of decadence. And you know what I always say:

fat = flavor

But still, I have to admit that I was slightly repulsed by the slabs o' mangalica szalonna. The mangalica is a Hungarian wild pig, and the szalonna is its fat. Slabs of pig fat. No meat interspersed with the fat to confuse things. So, I literally took a stab at it. It was smoky and flavorful and disgusting, but in a good Hungarian celebratory way.

It's tough-going for the vegetarian or vegetarian-inclined here in Hungary, if you want to eat traditional Hungarian food. Last night's non-meat offerings basically consisted of beets and gherkins.

I also ate cow's intestine, but I didn't know it was cow's intestine, because it was pretty dark inside. I recognized the taste and the texture, though, after I put it in my mouth. I'm pretty well-acquainted with offal, having spent a fair amount of time in Rome, where it's part of their regional cuisine. Originally, dishes like trippa all romana came about because meat was scarce, and people wanted to make use of all the edible parts of the cow. Perhaps this is the origin of the Hungarian dish as well.

I am intrepid in gustatory matters, and this is resolutely a point of pride with me. Food is intricately intertwined with culture, and if I want to experience the latter, then I need to experience the former. That said, I was happy to return to my regular Budapesti diet of fruits, smoked cheeses, and refined carbs.

Last night I also got to chat with one of my favorite Hungarians, Mező. I think he is my favorite friend of Zsolti and Anita's. You know when you just have a good feeling about someone? I think my fondness for Mező has to do with my revelation in my mid-20's that "nice is hot." What do you think? Aren't nice people extremely attractive? I don't mean an officious sort of niceness, but a real niceness. I guess that's pretty vague. But nice is hot. I've long thought beauty/fashion magazines should do articles on niceness. It's amazing what a warm smile or a kind word can do for your complexion. Is this meditation on niceness too cloying? I'm not proselytizing-- I'm just describing a phenomenon that I experience.

I have the perfect antidote for my mawkish sentiments! I will teach you how to ask for weed in Hungarian. Here ya go:

Kérek szépen fűt, legyen szíves. ("I would kindly like some grass, please") (Best to be polite as possible in this situation.)

Have fun, kids.

2004-12-18T01:11:00.000+01:00

Szabó Réka at the MU Színház

Down with Keanu!

2004-12-17T23:54:00.000+01:00

Oh Lordy. It is effing cold in this city, I hope you don't mind me saying. No kidding, y'all. I seriously can't feel my toes. No more leaving the flat until summer rolls around. I figure I can get my little Indian friends downstairs to bring me food, Zsolti will come and give me Hungarian lessons, the Swiss boy can--I don't know-- provide me with some sort of banking services?? and I have my bloggy for a sort of pseudo-social interaction. I'm sure the goings-on of my life in the flat will be good for endlessly fascinating posts.

But before I explore the domestic realm, perhaps I should tell you what did bring me out into the slushy December streets tonight (in some beautiful brown patent leather pointy-toe numbers I don't mind telling you) (thus the frozen toes).

Well, it was modern dance, of course.

It wasn't me who was doing the modern dance. Though I rather like the thought of myself flexing and swaying in a Martha Graham-style Grecian robe through Nyugati Palyaudvar (the West train station). But no. Instead, it was a group of five Hungarian actors/dancers under the name Szabó Réka at the MU Színház on the Buda side. The MU is tres intime, in the manner of the Trafo. Can only seat 250 people or so.

Here is the English text from the program:

We know it to be vociferous, forever on the run, rowdy, often vulgar.
And yet it can look so lonesome, all walled up, with the blinds down. It
has a callous face but it is still somehow vulnerable. Its facades glisten.
Its arms and face always in some other place: all desire inside,
while living on the outside.
We do a headstand, take a look at it, laughing.

Sound like your average artist's statement rubbish? No, it's not. "It" in the latter passage is surely the body. And the dance troupe this evening used humor, movement, and props to convey the body as described here. In one segment, opera music is played at a low volume while one of the male dancers holds a square window up to his face. He smushes his face against the glass, showing us, the audience, his alternately flattened nose, forehead, lips, as he rolls his face around. The window is a casement window which he unlatches and opens. The opera music's volume soars. His face protrudes freely.

A female figures stands with her back to us. Her arms are wrapped around her, and we notice a hand, presumably her hand, figdgeting and wriggling about the perimeter of her body. But the hand is capable of twisting and turning in a way that defies normal anatomical constraints. The hand
reaches down her side past her knees while her body remains straight. The hand wiggles back up and comes up between her legs where it does its own dance. The hand lingers there between her legs, eventually nestling itself against the figure's ass.

When I was at my parents' house in Florida, I tried to find something besides books from the library to feed my soul. I found precious little. (You'll pardon me if I don't find Phantom of the Opera satisfying in this respect.) Any sort of entertainment section or on-line city guide was overwhelmingly just about movies and TV. I told myself to be patient, that it was a good time to read and to spend time with my family, and that soon my soul would feast in the winter season of Art and Beauty here in Budapest.

Fine for me. But what about the people who can't go to Budapest? or to another metropolis that embraces the arts? I want more for my brother and sister, and I want more for other Americans. I know this is a can of worms, the whole question of the United States' attitude toward the arts, and I don't want to open that can now. I want to say that you as an American can ask for more. You can write a letter to your local performance venues, you can write a letter to the paper, you can make it a point to support what fledgling efforts there might be in your community. Say you want more than a stale old musical, more than The Matrix, more than C.S.I.! Tell them you want something new, something fresh, something to make you so cold that no fire can warm you. Down with Keanu! On with Art! On with Creativity! If we are no longer citizens, and only consumers, then consume Beauty my fellow Americans. Breathe it, drink it, eat it, lick it, love it, support it, give birth to it!

If we feed ourselves unimaginative muck, then we will produce unimaginative muck. But the good news is that there is better. Much better. There are voices, original voices, in our communities everywhere, and they only need you to listen. Listen.

Listen.

December 18th Addendum:
I reread this, and I don't want to give the impression that I subscribe to a hierarchical view of the arts. I know very well that there is a lot of creativity in TV land, and I think it's great. Some of it is a lot better than some paintings and a LOT of performance art I've seen, that's for sure. But TV and movies are San Fernando Valley and Hollywood-based, and there are other voices out there who, as I said, deserve a listen. We should have options and variety. That's what I want to say. Thanks.

Here, Pest

2004-12-15T18:10:00.000+01:00

Szia! Szép Varosom,

I return to you-- will you have me?

2004-12-09T19:41:00.000+01:00

A miracle happened here: three thumbs up!

Yo Yo Happy Hanukkah!

2004-12-09T19:38:00.000+01:00

Yo yo it's Hanukkah! oh dear, that's not right, is it? Seems a bit backwards. Perhaps: oy oy it's Hanukkah! Yes, there, that's it. Happy Hanukkah everyone!

Tonight our family had a Hanukkah party, and my brother and sister each invited all their friends, little Jews and little Gentiles all, to eat latkes and light candles. There was the sweetest little Gentile girl, a real doll, friend of my sister's, who had a spin at dreidel, and came up with shin, and she rejoiced, interpreting the three-pronged shin as "three thumbs up." Which surely must be luckier than two thumbs up. Absolute doll that one.

I am not Jewish (cumbersome to explain), but I'm rather a sort of wannabe Jew. Quite different from a Maccabee Jew. Ha ha,..just a little Hanukkah humor for you.

No, but seriously folks, my sister spent all Tuesday night making those wonderful construction paper chains. (You know the ones I mean. The ones that we from the old school used to make in kindergarten and beyond-- only we used that enticing, sweet-smelling paste. Where is that paste?) And my mom tried to discourage her! Said she didn't want chains at the Hanukkah party (or Hanukkah par-tay, as my sister insisted on calling it for the purposes of the invitation). So I said, "Mom, you're supposed to love construction paper chains. You're required to. It's like how you have to love those macaroni necklaces." She was unmoved. Said she didn't like chains, and that she threw away our macaroni jewelry. I take umbrage, mother.

Aliya, your Hanukkah chains are beautiful. I love them twisted round the pillars in the dining room, strung across the doorways. I invite you to bring your chains to Budapest, and decorate the portrait gallery with them. They might cheer ol' Lenin up a bit. He's looking so pensive and melancholy these days, you know. Has a little case of the collapse of the Soviet bloc.

Happy Hanukkah people. Make some chains. Get your dreidel on.

President Bush in the Doggie Toy Bin

2004-12-06T17:01:00.000+01:00

This one is for you SVM, and for you -a-n-d-y- , who worked so hard that we might have had a better leader for our country. And for all my friends and family made so sad (Connie, I'm thinking of you) by the results.

2004-12-06T16:59:00.000+01:00

Bellini and President Bush

James, Who Loved the Girl

2004-12-02T11:29:00.000+01:00

Once there was a boy named James. He lived in the Land of Oranges and Sunshine. He had shiny auburn hair and cinnamon on his lip. He had beautiful wrists and wore silver stars on them.

But on his right shoulder was a little skeleton tattoo holding a cigarette and a martini. The little skeleton was very bad, though James was very good.

James loved a girl. He loved her so much that he built an Italian palazzo for her cat, and he cooked her pierogies when she'd drunk too much.

But the girl was a wild thing, and she roamed from the Land of Oranges, and he called her as she roamed. When she went to Italy, he called her Olive. When she went to Georgia, he called her Peach.

The girl knew there was no greater, sweeter love in the world than James, who fell asleep with the words "Special Girl," on his lips, who made her pretty necklaces, who was given to surprising her with elaborately sculpted garnishes to adorn the sandwiches he made for her.

Whose heart broke when she roamed, but who said he wanted her to roam so that she would be happy.

Who kept the bad little skeleton out of sight for a little while.

And some years went by. But the bad little skeleton was always there, a dark inky fact deep in James' skin, and he did not want to be ignored.

And then one night.
One night.
When James was sad.
And the girl wasn't with him.
The bad little skeleton led James by his beautiful wrists.
And took him away from the Land of Oranges and Sunshine.
To a place without fruit, without sunshine, without love, without the girl.

And so the girl locked herself in a tiny room and pounded the floor with her fists and screamed louder than an ambulance siren.

That same night a cement block came to rest on the girl's chest.

The cement block was so very heavy that she could not roam. Could not even walk down the sidewalk without crumpling over. She could only lie in her bed and breathe short little shallow breaths.

One day the girl held a lock of James' shiny auburn hair against the block that rest on her chest. And then the girl knew: James did not want her to be so sad. He wanted her to go roaming, because he always wanted her to be happy.

So the girl started to chip away at the cement block that rest on her chest. Small little bits. Itty bitty bits. Until she could walk down the sidewalk without crumpling over. Until she could roam.

Though some bit of the block she could never chip away. It would always rest on her chest. When she got very tired from carrying it, she would hold the lock of James' shiny auburn hair, she would smell its sweetness, remember the whole head of that auburn hair, and then the lip with cinnamon, the way she kissed it, and finally she would feel a little stronger.

How to Live Out of a Suitcase and Not Cock Up your Parents' House

2004-11-28T10:43:00.000+01:00

I should say that I don't know how to do what the title suggests. I just thought if I tried to write a post about this subject, I might figure something out in the process. As my dad (who is from Long Island) would say, I inevitably "cock up" every room in the house.

I've lived out of backpacks, and more recently suitcases at various points in my peripatetic life, and have needed to use my parents' house in Palm Harbor, Florida as a refuelling point/base over the years. My stuff, or George Carlin's use of the word "shit," from my parents' perspective, is complicated. I am not able to follow Thoreau's instruction to "live simply and wisely." I find that living wisely for me necessitates living complicatedly. (I don't think that's a proper adverb, but whatever.)

The world is big, my interests are many, my suitcase doth overfloweth. But I would advise the following if I were to advise on this subject:

1. Ask your parents/ host (oh-- just realized "host" is also the word for "a living animal or plant affording subsistence or lodgment to a parasite." oh dear.) where they would like you to to put your stuff, or shit.

2. If you have a great many books amongst your stuff or shit, or if you rapidly accumulate them through libraries or prodigal on-line buying sprees, relegate a specific place for them, and stick to it. If you have the book variant of attention-deficit-disorder, replace each book to that specific place before you pick up the next one, even if, say, the Sartre book you're reading, makes you want to refer for some weird reason to your tome on Art Deco.

3. Keep your toiletries out of sight. Your teenaged brother doesn't want to look at your cucumber facial cleansing cloths, your moisturizer, your perfume, and certainly not your tampons. Have some sensitivity for goddsakes. There's sure to be some space where you can stow these items away in the bathroom once you've finished with them. If not, carry them from your suitcase to the bathroom each time you need them. It's a bit of a schlep, but it's the right thing to do. Special allowances may be made for your toothbrush and toothpaste, which are gender-neutral and are used frequently.

4. But all of the above can be handled by simply (or rather, complicatedly) being mindful. I know better than anyone how easy it is to kick off your Puma sneakers, drape your pashmina over the sofa, and leave your book on Martha Graham lying open on the coffee table. But we must be respectful of other people's space, because we are not animals. If we were animals, we might, like one fluffy ghetto dog who recently paid us a visit, assert ourselves every few meters or so along the baseboard, on the carpet, and on the sofas. But we as humans must resist this canine inclination to mark. If you must mark, do it on your blog, where with a simple click of the mouse, others need not countenance your stuff, or shit, as the case may be.

One word more to my parents, to my family, my hosts: I am trying, I really am. Though I may be protozoan at times, I know how lucky I am to be here with you. I will try not to communicate any diseases, but rather to coexist with you symbiotically.

Thank you.

Downward Facing Dog I

2004-11-19T18:16:00.000+01:00

My yoga practice is extremely interesting to my current housemates, Bella and Bellini. Having one's ears licked during savasana may not promote deep relaxation, but I still recommend it.

Downward Facing Dog II

2004-11-19T18:14:00.000+01:00

Bella

Of the Gita and Italian Shoes

2004-11-18T11:16:00.000+01:00

How am I to reconcile my reading of the Gita, the words of the Dalai Lama, the teachings of Buddhism, the Yoga Sutras, with my love for Italian shoes? for perfume? for massage? for art?

I read part of the Gita this morning. But here I am, staring down at the most fabulous kelly green pointy-toe shoes with a slightly-taller-than-kitten-heel, and I feel as transformed by them as I do by my spiritual reading. I want both. Can't I have both? Wasn't Marx a dandy?

There is much that appeals to me in Buddhism. Compassion. I can dig it. Equanimity. Challenging, but I can dig it. But how does a woman who swoons at distant bakery smells, who has wept biting into a fig, who stood for hours transfixed by the beauty of the Charioteer of Delphi, renounce her senses? How can this woman believe that her senses are actually a source of misery?

I can only believe it intellectually. I have tried repeatedly to meditate on this, to accept it. But as I sat outside this morning with the dogs and a view to the lake and a book on my lap and in my head, I know that Beauty is good. I will not believe that my love of beauty is a weakness. And I know that it is not when I feel the joy of Beauty as acutely as the warmth of caffeine from the first sip of coffee in the morning, as acutely as the feel of sunshine on my eyelids. While it may be true that at the atomic level everything is one, we do interpret the world through the lenses of our bodies. Our bodies have eyes, and we should not renounce the gift of vision and our senses as something evil, rather a girl might be singingly grateful for them. The actual world may be one thing. But the world we live in is another. I love Beauty. I---- love----Bee-u-tee. And though my reading of it is not tinged soley by the formal aspects, for just now I looked down at the yellow gold and amethyst ring that was my great-grandmother's engagement ring, and my heart soared, though yellow gold is typically not my favorite, and I have prized the taste of sugar cookies too cloying and sloppily iced for the the fact that I knew they were made with love, still Appearances matter to me, and I do not feel ashamed for saying so. What did Oscar say? Something about the mystery of the world being written in its appearances?

So how do I reconcile my Wildean instincts with my Buddhist sympathies? The answer is that I don't. The answer is that I must learn to accept Complexity and Contradiction within my heart. I think Henry Miller said something like, "If I say one thing today, and the opposite tommorrow, both times I am right." And there it is. I am right when I see ugliness in the strip centers and when I see desolation in the 10 lane highways of my homeland, Florida, but I am also right when I feel a connection with and tenderness toward the lethargic lobsters trapped in a glass tank in the supermarket.

I came in from the lake and the dogs to tell you that. I needed to say that. I respect you immensely, Your Holiness, but I will not renounce Beauty. I will work on Compassion and Loving-Kindness and even Equanimity, but I won't feel ashamed for being a sensualist. And I don't mind having the air of the ridiculous. In my one-of-a-kind pink tweed coat designed by a little-known Krakow designer click-clacking about in my Italian pointy-toes reciting verse from the Gita. There I am. I know there can be no other way for me.

Xtreme Gulp

2004-11-14T03:42:00.000+01:00

My mom and I were pulling into our driveway and I saw a strange girl in our garage stirring a bucket of paint.

"Mommy, who is that girl and why is she stirring paint in our garage?"

Once we pulled in, my mom identified her as a friend of my brother's. And I saw for myself that she hadn't been stirring a bucket of paint, but rather a Slurpee in a drink container the size of my torso with the words "Xtreme Gulp" emblazoned across it. Such a small girl with such a Big Gulp. Then I saw her brother, who also toted an X-treme Gulp. He told me you could get refills for only 96 cents.

I talked with them for a while about the extremity of their gulps. I am not here to judge. I do not frown on the Big Gulp. I don't want to say anything here about our fixation with size and quantity, with extremity. You've all heard that before, and there must be some expat in Japan who can play that fiddle much better than I.

No. Rather I want to say that I love the Big Gulp, and its water-reservoir proportioned-scions. It's just so us. Even the gradual upping of the ante is so American: from Big Gulp to Bigger Gulp to Super Big Gulp to Xtreme Gulp.

Though I can't help thinking of words from the Dalai Lama:

Fulfilled desire may provide a sense of temporary satisfaction; however, the pleasure we experience upon acquiring a new car or home, for example, is usually short-lived. When we indulge our desires, they tend to increase in intensity and multiply in number. We become more demanding and less content, finding it more difficult to satisfy our needs.

Ok. Yes, Your Holiness. That's certainly the case, and a good analysis of American consumption. But the Gulps don't offend in the manner of SUVs or McMansions. They're good fun. I embrace them. Though my arms can just barely contain their girth.

@ the station

2004-11-07T15:26:00.000+01:00

I saw anxiety flicker in her blue eyes as she surveyed the other passengers in Tampa's Union Station. Not unlike the anxiety she registered the time I took her to hear Janine Antoni speak about the plaster casts of her breasts, and similar to the anxiety I see whenever I announce the provenance of my most recent ethnic love affair.

"Mommy, do you ever wish that you had a normal daughter?"

A radiant smile took over her face. "Oh nooooooo! Whenever I hear my partners talk about their sons and daughters who are lawyers and accountants, I think, 'Thank goodness Audra's not like that!'"

"Mommy, do you think I'll be the only person on the bus with a yoga mat?"

"I don't know. But you could use it as a neck bolster."

Sad, Sore, Schmushed

2004-11-03T21:34:00.000+01:00

I am trying to be yoga, but that monkey is going to be our President again, and I'm going to have to try to explain it to every person I meet in Europe, and I don't understand it myself.

One European put it to me this way: "You've got about 290 million people in the US, right?"

"Um, yeah. Thereabouts."

"And that's the best you could do?"

Yes, George W. Bush is apparently the best we could do in electing the single most powerful individual in the entire world. A man who sees the world in terms of "evildoers" vs. those with some sort of mandate from his God. A man whom (most of) the rest of the world abhors. Even if one explores the outer limits of imagination, and supposes that he was competent, that he really is a good President, you would still have to acknowledge that the rest of the world at least perceives him as a cowboy. (Nothing against cowboys here: as John Travolta said in Urban Cowboy: "All cowboys aint dumb. Some got smarts real good.") But some are, in fact, real dumb asses, aren't they? Or John's character wouldn't have even made such a pitiful defence of their "smarts," as he put it. Perception in foreign relations is vital. If the rest of the world is antipathetic to our President, perceives him as stupid and dangerous, then this will have comprehensive effects: everything from our ability to promote our agenda at the U.N. to how American individuals are received abroad are affected.

Consider these words from the Dalai Lama:

"Since our very existence and well-being are a result of the cooperation and contributions of countless others, we must develop a proper attitude about the way we relate to them...Today, in our modern global economy, national boundaries are irrelevant. Not only do countries depend upon one another, but so do continents. We are heavily interdependent." And, "One-sided victory is no longer relevant. We must work to resolve conflicts in a spirit of reconciliation and always keep in mind the interests of others."*

In addition to my anguish over the election, tonight I was driving to Tampa to see Dr. M, and a man from New Jersey slammed into the back of me on I-275. My neck jerked violently forwards and backwards on impact, though now I feel OK. But my dad says it's tommorrow and the next day when the pain will show up. I was driving my brother's car, and it's schmushed and sad now. I'm sorry, Aaron. I also have a wicked sore throat, and I have no idea what I'm doing with my life.

If you could leave a comment saying something along the lines of "I feel really sorry for you. You poor thing! How brave you are to go on blogging in the face of such adversity! Shall I come over immediately and make you matzah ball soup?" that would be great.

*from the Introduction of An Open Heart: Practicing Compassion in Everyday Life

Kedgeree ----> Bagels

2004-11-02T07:54:00.000+01:00

First morning back in the US. I feel scared. I invariably experience a post-European depression. But I am going back in December, and I will stave it off by focusing on this.

I don't know if I got London. In fact, I'm sure I didn't. I was only there for five days and with Shani I only experienced Notting Hill and the West End. I was very sad to see they have such BIG litter there. Not just cigarette butts and bits of paper, but entire crisp bags and quarts of milk lying on the sidewalks. Not what I imagined. I really thought the English were more civilized. And they behave hideously on the tube. In Budapest, when the train pulls up, everyone forms two small queues to either side of the doors, and they wait until each person has gotten off before trying to enter. On the tube in London, you have to literally fight your way against an oncoming tide of people just to get off. Dear Londoners, I can tell you this is less efficient-- that it actually takes more time to behave in this fend-for-yourself manner.

But it's possible that I just don't get it. Maybe it's somehow invigorating to behave in this way, to have to constantly assert one's self. But I hold Courtesy in such high esteem that it's difficult for me to appreciate this. But I did have an amazing time. Shani and I spent the better part of Sunday in a proper English pub called The Cow. I ate kedgeree (rice, smoked fish, turmeric) and drank Guinness. We met three lovely boys who were sitting next to us. The loveliest was one Lewis of the Red Rosebud Mouth and the Pink Fuzzy Sweater. Lewis Lewis hope you sobered up in time for your driving lesson. Thank you for tea and earnest kisses in the street and in the garden.

oh! My mom just walked in the door with a bag full of fresh fragrant bagels and my favorite double-whipped cream cheese!!! Hello, America!

My Street

2004-10-27T15:21:00.000+02:00

This is my street and apartment house, Darlings. Second building from the right. Do you see the poster kiosk? Go up a bit to the balcony. That's my flat. Should put some flowers out, eh? Any recommendations? You can also see this street and the building in what is I believe the second scene in the movie Evita, the funeral procession. I'm often to be seen and heard on the balcony wearing a satin turban and singing "Don't Cry for me Argentina,..." My neighbors love it.

The Saddest Thing in Budapest

2004-10-27T15:05:00.000+02:00

So, what's the one thing more pitiful than a Trabante? Yes, a Trabante with a security device! This sad little thing is parked around the corner from my flat. The petrol in the gas tank (which is under the hood in Trabbies) is worth more than the Trabbie itself. Sad, sad.

must--keep--going

2004-10-24T19:00:00.000+02:00

So there's been a change in plan: I can't leave this town. It would hurt too much. There are some things I will need to figure out, but I can make it happen.

And I can't give up on this language. Not now. Studying Hungarian is like this you see:

You see a lush island in the distance. Someone tells you that there are succulent mangoes for eating and lithe dark island boys (for eating) eager to massage white womens' feet. Your imagination takes root on this island and compels you to start swimming. You're young. You're strong. You've got time. So you start off flushed with the excitement of adventure and challenge.

You've been swimming for a really long time, so you pause to check your destination. Funny, the island doesn't seem any closer. But you keep swimming. And swimming. Your arms and legs are getting kind of tired, but you knew it would be difficult, so you persevere. But the island still doesn't seem to be getting any closer. In fact, the brackish water is all in your eyes, and now you're confused: did you even see an island when you were standing on the shore, or was that a mirage, some trick of the sunlight reflecting off the water? But by now you are so spent, it would be pointless after all you've invested in time and effort and perseverence to turn back now. You can't face the possibility that you may have spent all these resources for nought. You've got to believe that the island and the mangoes and foot massages are real.

So you see I have to stay.

I will still go back to the States to see my family, for Thanksgiving, and for a very dear friend's wedding, but after that, I will be back in Pest amidst dark buildings and slushy December streets.

2004-10-19T18:10:00.000+02:00

"Boys," choreographed by Pal Frenak

Fiúk

2004-10-19T18:06:00.000+02:00

Fiúk, or “Boys,” choreographed by the Hungarian artist Pal Frenak, is a naughty and delicious celebration of boydom. At the Trafo, front and center with A.H, (where he always sits), I had a privileged and up-close view of the four dancers that twirled and scrambled up ropes, that crawled naked across the stage with only an “X” of black tape across their bums, that dressed in tutus and heckled and hee-hawed.

A.H. explained to me that when he first attended choreographed pieces by Pal Frenak, the music was always uncomfortably loud, no matter the venue. After some investigating, he found out that Frenak’s parents’ were deaf and mute, and the loud music was some sort of homage to the way that deaf people are able to dance: by feeling the vibrations created by extreme volume. He also noticed the dancers using their hands in unusually expressive ways: this of course was the sign language that Frenak had learned as a boy, though the dancers themselves do not understand the “words” they are communicating with their hands.

Fiúk is somehow drawn from Frenak’s time that he spent in an orphanage. Imagine a boy who discovers that he loves to dance. How other boys might react. His experiences feed into the scenes in which a tutu-ed man pirouettes about whilst the other boys scream and laugh and point. Though this composes only a small portion of the choreography, and Fiúk is by no means a straightforward narrative.

The scene that I will not soon forget: three of dancers stage left, each seated on a chair with his back facing the audience. Each one has pulled down his briefs to his thighs, so that his back from his shoulders to the delta of his ass is fully visible. Heads down. The rest of the stage is black, though three spotlights directly positioned over each dancer shine down, creating a gorgeous chiaroscuro of Michelangelo-esque torsos. First they are breathtakingly beautiful. Then they softly writhe. They ripple. I see each step of the ladder of their spines. I lose sense of their bodies as bodies; I see instead beautiful human-size cocoons with something live inside, wanting to break free. How beautiful to celebrate the small and under-appreciated muscles in a man’s back. Usually choreography is all arms and legs dependent, because arms and legs of course are the quickest route to creating dynamism in space, but what of dance that allows us to see the grace of even small movements?

I had forgotten how beautiful boys can be. Now I remember.

Fear at 2:40 pm [GMT + 1:00]

2004-10-15T15:20:00.000+02:00

Cold fear
Hot tears
I cannot leave you Budapest
Not your scowling
not your raining
not your shining
I dodge your dog shit
I keep on
this is my way, my city

Vagina will do just fine, thank you.

2004-10-14T20:31:00.000+02:00

So maybe I've been a bit tough on the old boy. You know who I mean: my man A.H., in his 60-somethings. And maybe not. He seems to frequently mention either sexual organs or sexual acts, and I cannot determine whether he is simply being frank, which is something I would find refreshing, mature, healthy, and interesting, or if he's being lechy. (I don't mean lecso-esque, but rather lecherous). This is a difficult situation. If I react vehemently to one of his apparently gratuitous or offensive references, then I not only risk offending him, but I could potentially shut the door on an honest intellectual exchange. To further complicate matters, there is the language barrier. Here is an example:

In Hungarian, there is a really cool slang word for a girl: csaj (it sounds almost like the tea drink Chai when pronounced, as "cs" makes a "ch" as in "church" sound in Hungarian). Maybe you have to know a little Hungarian to understand why it's a cool word, or hear it used by some young Hungarians. But as far as I know, we don't have anything equivalent in English. The closest thing I can come up with would be "chics," but of course that word is dated.

So he wanted to know about slang words for girls in English. And he asked me about "pussy." I said no, that doesn't refer to the female herself. He told me that he met some theater people in New York who were in fact using the word pussy in this manner, as a synonym for "girl." I said, "OK, but that's not the common usage. Normally it's used--" and he said, "I know, for your little friend between your legs." I was creeped out, but I let it go. But soon after, we were looking at the sculptural relief in the Kalvin ter metro station. It's supposed to symbolize the gate to the old medieval wall that was nearby, but it does not accomplish this very well: the relief features a vertically-shaped fissure of sorts. Again, he made reference to the work resembling, "your little friend between your legs." This time, I said, "I'm not six years old. 'Vagina' or 'vulva' will do just fine, thank you." He explained to me that they don't use this word in Hungarian. Not that the word "vagina" doesn't exist, but that it's used in a strictly clinical context, and indeed, some would say that it has a clinical connotation in English as well.

So, is A.H.
a) a lech
b) simply a man of candor, or
c) is he at a disadvantage as a non-native English speaker?

I don't know which, and I wish to be just. But if it becomes something more uncomfortable, I will toss Justice on her ass. Here's a lesson I learned: If you let someone touch you in a way that makes you uncomfortable or if you allow him to violate you in some other way without protest, you will regret it far more than you will regret offending him with a rebuff. Here's how I learned it:

Back in 1997, the Economist and I had just finished undergrad and we were backpacking about Europe. We flew into Cairo, where we hired a guide for three days. We thought we were prepared for Egypt: we had our phony wedding rings, our hats, our tuberculosis innoculations, and we even had iodine to defunkify the water. What we were not prepared for was negotiating constantly between respect for a foreign culture and its people and self-preservation. We were in a bus, making our way across the desert to the Pyramids, and our guide touched my thighs while talking to me. He did it in such a way that it seemed he must behave in this manner with every female. I was extremely uncomfortable, but I was frightened of offending or angering him, and I said nothing. I have always regretted it, but as a result I resolved to never let anything like that happen again.

The Economist and I spoke of this incident recently when she was here in Budapest. I believe it marked her in a similar way. It came up when we were at Mumus, and a Hungarian guy would not leave us alone. I tried polite. I tried calm but stern. He persisted, he grabbed my arm, and I reacted violently: I shoved him away from me, and said loudly, "Do not touch me." He left.

There is a moment that I love in the movie Holy Smoke!: Harvey Keitel plays the American cult-exiter P.J. Waters who comes to Australia to deprogram Kate Winslet's character, Ruth Baron. To this end, they are isolated in the Australian outback. Ruth is understandably defiant. P.J. grabs Ruth by the arm, and she pulls away, growling, "My body is mine." And of course, there is the implication that her mind is hers as well.

You know it's over when you throw away his toothbrush.

2004-10-11T16:20:00.000+02:00

Letter to an Acquaintance

2004-10-09T10:35:00.000+02:00

I told you I am blessed because I have many good friends.

You told me that as I grow older, I will eventually realize and understand the true meaning of “friend”: that people we call friends disappear with our fortunes. That one is lucky if he has one true friend. That you are very careful with how you use the word “friend,” and that you prefer to use the phrase “good acquaintance.”

I told you that was an ugly thing to say to me. You don’t know my friends. You’ve never met my friends. I’m 29, not 9, and I have experienced more Life than some ever will. I told you not to condescend to me in this manner. How contemptuous you are to assume that I cannot discern for myself who is a friend and who is not.

You persisted: told me stories of your grandfather, who was taken from his beautiful apartment overlooking the Duna by the Socialists, sent to live in a peasant village near the Czech border. How all of the people he thought were his friends deserted him, and none offered to help him, save for the building caretaker.

I have little interest in disabusing you of your beliefs on this topic. You have an interest in believing this way. I know you think I don’t see what you’re trying to do, but I can see plainly that you want to claim me, have me. And my abundance of friends threatens your stake, of course. You therefore have an interest in proving to me that friends are faithless and slippery things.

Go on believing as you do. I’ve no wish to make you reexamine a belief that is clearly so vital to your sense of self. If you were to see that so many of my friends are good, kind, generous, loyal, and thoughtful, I know that this would by implication force you to see the poverty of your situation. If I had an interest in doing that, I would ask you: have you been a good friend to others?

You are so arrogant that you can’t conceive that Truth might lie somewhere outside of your realm of experience. If you haven’t experienced it, then it must not exist.

I know old men like you.

You want a pretty package of a pretty young girl. You want to tell her your stories and have her stare wide-eyed with wonder at the life you’ve lived. You project onto me this need of yours. You want me to be a sort of beautiful repository of your self-mythology. You want my pale girl hand to stroke your old man ego. You tell story after story, lecture me on politics and art. Fine. But this is not conversation. This is not friendship. This is masturbation. For the most part, I am happy to oblige you in this way. I listen because I do feel respect for your vast experience, I am interested and hope to learn, and because I feel pity for your weaknesses. But I tell you now:

You will never possess me.

Peony Sea

2004-10-08T10:34:00.000+02:00

Nothing like a little wine at lunch to give one a fresh perspective. Sometimes I forget how beautiful my life is. If I were in a sea of lavender peonies, would even that exquisite flower move me? Hmm... bad example. If I were in a sea of lavender peonies, I know very well I would thrash about in exalted sensuousness. But let's say I was adrift in the peony sea for a year or so. Might not interpret them properly: their petal softness might cloy, their color might mean less against a backdrop of the same color.

I rang my mom at lunch, and while I was talking to her the pincer came and inquired if I was finished eating, I told him finom volt (it was delicious), and in that instant I realized how lucky I am, in this city, in that courtyard, in the sunlight, with a strange language on my tongue. Was it the wine, really? Or was it the magic of confluence of disparate elements at a precise moment?*

But there is a burden that comes with all this Beauty. I feel acutely that the time for taking and reveling is narrowing. The time for Giving is near. How will I leave an imprint of gratitude on the world? It's very well to pick up litter, it's very well to offer fragile ladies my arm as they descend stairs, and all very well to encourage others' creativity, but my debt runs deep, and these are but pennies against my balance. How will I pay it? I don't know yet. Shall I trust that the way for me to do this will present itself? Or do I fix my consciousness on it until I come up with something?

But wait: are these feelings anything to do with vestigial maternal sentiments? (Horrors!) Don't even THINK the foul and fatally unglamorous words "biological clock." oh,..I do feel ill. These are the words uttered by your parents' friends accompanied by a wink and a knowing smile at neighborhood BBQ's. Hideous. The next time they give me that wink and smile, I'll toss my boa across my neck and say, "Isn't it a pity about the Concord?"

* why do people say "a moment in time?" As opposed to a moment in sauerkraut?

Shani, and all her bits and pieces

2004-10-05T18:55:00.000+02:00

My friend Shani came to visit from London this past weekend. Shani and I were flatmates in San Lorenzo in Roma a little over a year ago, and we became instant friends. The advertising agency she works for in London organized a trip to Budapest for their employees, but she only had to have dinner with them on Saturday night, and the rest of the time she was with me. She came very late on Thursday night, and gave me the sweetest birthday card and a beautiful yoga book by Kathy Phillips. (Shani is the one who got me started doing yoga).

On Friday we met two of her Sydney friends who just happened to be in Budapest as well. Shani is Australian, though she has lived in London for the past five years. I learned some fun Australian speak, like up the duff, which means pregnant. We had a makos kifli, a poppyseed pastry, at the Gerbeaud cukrazda, which Shani kept pronouncing like "gerbil."

Then we did a little shopping along Vaci, and Shani and I went to the Gellert to have a bath. It was very relaxing of course, and for dinner we went to my favorite, Cafe Kor, where we shared a bottle of bubbly. We had fantastic conversation, as we always do. Shani is an amazingly good friend. With her friends, those that she has chosen, she is completely without envy and truly dedicated to their happiness.

On Saturday, we met David, her Australian friend, at what Shani insists on describing as "a bit of a brothel." It was a Thai massage place, and Shani and I asked for Thai oil massages while David got a foot massage. Shani and I were ushered into a sort of indoor tent with mattresses on the floor, and Shani pulled back the curtain between us even though she knows I'm weird about nakedness with non-lovers. We had to get full-on buck-naked (all your bits and pieces, love), without anything to go over us, and then two Thai sisters came in and straddled us. Quite an experience to have a strange Thai woman sitting on top of you rubbing your ass with oil. But not bad.

While Shani was at her work dinner, I went with M.N. (the Swiss) to a restaurant on the Buda side called Matteo. There was a piano player. But like not in a good way. And the place was empty. And the waiters were hovercrafting. And my pasta was so-not-al dente. Al dente is on the Pest side, and this pasta was on the Buda side. The only things that were nice were the big globe red wine glasses and the company. It had seemed so promising: in a converted Bauhaus bus station, cool columnar lighting, nice terrace,...

Shani called and told us to meet her at Negro, which is on the same piazza with the basilica. We took a taxi there, and it was packed. M.N. and I split up at the bar to see who could make contact with a bartender first. Not my crowd. All tourists. But I didn't mind because I was so happy to be there with M.N. and Shani.

The next morning I made Shani my leek, tomato, and feta frittata. It is the perfect food. Why don't people cook more with leeks? It's a gorgeous vegetable, packed with flavor and aroma. We sat around and ate and chatted until Zsolti called and asked if we could meet him. We met him at the Liszt Ferenc terrace, and had a drink at Cafe Vian. I realized at that point I was painfully exhausted. We hadn't gotten much sleep Friday or Saturday night. Shani doesn't require sleep. I apologized to Zsolti, told him I had to go, but he told me that he brought me some vegetables from his father's garden. We walked to his car, and he gave me two huge bags: one with grapes from his garden and the second with beautiful red tomatoes and green paprikas from his father. What could be more special than someone bringing you fruits and vegetables from his garden? I've put them to good use: just made a beautiful lecso with the tomatoes and paprikas. Don't know if I will be able to bear going back to those pink softballs in America after tasting these red beauties.

Miss Shani very much. I have to fly through London on my way back to America on the 28th, so I will check into leaving Budapest a couple days early so I can stay with her in Notting Hill.

Varakozok

2004-09-28T01:41:00.001+02:00

"First, we go to see the prostitutes." This is what Mysterious A. H. said to me early Saturday afternoon as we sat eating Fisherman's Soup in Obuda.

"Are they going to come with us to the sculpture museum?"

"I don't know. You should ask them."

The prostitutes turned out to be four bronze larger-than-life figures in the middle of an Obuda square. Officially, they are Varakozok, or people who wait. But A.H. tells me that they were inspired by the sight of Parisian prostitutes standing in the rain waiting for their next John, and this can be no secret. Though they are grouped together, they are perfect representations of solitude. Each stares melancholy; each huddles under her umbrella. Could the umbrellas also be halos? The divinity that resides even within a prostitute? Or could they be symbols of the shreds of security and shelter that we all grasp for in the rain of difficulty and uncertainty? Though they stand huddled and still, their clutching arms and bent elbows together with their wind-tossed coats and dresses amply express the tension and anxiety of waiting for the unknown.

Down the street is a small museum dedicated to the sculptor of these people who wait, Imre Varga. I am sorry to say that I had not heard of him before Mysterious brought him to my attention. Varga is a first-rate sculptor, in a global sense, not only compared to other Hungarian artists. He was awarded the museum by the Communists, and apparently he suffered caustic criticism after 1989, facing accusations that he was a puppet of the Communist government. Indeed, he did execute some busts and likenesses of various Communist leaders. Yet also among his works are deft portrayals of writers and artists, a figure of Saint Stephen that he created for the Hungarian chapel in the bottom of St. Peter's, and the most affecting depiction of war that I have ever seen. The latter is a theme that Varga carried out in several media: a figure in military garb, headless, one-armed, one-legged, with war medals nailed into his chest. Let them place this sculpture in every capital in the world. This is the true body of war. Put this dismembered figure in place of the lit torches and the neoclassical graves representing unknown soldiers.

I still don't know what A.H. does. He says, "My God, I just try to survive!" He says that I must survey his 10,000 books and guess what his profession is. I invited him to my birthday dinner Saturday night at Cafe Kor, but he refused, saying that he doesn't like "socializing," and that he lives like an "atheist monk." However, he invited me to go on Wednesday to the Garden of Philosophy on Gellert Hill and then to see a monument to his father (!!!). Will I be closer to unraveling A.H.?

I wonder though: what have I done to deserve this exquisite education? Why has he taken such an interest in me? I have little faith that it could be my sparkling intellect. The Economist is suspicious as well. She says: "Public places." And we know how smart she is.

First, we go to see the prostitutes.

2004-09-28T01:41:00.000+02:00

"Varakozok," bronze figures by Imre Varga, 1985.

This Could Happen

2004-09-21T22:30:00.000+02:00

Cookie is an American woman living in Budapest. She has some friends in Budapest, but not many. The natives tend to find her too cheerful, the Swiss expats find her appallingly unreserved, and the Ecuadorians are busy with their boyfriends. So Cookie must spend her 29th birthday alone.

As her moniker would indicate, Cookie has an insatiable appetite for simple carbohydrates and refined sugars. But she gained at least 3 kilos from sundry baked good-consumption in her first two months living in Budapest. Cookie's Vanity won out over her Gluttony when Cookie cut herself off from said treats. However, she decides that a birthday spent alone is pathetic enough to warrant unrestrained carbohydrate consumption. She should at least be entitled to the yummy Transylvanian honey bread known as kürtőskalács, in which raw dough is wrapped around a hot metal pipe, and then rolled in the topping of one’s choice. Cookie likes coconut.

Cookie has also had to cut down on her alcohol consumption because good wine is absurdly cheap in Hungary, and good and cheap has always been a dangerous combination for Cookie. But, again, she is alone on her birthday, so she allows herself to indulge and buys a few bottles of her favorite red.

Back at her flat, Cookies pours her first glass and remembers how punk rock always makes her feel better, so she puts on some Ramones. She dances around the extremely posh silk-walled apartment, which belongs to her client. She jumps up and down in anarchic revelry, and she spontaneously kisses Lenin’s bald head in the painting that is officially a National Treasure of Hungary. This makes her giggle; punk is good stuff!

Several glasses later, Cookie is tired from jumping around pretending to be in a mosh pit with the founding fathers of Communism. Just like Joey Ramone, she wants to be sedated, so she puts on some Bartok. She realizes she’s getting sort of hungry and it’s already late, so she goes to the kitchen to get her birthday kürtőskalács. She remembers seeing a box of those big tapers that go in candlesticks, yes, there above the espresso-maker, and she decides to stick one in the middle of the kürtőskalács. The kürtőskalács sort of tears open, and the candle is leaning over to one side, but it’s more or less vertical.

She brings it into the living room, sets it on the table, lights the candle, and starts singing the words of “Happy Birthday” in a stilted parallel with Bartok’s “Slightly Tipsy” whilst holding aloft her wine glass, swishing it back and forth and imagining that the great maestro is conducting a special birthday concert at the gilded Operaház in her honor. Everyone is there to wish Cookie a happy birthday. The depressed Hungarians are sort of smiling, the Swiss are sort of laughing, and the Ecuadorians brought their boyfriends along. With eyes closed in symphonic ecstasy and a zealous upward conductorial arc of her arm, Cookie knocks over the kürtőskalács, which is after all, cylindrical, and the candle catches the tablecloth on fire. She throws her wine on the tablecloth to put the fire out, but the alcohol gives fuel to the fire, contributing to a bona fide inferno. She runs around the flat, fruitless figure-eighting into the bedroom, into the hallway, into the study, back in the living room, back into the bedroom, and so on, looking for her mobile. Meanwhile, the inferno spreads to consume the oil painting of Lenin (National Treasure of Hungary,) thus destroying it.

After a brief but unpleasant spell in the foghaz (Hungarian for slammer), the government decides it must deport Cookie for reasons of national security as her gaffe has the unexpected effect of creating political instability in the fledgling democracy via galvanizing the old guard Communists, who effect a renewed solidarity catalyzed by their outrage at what they interpret as a ruthless and bizarre capitalistic ritual. They take to the streets around Parliament with picket signs depicting a thick red diagonal line bisecting Cookie’s besotted and startled face in a police photograph taken following the conflagration. At the bottom, in English: “Crumble This Cookie.” Cookie is summarily expelled from Hungary, never allowed to return, branded forever as the pathetic drunken American who spent her birthday alone in her flat and burned Hungary's National Treasure. Cookie consequently loses her taste for sweets, wine, and punk rock. She becomes fatally insipid, moves to Waycross, Georgia, and spends her days eating toast.

The End

The Happy Couple

2004-09-21T17:10:00.000+02:00

This post just to announce my impending marriage with sargadinnye fagylalt (canteloupe ice cream).

2004-09-18T10:54:00.000+02:00

Random Dance Company (UK)

Tonight, Electric

2004-09-18T01:38:00.000+02:00

Dancing in an electricity substation, a mysterious new friend, gliding along walls to avoid security cameras, and a late night peek at a recently restored synagogue turned Holocaust memorial.

Performances have begun again at the Trafo after their summer break, so I went to buy my season ticket today. The Trafo is a former electricity substation that was built in 1909 and has been converted into a nexus for all contemporary arts. I'd been a couple years ago with Michael, where we saw a dance performance that was advertised as featuring "the eery machinations of breasts." The dancer incorporated her uncovered breasts into her choreography, including one ten minute session I could only describe as rhythmic jiggling. Sounds absurd, but it wasn't. It was beautiful and a revelation to me. Breasts usually seem like a liabilty for dancers; they usually have to be flattened and compressed and put away so as not to interfere with the oligarchy of torso and limbs. But this artist owned her breasts, and she literally made them dance. They are factual, breasts. There's no getting around them, so close to one's face. And if you have large breasts, then they affect your balance, how you walk, how you carry yourself, how you run up and down stairs, how you sit on the bus, what you wear. They fluctuate in size, evolve in shape, alternately feel tender, sore, or titillated (no pun intended). To not address their existence in modern dance choreography, a medium whose vehicle is the human body, is an egregious omission.

Tonight there was a performance by the Random Dance Company from the UK. I was sitting in the performance hall in the fourth row with one empty seat to my right, when an older gentleman, balding, gray, wearing a black-leather vest and a checked-shirt, asked if the seat was free. We started chatting during the first brief intermission. He spoke very good English, which is rare for older Hungarians.

During the second intermission, we went for a walk. I noticed a new construction building on the corner made of a light-colored stone which was stacked on the diagonal. A.H. began to explain the building to me, that it was a modern addition to an older synagogue that was recently restored. The entire site is a museum and exhibition space. For obvious reasons, the Jewish population has substantially diminished in Budapest, and there are not enough Jews to utilize all the old synagogues for worship.

We were standing outside the building, Albert explaining to me that the Hungarian architect borrowed significantly from Daniel Libeskind, when two of the museum guards peeked out of the door. A.H. has such a friendly way about him, (an Italian jolliness about him) that I thought that he knew the guards. Especially when they let us into the courtyard. And especially when we were allowed to enter the historic synagogue, though we were instructed to walk along the walls so as to avoid the security cameras. The ceiling had a blue painted backgound with white stars, and I looked up at them, trying to focus on the formal qualities of the building, but thinking more about the magic of what I was experiencing.

A.H. is a mystery. I don't know what he does. He skirted around a lot of my questions. He knows a tremendous amount about art, music, and architecture. He has traveled extensively, which is also very unusual for a Hungarian. He was asking about my experiences abroad, and I told him about working at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice. He said that he makes a trip to Venice every two years. For the Biennale? I asked, and he confirmed. I asked if he was an artist, but he said no, no. We exchanged phone numbers and e-mail addresses, and he told me that he wants to take me to Obuda (this means Old Buda, and was one of the three distinct cities that were unified in 1873 to become Budapest) where there is a small sculpture museum dedicated to a Hungarian artist, and that he will introduce him to me.

So sleepy now. What will I dream? Of electricity and dancing and painted stars I hope.

Hol Van a Punks?

2004-09-14T22:21:00.000+02:00

I knew something was missing from this city that otherwise nourishes me in every way imaginable (though I could do with a bagel from time to time): no punks. I've seen lots of Budapest hipsters, artistic student-types, but I haven't seen any punks. Or maybe they are out there, but I'm not punk rock enough to find them? Is this possible? I'm afraid it is. Punk-rockedness is always something I've had to work at, in stark contrast to my friend Ellen who came into this world wearing black and instinctively measuring time in cigarettes. oh Ellen, that you were here to sniff out some nice punky boys for me to play with.

I know you must be out there punk boys. Where are you? The eighth district? The astral plane? Come to Audra. Come whisper sweet-nihilistic-nothings in my ear. Your blue mohawks will find a soft, if unpierced, bosom on which to lie.

If anyone has any leads, please advise.

Bor Fesztival

2004-09-12T00:35:00.000+02:00

Tonight the wine festival on top of Castle Hill. There were my Hungarian friends speaking Hungarian and I only understanding nagyon jol, and there were roasted vegetables but I went and stood by the stone parapet and looked out at the Duna at the thousands of bulbs illuminating the Chain Bridge at the circular traffic of Clark Adam ter at the shimmering jetty of the river. My cramps were there but distant like Pest and with all the lovely wines I drank even the sweet Tokaj with honey-taste that I pretended to like for my friends and with the stuff that I smoked and the Hungarian talk that makes me feel high even when I'm not. Zsolti and I puffed a Cuban and Zolika kissed me all over my face and Laszlo asked where my husband was, and I said je n'ai pas un mari. There was an American who worked at the Embassy who didn't want to tell me he worked at the Embassy and told me some tale about supervising construction for the American government and I said what is the American government building here and he was an awful liar, but trying so hard and so desperate and I was nice to him even though the American talk was taking me away from where I wanted to be-- lost in the night to the Castle with this back-of-the-throat language hung around me like a scarf. But Budapest but Budapest I am here I am here as much as any Hungarian I am here in this city and I feel her as palpably as a lover. She is a dark and shining lover. She is my worn giant of a lover. I am faithful to her like to no man.

Transport Ticket Ideas

2004-09-11T18:12:00.000+02:00

One of my Budapest public transport tickets. I have enough of these to wallpaper a room. But I was hoping someone out there had a better idea. Origami something or other? If anyone has any cool ideas for an art project utilizing these babies, I would appreciate your input. Please post your idea as a comment.

The Economist

2004-09-09T10:47:00.000+02:00

My dear friend-- I'll call her "The Economist," came to town. She had been in Lindau, Germany (40 km from Zurich) for a conference of Nobel Laureates in Economics, and she flew into Budapest on Sunday afternoon. I realized when she arrived that I hadn't been around any Americans for a while. It felt so easy and comfortable to be able to speak "American" again, especially with The Economist, with whom I share a more specialized vocabulary of longstanding friendship.

This is a very intelligient woman, the Economist. She is, in fact, the smartest person I know. When I say smart, I do mean that she has a giant pulsating brain, but I also mean that she is a creative thinker who is a superb and engaging communicator. She has not just a beautiful mind, but a clear mind. Though she might be a factory of contradiction and complication, her mind is "clear" because of her logical and balanced method of thought. (I do NOT mean "clear" in any Scientology sort of way).

Speaking of a beautiful mind, she mentioned, in a far too casual manner in my opinion, that she met John Nash,who was at the conference. She does admire him, but she said that he gave a speech about game theory, which isn't relevant to his expertise, and that consequently the audience received his speech with bafflement. (Though really wouldn't you be interested in knowing what John Nash thinks about anything? Not being silly here. For argument's sake, let's say John Nash looked at a bunch of Picasso's Cubistic paintings, would you say that you weren't interested in what he had to say because it isn't his expertise? No, he is probably capable of detecting patterns and seeing in a way different from even the most fastidious art historian. His way of seeing could thereby add another perspective, another view of the Truth which is as Cubistic in nature as any of Picasso's paintings. I argued rather weakly on this point, and the Economist seemed unmoved.) She said that he dropped his books, and that everyone around him was so eager to help him, but that he had such a terrified look in his face. She surmised that perhaps he didn't know if the people helping him were real or not. As The Economist said, he has paid dearly for his mind.

I took her to Marquis de Salade on Hajos Utca for dinner, where Zsolty joined us. We all had small glasses of Unicum before dinner, as I wanted her to start off her visit with a proper Hungarian experience. Unicum is vile stuff, and I don't know why anyone drinks it, but for some reason I force myself to have it. I keep thinking that one day I'm going to drink it, that I'm going to "get it," and then I'll really be assimilated or something. If this Unicum epiphany actually transpires, I will post immediately.

The Economist convinced Zsolty and me that supply-side economics was a bunch of bollocks while we enjoyed our sundry lamb dishes, a specialty of the restaurant. After dinner, I took her to Mumus, my favorite kert, where we ran into some Americans that we had also seen at the restaurant. They were visiting Budapest for a half-marathon that had taken place that day, but they live in Germany and are in the Air Force. One of the men in the group approached us, and I have to admit to feeling a bit of dread. I just wanted to have The Economist to myself-- I didn't want to have to have what I thought would be an inane conversation with some American fat-neck. I'm sorry to say that I apparently have some prejudices that I need to seriously reevaluate. He was not an American fat-neck; he was a polite, smart, funny, engaging person with whom we had a "shitload" of fun. I say "shitload" because he used this quantifier while we were talking to him, and I burst with laughter and glee: no one in my present world uses the word "shitload" or knows what or how much a "shitload" is.

I had a wonderful time with The Economist. Few people understand me as well as she. For a brief three days, there was someone here who knows me, someone with whom I need not disguise my grief at the loss of J, someone who knows my ugly bits and who still loves me.

Now I am alone again. But it is a glorious solitude-- in this city, in my shrapnelled, shredded dark beauty, my Budapest.

Fig Thief

2004-09-03T17:16:00.000+02:00

In Jerica: Spanish friend David spied a fig tree and picked us the most succulent, ripe figs that I have ever eaten. I feel certain that they eat these very same figs on Mount Olympus. Only after he picked them did we realize that they belonged to someone-- someone who came out to do her laundry while we were still in mid-gobble. Anita and I hid behind this stone wall to finish our treats. Zsolty couldn't find us and called out "Where are you, Fig Thieves?!"

2004-09-03T17:10:00.000+02:00

I understand that not everyone's loins are set a-quivering by the site of certain old buildings, so I will try to limit the pictures I post of them. This one is in the city of Valencia; isn't she a beaut?

2004-09-03T17:05:00.000+02:00

Zsolty, Anita, and I took a day trip to a lake about an hour south of Valencia. Zsolty ordered this beer carafe with what he called a "nipple." This is how a gringo drinks from the beer nipple. The Spanish most theatrically pour it from a distance into their mouths without missing a drop.

2004-09-03T16:58:00.000+02:00

Second night of embolado. This is the first and exhausted toro-- not so menacing, but still quite a presence. Unfortunately, I was too busy protecting my miserable life to take a good shot of the second toro that night.

2004-09-03T16:54:00.000+02:00

The third night in Illyria. Toro is still in the red truck. The drums are beating. My heart is beating. Spanish girls are spitting out sunflower seed shells, and I'm biting my lip so hard it bleeds.

2004-09-03T16:50:00.000+02:00

The toro is tied to a post while his horns are set ablaze. He is very angry at this point, and he is about to be set loose. Better plan your route of escape!

post-toro post

2004-09-02T01:35:00.000+02:00

New art supplies make a gal giddy! I just got back from the art store on Nagymezo utca. They have supplies I've never seen before. Gorgeous sketchbooks from France, and I got a set of beautiful rich pencils that are made in Holland. Giddy as a school girl. I hope I justify their expense by putting them to good use.

I am still thinking about toro. I know that the embolado is cruel. I know it's wrong to set fire to an animal's horns (which from what I've read do have sensation, much like teeth), and to make him the centerpiece of such course amusement. The sound of toro's moaning is still with me as well. This is a cry of pain, and cries of pain should be answered by aid, no matter if the voice emanates from a human or an animal.

But I am in no hurry to issue pronouncements on the morality of the Spanish involved in these fiestas. I know practically nothing about Spain. I have the observations of a person who went on holiday and little else. I have no understanding of why the Spanish have these sorts of fiestas or what the bull means to them. I tried to find out about their history, but no one seemed to know. Do they respect the toro, or is he just something to overcome? I suspect that they view him more as a commodity, as the bulls are apparently bred and manipulated to be aggressive so that they put on a good show. But are there Spanish who see toro as a brother, the way that some Native Americans regard(ed) animals?

I took my roll of film from Spain to get developed today, and I will pick up the pictures tommorrow. There should be a couple good pictures of the toro, so I will scan them in and post them.

There's a Jewish festival http://www.jewishfestival.hu/ going on right now, and I'm leaving soon to attend a klezmer concert at the Central Synagogue on Dohany utca. It is grandiose, the second largest synagogue in the world, seating 3,000 people. I've only been inside before on a museum visit, but I much prefer to experience a great building via a performance of some type.

Toro Embolado

2004-08-29T21:01:00.000+02:00

They are insane in Spain. No, this is not an Eliza Doolittle-esque exercise; I quite literally mean to say that the Spanish are raving mad.

I guess the following comes under "the Rest": on Wednesday Zsolty, Anita, and I went to Spain. We flew to Madrid, and then rented a car to drive to Valencia where we met their Spanish friend David, who let us stay at his weekend house in Godolletto for two nights, and then at his flat in Valencia city for the last two nights.

Zsolty had been telling me about toro embolado for a while, but I never really understood what he was talking about. I thought it was something like the running of the bulls in Pamplona. But I had no idea. Toro embolado is a week-long fiesta that almost every village in Valencia region has in which a section of the old town of the city or village is closed off by wooden-slatted barricades, and a raging bull is set loose within. The embolado part refers to the flames that are set to the tips of the bull's horns. But this description does nothing to convey the absolute insanity and pregnant danger of this ritual.

So consider my second night of torro embolado in Villa Marchat: we had gone to one the first night we arrived, waited for hours, and a toro never showed. And then when I saw the toro the second night from behind the barricade, I thought the thrill of the thing was merely seeing a bull ablaze. The toro was exhausted, having been running around already for an hour and a half. Yes, it was surreal: such a massive animal set loose in the village streets with two fire balls atop its horns. That was exciting. But afterwards, I remember thinking, "Ok. I saw the toro, I did this. We can do something else now. Let's drink sangria." So we went for a walk around the city outside the barriers. We came to the center again from the opposite side, and we saw men pulling back one of the barricades and a white truck pulling in. We thought that they were coming to collect the exhausted bull, and oh won't this be interesting, let's watch.

But the van started to shake from side to side. They weren't collecting; they were depositing. Zsolty had bought us Cuba libres, and maybe it was the rum that made me so dumb. I stayed there along the flank of the truck amid the other onlookers. And then they let him out. I heard a terrible long low moaning-- the sound of sentient misery. Then I remember the sound of thunder, the shouting, and furious running in all directions. Zsolty and I ran about fifty feet toward one of the barricades and scrambled up to the top, while Anita slipped through to the other side. I remember telling Zsolty that we were stupid, and why hadn't he protected his wife. He said that the toro brings out the baseness in humankind-- that all you care about it protecting your own miserable life. Then I saw people scattering at the cross street in front of us. The toro was coming.

I thought we were safe atop the barricade, but this was an illusion. Also illusions are the iconic images of the toro. They are not true. No depictions of toro can communicate the force, the power, the smell, the sound, the shaking of the ground that is toro. These I experienced when the toro ran toward us. A man scrambled up the barricade and pressed against me. I prepared to jump off on the other side, believing I was potentially done for if I didn't risk a jump. The house next to us had hung a small human-like decoy from their balcony by a rope. The toro gored it and not us, though only a precious meter away. My memory of the toro now is only a flash of beast and fire and cold fear. It's the remnant you experience the next day afer a dream, a nightmare. You can't remember the narrative of the nightmare, but you can still see the scene of your fear emblazoned in your mind.

We went to a final embolado on Saturday night in a larger city called Illyria. Many of David's Spanish friends came along. We all sat outside in a square and drank sangria beforehand. Deafening fireworks went off, and Zsolty, Anita, and I covered our ears while the Spanish kept on with their chatter. This was a repeat of earlier in the day in Jerica when we had climbed to the top of a bell tower, where men swung around a 10 foot bell. Spanish children, women all seemed unaffected by the deafening decibels, while the three of us pressed our hands against our heads.

We finished our sangria and made our way to the fiesta. The enclosure was the largest I'd seen and there was about a half kilometer of barricades with people already sitting atop them. So many people made me nervous. Nowhere to scramble up. I contemplated staying outside the enclosure, but I'd been branded the night before as surely as the toro himself is branded. I needed to be close to him again. We gathered in the main square where the truck had already pulled up. A band was playing on a platform, mostly an unvaried drumming. I had the feeling I was walking to my doom. The truck was shaking. One of David's Spanish friends told us that we needed to plan our route of escape. This is perhaps the most frightening moment of all: waiting for toro to let loose.

I came close to him many times that night, out of some unquenchable, maybe base attraction. I don't know yet what this all means. I don't know if it's something as explicable as adrenalin, or if there is something more profound that has taken hold of me. I must wait for the fire to burn down and then examine the ashes.

half a socket

2004-08-19T10:45:00.000+02:00

I don't know how quite to describe the joy (except that I know that "joy" is the precise word) that I feel speaking another language with someone. I feel like I can stretch out with other languages-- I can be a person that I can't be in English. Or maybe it's something uglier: maybe it's the vanity and exclusivity that I feel at having learned to communicate in another language. I hope not. I hope that I'm revelling in something loftier.

Tonight: A, from Italy. M, from Ecuador. And M.N., from Switzerland. We all met at a kert, called Mumus on Kisdiofa utca. Literally kert means garden, but in Budapest this means an apartment house courtyard that's doubling as a bar for the warm months of May through September. They are the loveliest of places. Mumus is designated from the exterior by a spray of grafitti. On the interior a gravel-floored courtyard houses a bar and an assortment of 60's armchairs and sofas.

I hadn't seen A for weeks, as he'd dropped out of our Hungarian language class. He speaks such lovely, clear, proper Italian that I can't help being swept up in the illusion that I must understand Italian very well. Until M.N. arrived, A. and I spoke Italian, while M. spoke Spanish. Amazing to me how this worked. Then M.N. came in and he speaks French, which everyone also speaks. All through the night, we had this fantastic chatter of Italian, Spanish, French, salt-and-peppered with English and Hungarian.

We went for dinner to an Italian restaurant called Aetna near Keleti palyaudvar that A. frequents. We walked in, without A. as he had to do something at his flat first, and the Hungarian hostess told us that there were no tables available. She said it could be up to an hour. So we accepted the situation (as there seemed no alternative), and humbly walked back outside onto the sidewalk. But M. from Ecuador said "No, let me see," and the next thing I know we were seated at a table in the back. M. says that she experiences this whenever she tries to do something in Hungary. She's always told that they can't do it, or there's nothing available, and that she is accustomed to simply insisting. She also says that she does not like "Hungarian woman," for this reason, though not this reason alone. So M has inspired me to become a pushy broad. No more letting little old Hungarian ladies push their way to the front of the queue.

M.N. told us one of the funniest stories I've ever heard. I'm not throwing around superlatives simply because I've had a few beers and some limoncello: I think I inadvertently drooled on my shirt a little bit because I was laughing so hard. Maybe it was also the very reserved manner that M.N., being Swiss, uses when he tells anything. He told me in his staid Swiss voice that once he was in Zurich eating at quite a chic and expensive Asian restaurant when he discovered something in his soup. There was "half a socket," as he called it. Or half of the plastic wall plate which covers an electrical socket. I don't need to embellish this story with any clever asides, do I? It stands on its own?

Tired now. I have a big day of scouring the markets tommorrow. I'm making brunch on Sunday, and tommorrow (Thursday) is the last day before Sunday that everything will be open, as Friday is a national holiday. Will go to sleep with crossed fingers that I might find some maple syrup in this city.

Lecso

2004-08-16T08:56:00.000+02:00

Zsolty, Anita, and I made lecso tonight at their apartment. Zsolty first told me about it on Friday when I was having lunch with him downstairs at the Indian tandoori place. He described it to me thus: tomatoes, onions, paprikas (by this he means the actual peppers, not the red powder), then at the end you add a couple eggs and stir them in. I thought the egg sounded a little weird, but so far so good. But then he told me that he didn't think I would like it.

Why wouldn't I like it, Zsolty?

Because it's not-- attractive.

But I loved it- unattractiveness nonwithstanding. Zsolty and Anita had tomatoes and paprikas from their parents' gardens. Zsolty's parents' tomatoes were huge- tomatoes on steroids. Tomatoes to feed whole gypsy families. I took a picture of Z holding one of these, and I will scan and post it when I get it developed. I had the job of cutting them, and they were bright red tomato meat through and through, and they were incredibly packed with bright red tomato flavor. Apparently, you simply can't get tomatoes like this out of season in Hungary-- the ones in February for example are grown in greenhouses, and so not as good.

I asked Z and A a "hypothetical" question. I said, "Suppose there's an American girl who wants to stay and work in Budapest. Let's just call her 'Audra.' Is this possible even though she's not an EU citizen?" They seemed to think that it was possible, and not inordinately difficult. I just can't see myself living in America again right now. It doesn't even feel like a discernment between like and dislike; it feels more like the difference between right and wrong for me. I don't know if I can leave here when the time comes. I am beginning to understand words, Hungarian words, and these words are beginning to sound like home.

Sziget

2004-08-13T02:24:00.000+02:00

Zsolty asked me to the Sziget festival www.szigetfestival.com Tuesday night with him and his wife Anita. We were all a little tired at the outset. As we looked at the never-ending queue of cars all headed to the island in front of us, Zsolty and I grumbled that we didn't like sweaty people touching us. Part of me wished I had just stayed home and read, and I wondered if I was too old to be still going to these things. But I felt like I needed to go, to experience this music festival that has become a Budapest summer tradition.

It took an hour just to get our tickets and get through the two checkpoints for the armbands. Once we were inside, we ate at Wabisabi, a vegetarian restaurant on the Pest side which had a venue at the festival. They had tents and tables set up with bean bags and candlelight, and the three of us ate our pesto paella and ginger rice, drank our "spicy lemonade," and we all perked up. The island was swarming. Zsolty wanted to know if it qualified as "pandemonium." Apparently, it was more crowded than the other nights, maybe because it was the last night of the festival or maybe because everyone wanted to see Faithless. Before we went to the main stage, we stockpiled wine in plastic jugs at a wine bar and met up with some other Hungarian friends. Then we headed for the main stage, and by then the spicy lemonade, the wine, the night, the swarming, the sweatiness, and the music all made for buzzing giggling excitement.

I didn't know who Faithless was, to the incredulity of my friends. I'm pretty sure that to them admitting this was tantamount to saying, "Hi, I'm the biggest nerd east of the Danube." After the show, I heard my friends speaking, and I kept hearing them say kurtoskolacs, kurtoskolacs,..I don't know how to type an o or u with the little dots, but written phonetically it would be something like kurtushkolloch. It's a Transylvanian specialty I think. (Transylvania was a part of Hungary before the 1919 Treaty). Traditionally, dough is wrapped around a bottle and baked in an extremely hot oven. But sometimes and at the Sziget festival, it's baked around a metal pipe. Then you choose what sort of condiment you want it rolled in: nuts or cinnamon sugar.

I'm so glad I went. I've heard some other expats complain that it's difficult to make Hungarian friends, and this is probably true, so I feel lucky to have Zsolty and Anita as friends. They're not simply useful guides into the Hungarian culture. I would be friends with them anywhere and under any circumstances, even amongst sweaty people.

Someone's Head is Existing

2004-08-10T07:01:00.000+02:00

I just got back from my Hungarian class. Tonight we learned possessives. They don't say that someone "has" a head. They sort of say that someone's head is existing. (Feje van.) Baffling. Do I have this blog, or is this blog just sort of existing?

I wonder if the Hungarian grammatical structure has any observable effect on the Hungarian existential outlook. One of my friends in my class, Mariela, told me tonight that she does not like Hungarian men. That they are "depressive," and "difficult." She is Ecuadorian and has worked at the Ecuadorian Embassy here in Budapest for the last three years, so she has a perspective informed by a substantial amount of time. I do remember my mom telling me that she learned at a Pfizer conference that Hungary has the highest suicide rate of any country. I was shocked, thinking for sure it was some Scandinavian country with its sunlight-starved citizens. But then I remembered that the one suicide attempt that I have ever witnessed was here in Budapest. A man had climbed atop the Erzsebet Hid (Elizabeth Bridge)--no, that's the modern one-- I need to learn my hids,..it was on Szabadsag Hid, the beautiful old green one which connects on the Buda side with Gellert ter. Anyway, he intended to jump to his death into the Duna, but he was rescued by officials who successfully maneuvered a hydraulic lift to where he was perched.

So why are Hungarians so busy offing themselves? This is the question I put to my Hungarian friend Zsolt. Even Zsolt, whom I've come to believe is at least quasi-divine, didn't have an answer. He didn't know why. Could it be because Hungary has lost every war since the 12th century? Could it be the crippling 25% sales tax? I don't know. Surely the former reason has some effect on their disposition toward the world. At dinner with Zsolt last week, we were talking about the entrepeneurial spirit in America. That in America, if you decide you want to sell rubber cutlery, say, or if you want to start a business scooping dog poop in other people's yards (I heard the latter on NPR), then you can. And there is the societal spirit and infrastructure to support such ventures in the United States. But Zsolt tells me that here in Hungary, people just want to survive. Survival is success here. The 20th century was vicious for the Hungarians. Hungary has been betrayed, broken up, and besieged by external forces for almost its entire history. Why stick your neck out with such a legacy in place? In other words, why risk the possibility of your head no longer existing?

Dilettante

2004-08-05T15:27:00.000+02:00

I'm not sure about this blogging thing. I'm not certain my life here in Budapest is any more interesting than anybody else's. I think we've all heard enough amusing expat anecdotes. No one needs any more from me.

But maybe it will help me to feel closer and vice versa to my many wonderful friends all around the world. My friends are so nice they'll probably read this solipsistic bloggy stuff. I would read their solipsistic bloggy stuff so I guess it's all right.

I am almost two months into my new life in Budapest. I live on the Pest side near the Parliament. It's an expensive neighborhood, embassies and government buildings, that sort of thing, but I find it a tad dull in comparison to some of the more lively districts. What am I doing here? I don't know exactly. I just knew I had to leave Savannah (Georgia). It didn't feel like a whim-- it felt as necessary as breathing that I get to a big city. I am taking Hungarian language classes and I am working in little spurts in connection with the job I left in Savannah as a historic preservation consultant, but mostly I'm a dilettante, dabbling in my short stories and some other stuff.

At first I felt the burden of so much time on my hands. Unused to being adrift without the anchor of regular employment, I went through feeling guilty, bored, lonely, and doubtful. But that didn't last long. I soon discovered that European cafe life is a perfectly charming existence. That you could spend a lifetime sampling different cocktails. That the Eckermann has the most wonderful bowls of milchkaffee with chocolate flowers drawn in the foam. That bowl alone can represent two hours of my day.

Budapest has so much to see and do. You really can't be bored unless you are boring yourself. There are concerts, operas, film, and dance performances. Several pedestrian zones make Budapest very cafe and people-friendly. If you want to go for a run or a walk, there is Margaret Island. It's in the middle of the Danube, situated between the Buda and the Pest side. A rubbery track for runners circles the perimeter, and in the center are flower gardens and fountains. You can see sea turtles sunning themselves amidst the lily pads and lotus flowers in one of the ponds. There's a little zoo with fowl and ponies and deer. You can also see humans in their natural form, sunning themselves on the banks of the island. And there are the more dodgy elements of urban life represented on the island as well: yesterday I saw a man urinating just a couple meters from the track, and some big silver "Fuck You Gipsy"(sic) graffiti effaces a metal gate.

It's a complex and beautiful and dirty place, Budapest. I hope I make the best of her.