NORMA WROTE FROM LONDON ( In Yiddish):
Mayn tyere Chaiml bin zsufriden tsu krigen dain breifele.
der doktor ot mir gegeben steroids far main trapped nerv.
Er hot mir gemacht a plastic frame to strap on at night to rest it.
Before injecting the steroids, which apparently had to be done vey carefully, or it could hve all gone wrong.
ich gleib az di doktorin in Seattle velen kenen dir helfen.
yoh, ich gleib az di kensr-=t zain 'lonely' siz shver nit tsu zain mit fraindt un mishpoche.
Ich duf gehn shlofen yets- ich vinch dir a gute nacht, main tairer.
dain cusine
Nachamala
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alex deleon
THAT SOUNDS LIKE EXACTLY -- PRÉCISEMENT- MA CHÈRE COUSINE NORMA ---
comme le probleme que J'ai, moi. Anyway, I have decided -- and received
approval from
See-Money Home Offoice -- to come back to Seattle, via Commercial air --(er vet, of
course, batzoln) -- to get my arm treated properly at the University of Wahington Med Center. That'll be a relief -- not to have to let some Hungarian vampire doctor cut into my arm with butcher knife -- But also because I have been rather depressed and Alienated lately -- because of lack of people I can relate to on an intimate-old-friends level -- and this hectic, but tiring
flurry of Film Festivals the last two months -- in Romantic-fantastic cities like Venice, San Sebastian, Barcelona, and Geneva -- but cities where I have no personal friends to commune with, and always bothered by this "trapped nerve" thing -- Curieux -- that actually does seem like the best description of the condition --"trapped nerve" -- thank you, Nekhume, for
giving me the right expression to put this fucking thing away -- and out of mind for a while. When I'm busy writing I stop thinking about the goddamn "trapped nerve" for a while, and then it doesn't bother me -- ober all the resta the time --oy vay -- af maine sonim ...(Only my enemies should havvit!)
Ikh zitz yetzt bay a computer in zeyer an alte hoyz in dem terkishn-kurdishn gebiet fin Berlin -- ikh hob gerekhrt a bissl gitn hash in a pfaife mi main nayim roosishn fraint, Arkady - un jetzt zonen ale di yunge lait avek in a pub ergetz, iz zitz ikh do einer alein un fiel mikh git tzu "redn" mit dir afn e-mail --ober redn mi e-mail iz gor nisht di zelbe zakh vi redn mit a mentshn punim in punim -- (Yeah, e-mail is better than nuthin, but it still ain't the same as talking "face-to-face" -- tete-à-tete, entre quattes-yeux---)
Ibermorgn, zintik, flig ikh avek tzurik in Budapest, un efsher a vokh shpeter, vel ikh avekfliegn kain Seattle -- I have a nice warm circle of friends there I've known for about 15 years, and in whose company i feel comfortable, and additionally feel that the people are a little concerned
about me -- a bissl azeyvi a kleine meshpokhe --
This is what's lacking in my otherwise generally interesting and exciting European life -- Intimate Personal relations! -- I meet many people all the time
and have extended relationships with some of them --but mostly on a film-professional, or otherwise impersonal level -- ifya see whadd i mean -- I interact with many many people -- intermittently -- here and there -- whether in Paris, Riga, Vienna, Rome, Budapest, Berlin, San Sebastian, Barcelona, or wherever -- just to practice the language at hand in the situation -- I have great language adventures wherever i go --of a very special kind that few (if any)
other people experience --For instance, In Barcelona I get lost in the crowd on the Ramblas and am soon interactig --living -- not only in Spanish, but in CATALAN as well --as I explore --so to speak --the tracks of Picasso and Dali -- to the cafè known as "ELS QUATRE GATS" -- The Four Cats --Los Cuatro Gatos --and talk to the waiters and people who have been there a long
time -- and so plunge into that movie -- in a bi -and tri-and-multi-lingual way with a
particular attachment to, and awareness of, the Art History AND the political history -- of The Franco era -- the battle of Teruel --the Brigades with Yiddish volunteers from Poland -- -- NOBODY I am sure "sees" and feels Spain and Barcelona from such a multi-faceted point of view --and the inolvement withal -- Becoming in a way part of that history -- But the last
time I was in Barcelona, it was was just two months ago, in late September --When I
went there on a bus from San Sebastia with Persian Film Critic and publisher Abbas Yari, after the San Sebastian 'Nazioareteko Zinemaldia' --Int'l Flim Festibule --me to get my passport extended at the US consulate there with 24 extra pages ... --Abbass to hang out and see the city before going back to Iran -- Funny Abbass -- who has been teaching me Farsi words all week at the hotel CODINA --and me teaching him how to say things like "Whatta pain in the ass" --and him cracking up at the vulgar American expressions I often use to season my monologue --
such a funny good natured guy, always smiling Abbas -- so we ride the bus down to Barcelona passing through the this crazy wild-West looking desert country of la provincia de Aragon on the way -- no wonder they shot Spaghetti Westerns here -- its nearly a completely interchangeable landscape with Arizona -- through Pamplona, where they run the bulls --one of Hemingway's reputed hangouts -- and the street signs are still in Basque, altho this far south few people still speak the Euskara -- Then Zaragoza -- --Caesar Augustus City in the Roman times --and then in Barcelona after, much against Abbas's better hotel judgement, we check into the Youth Hostel I know, right off the Ramblas -- around the corner from the Teatro Lirico famed Opera House -- and then I take him, to his amazement, to the PAKISTANI-ARAb Ghetto a couple of alleyways away -- and Abbas is delighted to feast on familiar middle-Eastern food after only Basque-Spanish goodies during the film festival in Donostia -- and we test our various languages on the waiter --who is some kind of Urdu-Punjabi Moslem -- a scene straight out of Daddy Warbucks in the Punjab -- and of course all these people in the ghetto are at various stages of trying to express themselves in broken Spanish -- (Shh --don't tell the waiter I've been teaching him Yiddish --he thinks it's Catalan!) --ANY WAAAAyyy --to make a lung story short -- makhn kertz a lainge geshikhte -- NOBODY experiences Europe in the multifaceted Linguistic-historical.art-aware- ical-Musical, filmical, back-streetical, and just plain plunge-in and livvit with the natives -Way that I DO. -- Nobody --Keinernisht ... ...
Every day is a marvelous series of rich unplanned adventures when I'm on the road in Europe and Turkey -- and yet ... nonostante -- when all is said and done -- At the end of the fukkin Day -- The Bottom Line Is -- that when I come "home" to my incredible pad in Budapest, Chaim is once again all alone -- isolated -- in my lone-wolf lair in a bleak shit-eating blue
collar-no-collar gypsistic neighborhood -- CSEPEL -- alone-again homesick blues ... in twenty-five languages -- and my wall to wall collages on all the walls -- my personal
Philadelphia Art Musem Abroad -- new film posters, new nudie photos, new Da-Da additions all the time, with Che Guevara peering out from toilet seet cover dans le Scheisserie --gabinetto --an ever-evolving exhibition and expression of my irrepressible imagistic imagination -- my personal Lascaux --
But still --immerhin -- alone-again, home-again, homeless-again, Budapest Blues -- Jaj Istenem (Rebeina-sheleilem!)-- as Bartok Radio brings you the latest report on the clogging of the Budapest streets by legions of new Maffia machines and the Gyurcsàny government retreats behind the stately Neogothic neo-lithic walls of the Parlament and the Tear Gas patrol is
called in to dispel the demonstrators out there on Kossuth Square demostrating for a bigger piece of the paprika pie for their hungry Hungarian dogs at the end of Leary leather leashes -- Vay -Iz -Meer! --Who-thefukk Needsit? --
So, I am looking forward to the temporary return to Seattle, to a place where, for a time, I will
have some people around I can actually relate to --and they to me -- I think -- -- But when I get there I'll probably find something else to complain about -- to kvetch and krertz about -- because It's my nature -- I'm a scorpion -- A Yiddish scorpion -- and I have a tendency to sting myself in the back with my own poison -- when not otherwise gainfully employed. (as a
scorpion).
Chaim-Scorpion, krertzing in Kreuzberg, Berlin
Dec. 1, 2006
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