Lilie and Konwalie in Paris - Monet, Chopin and the Rain

What do I love in Paris? So much, it is hard to make a list...  I started from Musee de l'Orangerie and a visit to my favorite Water Lilies, Monet's gift to the French nation and to the world. Eight monumental multi-panel paintings, two rooms, Dusk and Dawn, or Dawn and Dusk... You can sit there for ever. Last time, in 2011, I wrote a set of poems inspired by the paintings, and took home pictures. This year, cameras were strictly forbidden, and the guards chased after the tourists who pretend they were not holding their smartphones up at all...

What piece of music should we listen to while admiring the lilies? Maybe a String Quartet by Gabriel Faure? Maybe the Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp by Claude Debussy? or maybe the Nocturne op. 27 No. 2 by Fryderyk Chopin?

Among the Lilies

~ Inspired by Claude Monet’s Water Lilies at L’Orangerie, October 2011, Paris

PART I. DAWN

I.

Etched under my eyelids

The water lilies rest on the surface

Of Monet’s pond at Giverny

Intense blues and greens of his palette

Fill me with color he invented

 

This, I want to see – his nenufary

This I want to be – a lily among his blossoms

With my golden hair

In a halo of sunrays, above aquamarine

And celadon

My crystal necklace

Sparkles like the pond he made

Sunlit, translucent

Mirrors of stained-glass windows

Lined with birdsong

II.

Clouds measure the stillness of water

Cerulean breeze dances in the grass

He starts a new canvas

Turquoise into aqua into mauve

The secret of water lilies

Born in iridescence

His garden drinks in

The dark vertigo of the sky, swirling

With opaque strands of mist

Dawn air chills his fingers

III.

He keeps the colors royal

Vermilion and scarlet

The breeze shifts, scattering the patterns

Cleansing the air

Distant traces of mustard gas

  

The breath and the brushstroke are one

He is the wind, moving through the garden

Made to be painted

Fading

IV.

Lily pads float up into indigo

Gathering like birds before winter

Pulled by the gravity of belonging

They fall into the night

Blossoms and cicadas

Nightingale’s song swirls above their sleep

A cricket counts the brushstrokes

Stiff fingers ache

It is good he had the ponds dug out

Life is good

PART II - DUSK

V.

The dusk is falling

Brush drops from his fingers

In a stretch of darkness

Contours barely felt, imagined

Shade-green leaves

The water – unfathomable

Murky, mysterious

The end of the beginning

Crimson lily brightens

The moonlight

VI.

The moon is too close

Willow’s shadows

Grow on the other shore

His brush sings of solitude

The willows weep and weep

Drop leaves into the pond

Remember the fallen

VII.

He strains to see

The dream of a blue horizon

White shape-shifting clouds

Shimmy across the water

A day transposed

Above the deterioration

Of time stretched by blindness

He paints a latch to escape

VIII.

Light becomes heavy

Settles into the sunset

Brightness of yellow hearts

Erased in the still, stilling world

Silence tastes of Beaujolais

White blossoms open and close

From dusk to dawn

From dawn to dusk

Only the water the lilies and the sky 

I got one ticket at Musee d'Orsay - to tour its abundant collections and to see my beloved Monet lilies. Each time you visit the same museum, filled with masterpieces, you find something different to fall in love with. This time, I discovered Vincent Van Gogh's  La Méridienne oú La sieste, d'apres Millet, a large azzure and gold painting of a couple resting at noon from the hard work of harvesting grain.  It is quite large, for a Van Gogh, and is set in an enormous, ornate gold frame. The colors are intense, vivid, like only Van Gogh would be: you feel the sunlight burning at noon; prickling straw, the allure of a cool shade... I have yet to see a reproduction that gives justice to the perfect balance of the artist's colors. Pure genius. The blue is rich, intense, the gold of the straw vivid, but neither orangey nor lemony, as on some copies. Of course, none of the posters could have the richly textured surface of the painting, covered with fervid strokes, touchingly unfinished in corners. (I love those unfinished corners and borders the most, in all Van Gogh! They reveal the intensity of his passion...)

Vincent Van Gogh, La Méridienne oú La sieste, d'apres Millet (1890)

And of course, there is the love story right there, in the golden noon. Resting in trust. In comfort. 

          Azure

         ~ after Noon by Van Gogh and Millet

     Half of the day's work is done.

     She curls into a ball by his side

     He stretches up, proudly thinking

     of the bread they will bake,

     the children they will feed.

     Noon rays dance on the straw

     they cut with their sickles 

     to finish the harvest when the sky 

     is still the bluest of summer azure.

     She took the first fistful of stems 

     solemnly, among the rolling waves 

     of wheat ocean. She made a figurine,

     placed it high up on the wooden fence 

     overlooking their fields. She learned

     it from her mother, her mother before her,

     generations reaching back to that first 

     handful of grain, droplets of wine 

     and water spilled at its feet. 

     The offering for the goddess of harvest. 

     They move together in consort

     in the white gold of silence.

     They rest together, two pieces

     in a puzzle of bread to come.

The painting reminded me of my childhood memories, thirst for cool water on a hot burning day, holding a small child's rake in sweaty hands, trying to avoid getting scratched by the thick, sharp ends of straw... I captured some of the wonder of harvest in one of my Chopin poems, "Harvesting Chopin..."  - dedicated to my father Aleksy, uncle Galakcyon, and grandmother Nina Trochimczyk. Here a Mazurka will not be out of place.. .Mazurkain F-sharp Minor, Op. 59, No. 3 .  Like all Chopin's mazurkas it is there and yet it is not, nostalgia takes you from here to the golden past, the joy of dancing in circles, round and round...

Harvesting Chopin

The straw was too prickly,

the sunlight too bright,

my small hands too sweaty

to hold the wooden rake

my uncle carved for me.

I cried on the field of stubble; 

stems fell under his scythe.

I was four and had to work -

Grandma said - no work no food.

How cruel!  I longed for

the noon’s short shadows 

when I'd quench my thirst

with cold water, taste

the freshly-baked rye bread

sweetened by the strands 

of music wafting from 

the kitchen window.  

Distant scent of mazurkas

floated above the harvesters

dressed in white, long-sleeved shirts 

to honor the bread in the making.

The dance of homecoming

and sorrow – that is what 

Chopin was in the golden air

above the fields of Bielewicze 

where children had to earn their right 

to rest in the daily dose of the piano –

too pretty, too prickly, too bright.

It was raining outside, when I left the museum with my butterfly umbrella and walked through the drizzle in my ballerina flats.  Acacia and horse chesnut were in bloom. White daisies dotted the grass. Flower stands were filled with bouquets of lilies of the valley, the scent of konwalie filled the air.  No wonder people sing: "I love Paris in the spring time, I love Paris in the fall..." and fall in love in Paris, with Paris.  On my first evening there, I saw a marriage proposal under the Eiffel Tower: in front of hundreds of tourists, the man knelt down and asked his one question, the woman started to cry. He stood up to put the ring on her finger and the onlookers sang and cheered. 

Only in Paris... 

A heart of a sycamore tree,

bells of konwalie on the stone bridge

not far from the steel branches of the Eiffel Tower

reflected in wet cobblestone streets.

Delighted with the sweet scent  

from my childhood garden

I wander through the drizzle 

with my butterfly umbrella

until the sun comes out 

shining on the fallen blossom of a chesnut,

and the star-white secrets of  kalina and jasmin. 

hidden in a garden made for nobody, but me.

Shadows stretch beyond leaf-painted park vistas...

Night dazzles the still rainy city.

The sky - a Van Gogh painting - its magic spills over

beyond the moment, breathing 

like only Paris in the spring rain can breathe...

__________________________________

All pictures (C) 2014 by Maja Trochimczyk 

Selected poems from "Among the Lilies" were published in The Lummox Journal in 2013. 

"Harvesting Chopin" was published in Chopin with Cherries (Moonrise Press, 2010).

The Polish Easter of Sorrow and Joy - In Memoriam

It is quite surprising, if you arrive from Poland, to see the American Easter, with its Easter Bunny that lays chocolate eggs (this idea is somewhat disgusting, if you think what round objects of chocolatey hue come out of the Bunny's other end). Another surprise is the obligatory pastel coloring of the entire set of decorations - baby rabbits, baby chicken, baby ducks, puppies, kittens, and all sorts of baby everything, including pastel colored eggs and egg-wreaths that replace Christmas wreath. And, of course, chocolate. Tons of chocolate. It is astounding to see so many major holidays transformed into excuses for buying chocolate: St. Valentine's Day, Easter, Halloween, Christmas... Then there are the pastel dresses and hats of children running around pastel yards with pastel baskets looking for pastel plastic eggs filled with chocolate in pastel wrappers... Actually, I've grown quite fond of this tradition and continue hiding my three dozens of eggs in my front yard for the neighborhood kids for Easter Sunday... We have a street celebration. It is fun to see the kids grow, have their own kids, year after year running to find the precious "golden eggs" with money inside. 

For a Christian from Europe, however, the colors of Easter are different, starker. It is the hue of green palm leafs of the Palm Sunday, the stone bareness and austerity of Good Friday, the vermilion red of liturgical vestments on this day of cosmic suffering, the shadowy darkness and brilliant new flames of Easter Vigil, and the purity of white and gold of the Easter morning Resurrection Procession. I experienced these colors of truly religious Easter at the convent of Fransciscan Sisters, Servants of the Cross, in Warsaw, where I was baptized as an adult during the Easter Vigil on March 30, 1987.  There was not a pastel Easter bunny in sight. 

Listen: "O, Holy Cross" - A Choral song for Good Friday (14th C. Poland)

Listen: Easter Vigil's "Exultet" - with music and text (Gregorian Chant, tutorial)

Listen: "Chris is Resurrected" - A choral song for Easter Vigil (Polish children's chorus)

Listen: "A Joyous Day" - A Choral Song for Easter (Polish children's chorus)

Listen: "Wipe your Tears" - A Choral Song for Easter (Polish children's chorus)

Yes, there are less austere decorations in Polish homes for Easter - eggs colored in onion peel (dark reddish brown), with scratched out patterns; handmade "palms" with colorful dried flowers - a folk-art specialty, the first branches of willows with their soft yellow furry flowers ("bazie"), and the sugar lamb, the symbol of the Divine Lamb, decorating the table and waiting to be eaten, licked into nonexistence, limb by limb.... 

Easter table in Warsaw, 1981, with Marcin Depinski.

Of course, there is food: the meats, the breads, eggs and salt, blessed in Easter baskets. On our table first and foremost was the mazurka, the main Polish cake for Easter. There are many kinds of mazurkas, many flavors (you see three different ones on the picture above). I favored the Royal Mazurka, which, to Americans, resembles a very light and delicate fruit cake (baked without butter or any fat, but with tons of ground nuts, chopped figs, dates, prunes, and raisins).  I immortalized it in my poem dedicated to Chopin and my grandparents.

How to Make a Mazurka

            After Mazurka in A Minor, Op. 17, No. 4,

                        for my Grandparents, Stanisław and Maria Wajszczuk,

                        who could play and bake their mazurkas like no one else.

            Take one cup of longing

for the distant home that never was,

one cup of happiness that danced

with your shadows on the walls

of Grandpa’s house, while he played

a rainbow of folk tunes

on his fiddle, still adorned

with last wedding’s ribbons

            mix it – round and round to dizziness

stir in some golden buzz of the bees

in old linden tree, add the ascent

of skylark above spring rye fields,

singing praises to the vastness of blue

            mix it – round and round to dizziness

add chopped walnuts, figs, dates

and raisins, pour in some juice

from bittersweet grapefruit

freshly picked in your garden

            mix it – round and round to dizziness

add dark grey of rain clouds in Paris

that took Chopin back to the glimmer

of candles in an old cemetery

on the evening of All Souls’ Day

            mix it – round and round to dizziness

bake it in the cloudless heat

of your exile, do not forget to sprinkle

with a dollop of sparkling crystals,

first winter’s snowflakes at midnight 

(c) 2010, published in Chopin with Cherries

If you would like to know what kind of music is mixed like this, "round and round to dizziness" listen to the Prusinowski Trio. Event the dance of the shadows is just right in this visual interpretation of my childhood memory:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfcsTxTKqH0

My kids prefer chocolate mazurka on the layer of shortbread, "kruche ciasto"- with a thick layer of soft dark chocolate, decorated with walnuts and almonds. One year, in California, we put fresh strawberries on the chocolate-almond mazurka - the best ever!  Traditions change, the colored eggs are made of wood and put out year after year...

The Easter brunch comes, or should, after 40 days of fasting, giving up a favorite food, sweets, or deserts, or anything at all that we like too much.  Then, in a village tradition of "przednowek" - the time before the first harvest, the time of hunger -  the starved celebrants gorge themselves on cuts of cured meats, horseradish, eggs, egg salads, rye bread, and a variety of mazurka desserts. 

My Grandma and Mom also made Easter yeast-cake, "babka wielkanocna" - but those concoctions are too hard to do, in my busy lifestyle. They have to cool off on towels in a closed, warm room. In Grandma's house kids were banned from the house, lest they slam the door and the cake collapses on itself, resulting in the barely edible, ugly and squishy "zakalec."  One year, an attempt at a "babka" ended up with a zakalec that was not only completely flat and rubbery, but also burned. It was so bad that even a hungry dog did not want to touch it...

Family holidays with Marcin Depinski, Ania Harley, Aleksy and 

Henryka Trochimczyk, Maja Trochimczyk and Ian Harley, 1999.

It is fun to remember the holidays, the amusing mishaps, the laughter around the table. But all good things come to an end. For me Easter is and always will be also the time of remembrance, a sorrowful time changed forever by a family tragedy.

On the 4th of July 2013 as I was riding in the Poets' Convertible in the Sunland-Tujunga Parade, my Mom Henryka Trochimczyk, nee Wajszczuk, died in Warsaw, after an emergency surgery. Born on December 16, 1929 in Baranowicze, then Poland, now Belarus, she survived an escape from the Soviet occupation, spent WWII as a refugee with 20 people in a two-bedroom house, met my Dad while removing bricks from Warsaw's ruined streets afterwards, became a chemical engineer, worked for Foton (a photochemical company), took and developed lots of wonderful pictures, traveled, sailed, danced, loved people, loved her children and grandchildren, loved cooking and having parties, and loved life...

Shot in her home by robbers on April 3, 2000 (the bullet went straight through her lung, three centimeters away from the heart), widowed in 2001, she never fully recovered, but in poor health soldiered on. My dad, Aleksy Trochimczyk (born on September 25, 1927 in Bielewicze), fared much worse. The killer bullet went diagonally through his stomach, intestines, spleen, liver... After being tied up and left to die on the floor of the house,  he somehow freed himself, dragged his wounded body to neighbors' houses, but in vain... Nobody opened the door, nobody answered. 

Only the next day, fifteen hours after the attack, he managed to get help for himself and my mom, saving her life. His strength astounded the doctors who could not believe that for over a year, until May 11, 2001, his body simply refused to die, against all dire prognosis, against lost hope.  He recovered from sepsis, multiple dialyses, multiple surgeries, blood transfusions.  In the meantime, he managed to tell me some secrets during my repeated visits to the hospital in Poland.  The poem below was written on the way back from the first, shocking trip.

The Polish Easter

Chance. A whim of fate.

A wheel of Fortune

falling off its path.

The bullet pierces the lung,

blood spills in darkness:

shortness of breath,

mouth tied with tape,

agony in the basement

on the cold cement floor.

How does one live after that?

Does one live?

After a midnight stroll

on all fours, searching for help

screaming, unheard?

How does one live 

without the stomach,

kidneys, intestines and spleen?

Plastic pipes carry out

all kinds of liquid.

Seven drains and two IVs

for blood and feeding liquid.

The Polish Easter

is a celebration of

overeating. Food is life.

Would dad ever eat again?

Would mom ever breathe 

without gasping?

Honor your mother and father.

I do.

They did not.

(c) 2000 by Maja Trochimczyk

Written on a plane from Warsaw to Los Angeles, after the attack of April 3, 2000.

That's what Easter means to me: a baptism and two funerals...The end and the beginning.  My father just retired, it was  his first full year in Poland after decades of working abroad. My parents just came back from visiting me in California. They were here for three months - Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year... They went around, to San Francisco, the Grand Canyon, San Diego. They had energy. They had fun. After coming back home, they were getting ready for me to visit in the summer with children. They were planting roses, cleaning up - that's why they went to the summer house so early, when the area was still empty. My mom wanted to have a head start on spring cleaning, planting.  In the evening on that fateful Monday, the robbers cut the wire to the phone, broke in, shot them, tied them, left them to die. Took their wedding rings and the milk money from the purse. There were looking for gold. What gold? In a summer house? There was nothing else to take. The robbers were never found. Four months later, another elderly couple was found in their summer home, shot, tied, and dead. The murderers were never found then, either. 

My father, a half-orphan from a small village of Bielewicze (b. 1927, his birth certificate burned with the Eastern Orthodox church he was baptized in) lost his father when he was 12 and the war was just starting. The teen was resilient, he was hardworking and took care of his mom and brother. Only after the war ended he went on to finish the gymnasium, high school and college. He got a M.Sc. in electrical engineering from the Polytechnical University of Warsaw and worked in the high-energy area of power-plants. He started his doctorate, taught for a while, but then family duty called and he had to earn more money. 

He designed power plants and electrical installations and started travelling to building sites in the Middle East where Poland was constructing these power plants, water desalination plants, sugar refineries, and other infrastructure. He worked in Iraq, he worked in the Emirates. He was very good at what he did. He could not stand nonsense and found an engineering solution to every problem. People loved him, though he preferred books to company. Thus, he made his way through life; took care of two children; traveled to see the world: Italy, Greece, Turkey, Lebanon, Spain. The funeral of Princess Diane in London. Trips to Paris. 

My parents had a rich, busy life and were looking forward to having even more time for having a rich, busy life,  in retirement. Then,  the two bullets ended their dreams. 

Henryka and Aleksy Trochimczyk, Abu Dhabi, UAE, 1980s.

When I posted the portraits of my parents on FB, 14 years after that fateful attack I was surprised by the outpouring of kindness from my friends. I thank them all for sharing their wisdom, advice and compassion with me. It is good to know we are not alone, after all...

 When my parents were shot in a home invasion robbery in Poland at 9 pm on April 4, 2000, I was in my office at USC at noon, just after my morning class. I sat down to answer emails and suddenly I could not move, this incredible peace washed over me, "nothing matters... everything is fine...it is all over... my life is over....it is good"  I was in that state for about 20 minutes, and the next morning got a call from Poland, that my parents were shot and found, alive,15 hours after the shooting. When I arrived in the hospital in Warsaw, my mom told me her experience in detail, that incredible otherworldly peace after life is over that I shared with her on the other side of the globe. That serenity stayed with me for a long time, not long enough..... Fear of death is useless and so is "stay safe" admonition, life is inherently dangerous, we do best when we laugh and love instead of being terrified.