On Henry Brant's Music Stand and Summer Diversions

In the spring of 2004, I drove to Santa Barbara every week with a tape-recorder to interview Henry Brant (b. 1913, d. 2008), one of the most original “mavericks” of American concert music.  Henry had just won the Pulitzer Prize for his monumental orchestral composition, Ice Field, premiered in 2001 in San Francisco with the support of the Rockefeller Foundation and Other Minds Festival (with Michael Tilson Thomas conducting). 

The Ice Field, for 100 musicians dispersed throughout the concert hall, from the stage to the top balconies, was inspired, like so many Brant’s pieces, by an apocalyptic, violent environmental event, the breaking of the ice field. He also wrote music about hurricanes, meteor showers, waterfalls, sun spots, and the destruction of rainforest.

The Ice Field is made of clashing layers and eruptions of sound from many directions. In the words of the composer,  the piece features: “extreme high register outbursts, extreme low register volcanic suggestions, melismas both sustained and jagged, spatial textures of polyphonically dense complication, and sections of unmistakably jazz character presented in harmonically strident contexts…” I spent a fair number of years studying Brant’s unique spatial music among other approaches to connecting music and space.  

Brant loved the music of Charles Ives (1974-1954), a pioneer life-insurance-salesman-turned-composer (or vice versa) whose “Unanswered Question” (1906) is a 20th century classic, and “The Fourth of July” should be in every American home. Is it? I was amazed after moving here that my American students have never heard of Ives. Who heard of Brant in his centennial year?  I learned about Ives and Brant in Poland.  

My home country’s Parliament declared 2013 to be the year of composer Witold Lutoslawski (1913-1994), and his centenary was celebrated around the world, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Alas, the U.S. Congress did not declare 2013 the Henry Brant Year.

Kathy Wilkowski and Joel Hunt with Brant's materials. Photo by Maja Trochimczyk

My book of interviews will be among very few commemorations of Brant’s unique and visionary talent. Emerging Brant scholar, music theorist and saxophone player Joel Hunt will transcribe them.  The details of life and music will be thoroughly reviewed by Kathy Wilkowski, the composer's dedicated widow, who finally finished cataloging his works before shipping the manuscripts and documents off to the Sacher Stiftung in Basel... Yes, a book will definitely be lots of fun.

I have not written any poems about Brant yet, though the old music stand with Brant’s German inscription is begging for some verse (a gift from his widow, Kathy Wilkowski).  Let me try...

Maja Trochimczyk with Kathy Wilkowski and
 the Music  Stand. Photo by Joel Hunt.

The Music Stand

~ for Henry Brant, in memoriam and for Kathy Wilkowski

(c) 2013 by Maja Trochimczyk

Three ornate cast-iron legs

Dark, polished wood inscribed in German

Luften! Nicht Schleppen!

The faint red ink of the composer's warning 

Fades away, erased by death, melting into 

Timelessness - Lift! Do not Drag!

It stands in the corner, beneath a portrait 

Of a lady in an intricate golden frame. How do they

Bear surviving? Oh, the mindless cruelty of things!

Lift your eyes, child, when you speak to me.

Don't drag your feet. You'll wear out your shoes 

And who's going to pay for them to be fixed?

Do not drag me into this sorry affair
You are too good for that! Sing, sing, 
Sing along! Lift your spirit up to heaven!

Who knows what the music stand has heard? 

Who gave a German name to this antique wood?

Lifted before and after the rehearsals

In the most unlikely places - the top balcony, 
On the stage, between the aisles, under 
The maple tree in the courtyard

On the roof, by the pond - music transcends 

Space, weaving distant streams into a tapestry

Of sound and whimsy, crashing icebergs

Fountains and volcanoes. Here, four boats 

Of flutists float along the river Amstel, 

Under the din of Amsterdam's carillons 

There, a South-Indian trio, with a jazz band 

Gamelan, and Caribean steel drums. Don't forget 

A hundred trombones orbiting in a circle

A hundred guitars strumming an elegy 

For the rosewood trees killed to make them

They died in the rain-forest that will not grow back

Luften! Nicht Schleppen! Look up to the sky

Catch your vermilion days in a lucid net 
of notes, words - found, scribbled, counted

Lift! Do not Drag! Keep your spirits high

with the Angels and Devils, Verticals Ascending

Instant Music and Unanswered Dreams

Mojave Valley Yucca, Photo by Maja Trochimczyk

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Not to get overwhelmed with existential and environmental drama, I wrote a rhapsody on the flavors of summer.  The flavors of past summers in Poland, mixed in with intense, fragrant summers of Southern California. 

Mojave Valley Yucca. Photo by Maja Trochimczyk

The Flavors of Summer

(c) 2013 by Maja Trochimczyk

Pink clouds of raspberry sorbet float in
A large bowl of cherry soda at the museum.
“The signature recipe of my Grandma”
She offers, “the taste of my childhood.”
Not my flavor, not my taste.

The cold sweetness fizzles on my tongue
In the idyllic country of Ramona, the siren
Of almond blossoms and winter sunshine,
The tragic heroine from pages of an old romance,
And a tourist attraction, rolled in one.

Foreign story, distant times.  I long for
Hand-picked cherries bursting with delight
While my bare legs dangled from the tree branch.
I dream of my mom’s famous zupa nic, soup nothing –
Egg-white clouds frozen in a yellow yolk sky.

I see scarlet droplets scattered in a forest clearing
Wild strawberries hiding under fern fronds
Discovered in a burst of sunlight, bittersweet
Treasure preserved in small jars of confiture –
A teaspoon for each dark night of winter.

Bittersweet grapefruit ripens on my tree
Pink juice wells up under sunny yellow skin.
Birds got to the apricots before I did, leaving
A memorial of round holes in soft orange fuzz.
I find comfort in the scent of lavender and rosemary.

The dangerous whir of hornets (run if you hear one)
Morphed into a low din of bejeweled hummingbirds
Bombing each other away from the sugar water
In a ruby feeder, among flowercups of mandevilla
And white star jasmine climbing the roof of my patio.

I let the grass grow tall in my backyard this July
To remember the orchard of my aunt, the juice
Of cherries and pears on my chin, angry circles
Of yellow-jackets that sting and sting again
Unlike noble honeybees, dying with honor.

My neighbors of immaculate lawns and pristine
Driveways look at the Slavic jungle with disdain
And a warning: “Beware of snakes. Rattlers are hiding
In your grass. They are thirsty. They come from the desert. 
Watch out for the snakes of California summer.”

 

 

As the readers may have noticed, the inspiration  for this poem came from attending a Ramona lecture by Dydia Delyser at the Bolton Hall Museum… Who heard of Ramona? A fictional heroine of a 19th century novel by Helen Hunt Jackson, an activist, Indian Affairs inspector (who in vain bombarded the Congress with documents and reports about abuse and injustices inflicted upon Native Americans).  Mrs. Jackson decided to fictionalize the many grim and tragic events from the history of Mission Indians that she described in her somber reports and books. 

Escodillo Museum, Ramona's Marriage Place in Old Town San Diego.

The end result, a tragic love story in a novel "Ramona," became an unofficial guide to Southern California for visitors by train and the automobile, and a myth. Charles Fletcher Lummis, D. W. Griffith, and other luminaries became fascinated by the story, that became the subject of three movies. The book itself had more than 300 editions and spawned a tourist industry, with Ramona-themed locations and attractions in Ventura, San Diego, and other counties.  In addition to the various places and companies named after Ramona, her story has survived the past 80 years in the town of Hemet that has held the annual Ramona Pageant in late April. 

I visited San Diego and stopped by the Casa de Estudillo in the Old Town Historic Park. The U-shaped house is filled with artefact from Californio life - the Spanish-themed house includes a small tribute to Ramona, the novel that saved the building, known as "Ramona's Marriage Place" to the book's readers and lovers.

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Photos by Maja Trochimczyk, unless otherwise indicated.

On Irony and Love Songs with Grapefruit and Pomegranate

Some people… wrap themselves in a thick blanket of irony of sarcasm and greet every expression of sentiment or affection with a sneer. We’ve all seen our share of these tough guys and gals, who curse or ridicule every expression of what really matters. “How banal, how boring!” they say, when they hear a sweet love poem, like the one below (first published in the Emerging Urban Poets 2010 Calendar). I remember, I was like that, too, deeply wounded and hiding my pain under a mask of worldly indifference. There was no hope, no future, only the reward for work done in the present. All love declarations I heard were a gigantic lie. The Universe was wrong, all around me. We lived in Hell. Or so I thought.  In my new life vision the Hell part has been upgraded to the level of Purgatory, the place of atonement, relentless testing, endless life exams. Yet, there is hope, there is love, and there are glimpses of Heaven.

The concept of “irony” (from the Greek term εἰρωνεία eirōneía, “pretended ignorance”) is a great invention of romantic heroes, starting from Lord Byron, who protected their vulnerability with an armor of disaffection, finding themselves alienated from the whole world. It still is a useful literary device, but why is it wrong to be ironic in life? To spend your life so well armored, that no real emotion may pierce it? That’s exactly why. This separation from others, this distance, alienation, is the plunge of the soul into the emptiness of a spiritual void. Ugly things become possible: indifference, cruelty, unwillingness to help others, to care for anyone at all, but your own career goals or physical comfort. 

I was going to say I “hate” irony but that’s not true, I do not hate anything, nor anyone. I have pity instead. I consciously cultivate in myself an ability to be filled with love and compassion for everyone. (Do I fail in that? Of course, but it is not giving up that matters…) The moral choice of refusing to be ironic, in life or art, may have unpleasant consequences. Some “real” poets would think me silly, and my love poetry sappy and trite, as I happily write a next sweet line while listening to the rich mezzosoprano of Patsy Cline or Ella Fitzgerald, warm as liquid honey: “I’ll be loving you… always… with the love that’s true… always….” 

These words were once addressed to a real person, just as my encounter in the garden really happened… but I don’t think we need to know such details, to feel refreshed and nourished by love.

The bitter-sweet pink grapefruit and the baby pomegranates from my garden are a perfect illustration of our topic for today.

A Portrait in Brackets

               “… you promise eternity almost, from the embrace.”

                     Reiner Maria Rilke, The Second Elegy, Duino Elegies

I love every hair on your head

every wrinkle, the round scar

in the middle of your forehead

like Cain’s mark – you are

the chosen one, the untouchable

The little freckles on your nose

shine – endearing, childlike

It was supposed to be

summertime when they came

Here’s summer all the time, already

My love stirs for your full, half-open lips

waiting for my kisses, as I caress

the sharp contours of your cheeks –

I hold them in my cupped hands

looking straight into your eyes

There is no world

only us and the birdsong

at noon in my garden

I love the quiet confidence

of your fingers, skillful hands

like my father’s – solid, able

to fix things, take care of me

I touch your skin, tracing a line

down the nose, soft lips, and chin

I brush against the prickles

of your goatee, before reaching

a sweet spot on your neck

Below your shoulders, under

the smoothness of hard muscles

the bell of your heart welcomes me

The blood sings in your veins, love

surges towards me – I do I do I do

I rest my head on your chest

and listen to your heart

that beats and beats and never

stops playing the music 

© 2009 by Maja Trochimczyk. Published in 2010 Calendar, Emerging Urban Poets, Pasadena.

A Lesson for My Daughter

After a ruby-colored glass of Merlot

I told my daughter the secret of the Universe.

I solved it at noon, by the river

Questions, as I thought, do not matter

The right answers to life are “Yes”

And “I Love You”

If you build a circle of “Yes” all around

Affirming who you really are

You will be safe

If you say “I Love You” to everyone

near you –  very quietly, so they can’t hear

but you know

You will walk in a sphere of gladness

That no insult or curse

May pierce

You will find yourself hidden deeply

Where love blossoms, laughter bubbles

And joy overflows

© 2006 by Maja Trochimczyk 

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This article and two poems are published in the June issue of The Voice of the Village.

Photos from my garden - grapefruit and pomegranate.

The Spring with Birds and Susan Dobay's Art from China

April showers, May flowers... and birdsong. During the Village Poets reading at the La Crescenta Library, my fellow poets formed a chorus of birds, using children's toys from Poland - little bird sculptures that are half-filled with water and whistle like birds. These poetic birds provided a background and refrains to my poem, inspired by Susan Dobay's painting, "Musicscape 12" - the same painting was also featured at the "Co-Inspirators" reading at Pasadena Public Library, organized by Rey R. Luminarias.

Reading with Musicscape 12, Scenic Drive Gallery in Monrovia, 2012

See, how we dance?

~ inspired by Susan Dobay's "Musicscape  12"

Simon says – “grow”
and our roots reach for water
our branches for the sun

Simon says – “blossom”
and our pink petals open
in a gold mist of newness

 Simon says – “sing”
and we let the breeze whisper
with hummingbirds, jewels, leaves

 Simon says – “fly”
and we turn and turn again
in swirling clouds, voiceless music, dancing

This poem is published in Poets on Site's anthology, "On Awakening" edited by Kathabela Wilson (Pasadena, 2012),  and on display at the LitFest on May 11, 2013 (10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Pasadena’s Central Park. 275 South Raymond Avenue). For schedule. http://litfestpasadena.org/ The LitFest will feature panels, readings, performances... You will meet Kathabela and Poets on Site. You will be able to paint a poem on Just Kibbe's car...

At the Pasadena LitFest 2012 with Kathabela Wilson

The month of May, honored by so many poets as the month of love and romance, is not considered a good month to be married in. Apparently, the romance of May is short-lived; for the marriage to survive you have to tie the knot in June or September!

While reading an exceedingly bizarre treatise by a 19th century Swedish mystic, Swedenborg, I was struck by his vision of Heaven in which eight-limbed creatures float by; these creatures consist of couples that found their perfect match and are blended into one being while the ones that are still single frantically search for their better half. How far do you have to go to find an ideal person to share your life with?

Sometimes very far, sometimes you’ll meet that person in high school or earlier. The partners in one of the best marriages I know met in seventh grade Another happily married octogenarian admitted that every day she feels a flush of joy when she hears the key turning in the lock when her husband comes home. Her friends who long ago stopped talking to their husbands and are now living in a marriage of “suspended animation” or a “permanent truce” laugh at her “silly infatuation,” but, she says, it took years of hard work to get there. Someone else said that the secret to a happy marriage is “compromise” – how distant from romantic love! How close to the “arranged marriage” of so many cultures!

Arranged or not, each culture has different wedding customs. For instance, in China, the bride’s traditional shoes, veil and other wedding clothes and symbols were red (red is also used in India). There even was a special calligraphy symbol of “Double Happiness” that decorated wedding gifts, to bring joy and happiness to the newly-wed couple. What would happen if you leave that tradition behind?

 During her trip to China, Hungarian American artist Susan Dobay saw a bewildered looking Chinese bride in a white, Western-style dress and used the picture in her artwork, called Bride on the Rock. This image gave rise to my poem and here it is…

Vision, Unveiled


“Why are you leaving us?”
Chinese characters dissipate in the air

Clouds descend
Down the waterfall of jade

Clouds float down
The slopes of aquamarine

“Where are you going?
Why are you doing this?”

Centuries of crystal
Petrified traditions stand silent

Watching over
The white tulle of a Cinderella dress

The dark-haired bride
Is anxious without her talisman

Lost without the red hue
Of prosperity, crimson joy she hides

The sign of double happiness
Marked in blood-red ink

 Under the pristine silk
 Of her bridal gown

They cannot see – she listens
To the whisper of the crevices

Her veil flutters
On the breeze


© 2013 by Maja Trochimczyk




Since the path of the bride took her away from her roots in Chinese tradition, I decided to add a poem about a young girl who went in the opposite direction – towards the wisdom of her ancestors, symbolized by learning to count in Chinese. It is important to find a balance between staying connected to tradition, and making a new place for yourself in the world. Sometimes it takes a lifetime…just like a good marriage.

A Skipping Lesson 

One Two Three 
En Deux Troix 
Ein Zwei Drei 

she learned to count
like the foreigners
do

she skips up the steps
and stops at the top

attentive

she listens to stories
of her ancestors
deep within
her veins

Yee Uhr Sahn 
Suh Woo Lyo 

blood circling
from her heart
to her breath

tomorrow

she'll learn to count
all the bright red hats
on the way through
the city

in Chinese

Yee Uhr Sahn 
Suh Woo Lyo 
Chee Bah Jyo 
Shi 


(c) 2013 by Maja Trochimczyk
“A Skipping Lesson” was published in Quill and Parchment, March 2013.

The three stages of life - childhood, adulthood, maturity receive different degrees of attention in  Western society.  Our gaze stops at the peak, the bride at the summit, the young man at the top of his prowess. We look in fondness at children, give too much attention to adolescence as a distinct and different stage in life (replete with its own, highly commercialized culture), and tend to devalue the wisdom of age.  "What creature walks on four legs, then on two, then on three?" Asked the Sphinx? The answer - a human being, crawling, walking and shuffling along with a cane...

A friend of mine, in her mid sixties, complained with exasperation how she hates being patronized by people in public spaces, ignored, disrespected, belittled, like a child. "And hare we today, dearie..." "Aren't we flustered..."  She's talked down to by silly teenagers, shop attendants, nurses, as if she were already senile, useless... In China, the ancestors are revered, Confucianism places a premium on proper respect and obedience to the elders. The wisdom of the elders is also recognized in Native American traditions. Tbe women's wisdom is the key to survival, endurance, no matter what. Sometimes very hard, sometimes it is the only way.

My third poem from the "Women's Trilogy inspired by Susan Dobay" deals with the wisdom that old women share with the youngsters. If you learn, you will survive, if not, you will become a forgotten part of history, that little corner that someone might once discover, for it was not written by victors and is of little import on the public stage. This poem is published in the current issue of The Statement Magazine, a literary journal of California State University at Los Angeles. Come to the publication party on May 16, 2013 at 6:30 p.m. in the Golden Eagle Ballroom of CSULA.

... Too Bold 

The ancestors’ weight heavy on their shoulders
The ages’ wisdom embroidered on their skin

 Bend down, bend down 
 You will not be broken 

Tall stems of rice bow low before the wind
Slide through the onslaught, a sudden surge of war

Young mothers whisper silence to their daughters
Girls watch, repeat the gestures of their kin

Bend down, bend down 
You will not be broken 

You have to learn the art of disappearing
Invisible, you will outlive the strangest times

Be still, be patient, breathe the longest hours
You have to do it all and remain unseen

Women alone survived in our village
Into the river silver tears have flown

Bend down, bend down 
You will not be broken 

Bend down, bend down 
You will not…


 © 2013 by Maja Trochimczyk
.

National Poetry Month - Celebrating My Poetry Circles (April 20 and 29)

Have you ever had the feeling that you've done what you were supposed to do in life and everything else is a bonus, a desert of sorts? After publishing some of my most intimate and autobiographical poems in the last few years, I do feel that way. I've left the proof of my existence - on paper, and online - in a portrait of what I really think and who I think I am. It was such a welcome relief from the heavy-duty writing of musicology where I had to dig into other people's lives and thoughts, and play a guessing game about what they were about. Or, worse, as many musicologists do, impose my own theories and ideas onto my subjects, quote the most fashionable experts of the moment, and strive to make myself famous at the expense of those I wrote about.  I'm glad I don't have to anything, any more. . . So, in a way, I'm done, no reason to continue.

But wait, there's so much more! Having finished the egocentric trip of describing myself, I still have the whole world to write about, and there's plenty to do! Here's my poem about poetry writing, published last year by Apryl Skiles in her Edgar Allan Poet blog and her guest piece for another journal.

Definition: Writing 

               in response to George Jisho Robertson’s essay “Path of Poesis”

It is not like splitting the match in four

or counting devils on its round head –

none of this matters, really

see the sunrise above Strawberry Peak

and Mount Disappointment shimmer

on the puffy underbelly of summer clouds

be dazed by bright ripples on a shallow canyon stream

shining like scales of a carp waiting to be killed

in a bathtub before Polish Easter

listen to the roosting birds at dusk,

the murder of crows covering tree branches

with angular shapes, dense Xenakis chords,

black clusters, dissonant, intense. They bathe

in the river, sit on a concrete bank with wet wings

outstretched, drooping with water, docile

like tattooed crowds resting, sweating

on sandy beach towels in Santa Monica,

waiting for a tsunami that will not come

shifting the gaze is important, from the navel

to cosmos – not how we fail in a multitude of ways,

but what graces hide in galaxies

that collide amidsts exploding supernovas,

on thousands of inhabitable planets

we’ll count but never touch –

we’ll touch but never count

the veins on the petals of the rose

shriveling from desert heat, just opened

Not us, then, look around, beyond,
catch what’s already gone, hold it
in your hand – the spark, the passing

(c) 2010 by Maja Trochimczyk

 Let's focus on what's really far away - all these galaxies and clouds of interstellar dust - and on what's really close and often overlooked - the treasures found on daily walks. The spark of joy seen in someone's eyes. Apryl Skies just made this poem her "Poem of the Day" for April 18, 2013!  She previously published it on her blog, at Edgar Allan Poet: http://edgarallanpoet.com/Definition__Writing.html For the National Poetry Month last year, I also wrote an article that she published with the poem. How sweet! http://www.examiner.com/article/majatrochimczyk-poet-laureate-the-passing-of-laurels"

It is good to have friends. It is better to have poets as friends. For the National Poetry Month 2013,  I have been invited to three group readings: Westside Women Writers, Village Poets, and Rey Luminarias's Poets and Artists Reading.

The reading by Westside Women Writers was held on April 17 at the Topanga Public Library on 122 N. Topanga Canyon Rd. The reading included individual sections and a group reading of poems inspired by an ancient, Cycladic sculpture of a harp player, from the Getty Villa antiquities permanent collection. The poems were written during the first field trip of Westside Women Writers, organized by Kathi Stafford and held on March 30, 2013 at the Getty Villa, Malibu. The Westside Women Writers, created five years ago by Millicent Borges Accardi, currently include, besides Millicent, Kathi and myself: Georgia Jones-Davis, Susan Rogers, Lois P. Jones, Sonya Sabanac, and Madeleine Butcher. 

The Village Poets of Sunland-Tujunga will appear at the La Crescenta Library on Saturday, April 20 at 2 p.m.  The library is located at 2809 Foothill Blvd., La Crescenta, CA 91214, tel. (818) 248-5313 (the parking is in the back). The reading's program includes poetry by Dorothy Skiles, Poet Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga, as well as fellow past poets Marlene Hitt, Joe DeCenzo, Maja Trochimczyk, Mari Werner and Beverly M. Collins. In addition to selections by each poet, the reading will include four poems read by a group - Sensations, Remembering, Enrollment, and The Veil, the Weave.  More information is posted on the Village Poets blog. 

Village Poets of Sunland Tujunga is a group of former Poets Laureate of Sunland Tujunga who organize poetry readings in their community, write poetry, and publish books, making sure that poetry life is rich and vibrant in the foothills. Every two years Village Poets organize a competition for the Poet-Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga and, in order to involve the local community in the selection of its Poet-Laureate, establish a Poetry and Literature Committee of Sunland-Tujunga which selects the next Poet. Dorothy Skiles is the current Poet-Laureate in our community (2012-2014). Another important project of Village Poets is the Monthly Village Poets Reading at Bolton Hall Museum in Tujunga, CA. The next reading, by Neil McCarthy, will be at the McGroarty Arts Center on Saturday, April 27, 2013. The upcoming readings are announced in local "good news" paper - The Voice of the Village. 

Reynald Romea Luminarias wrote a beautiful poem for my anthology Chopin with Cherries. I was very happy to include it in the book.

There Is No Other Love

                     

                              After Chopin’s Etude in E Major, Opus 10, No. 3

R. Romea Luminarias

                                                    —for Annie

November sunlight peers

Between leaf-veins. Oval windows.

Rose petals on velvet. Autumn vines our arms

Glazed with ripeness, steeped in unrestrained embrace.

Tongues stilled; drought-pained mouths this one now-love alone

 

Can heal. Our Love steers

Unknown universes’ oceans of shadows,

Maps red coral galaxies. Anemone-meteors swarm

Around us, stir hunger’s hull knifing waves, probing abysses.

There is no other love obtains the soul, breaks open steel and stone;

 

There is no other Love destroys this present, ancient drought, this fall

Stripped bare of songs, deprived of harvest; there is no other Love sees

Through storms of swirling fires; only this love, O this our Love alone:

No other Love ordains, builds up the spirit, breathes life into dry bones.

 

 

 In return, three years later, he invited me to present some of my poetry at his National Poetry Month celebration at the Pasadena Public Library, Wright Auditorium, April 29 at 6 p.m. The event, entitled "Co-Inspirators: Poets, Artists, Music-Makers" will present interactions between various arts. The Pasadena Library is located at 285 East Walnut Street Pasadena, CA 91101, tel. (626) 744-4066.

Rey invited me to read three poems: "Memory Mirrors" (inspired by Susan Dobay's digital artwork, "Reminiscence" from her "Impression of China"), and "A Study with Cherries," and "How to Make a Mazurka" from the Chopin with Cherries anthology. For the first poem, Rick Wilson will accompany me on a Chinese flute from his exquisite and extensive flute collection. For the Chopin's pieces, celebrating his music as heard in my childhood, at my grandparents house in a Polish village, I will bring two Chopin music boxes... It is going to be a beautiful, beautiful event.

A Summer Rose Dream 

                  ~ inspired by Chopin's letter from Nohant


Rose petals float down 
Onto the desk covered with music 
Pages of notes and ink blots 

Chopin looks out the window 
A carmine blossom in her black hair
Exotic beauty at the ball 

He sees the eglantine roses 
The picket fence of long ago 
His sister smiling 

Fragrance spills on the velvet 
Of night, notes scatter 
On a canvas of his thoughts 

His fingers search for memories 
On smooth ivory keys 
Roses and nightingales, roses

(c) 2013 by Maja Trochimczyk

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Photos from Descanso Gardens, Tujunga Wash, and Roses from my garden.
(C) 2013 by Maja Trochimczyk

Norooz, Passover, and Easter - New Life and Fire

Fire and Fire

Whoever invented Easter Bunny that lays Chocolate Eggs on the lawn was not thinking through the rather dismal consequences of this wild leap of imagination... No matter, children are happily looking for chocolate confection scattered on the lawns of American suburbia... Would the popular-culture Easter be more memorable and dramatic, instead of just plain silly, if it included jumping over the bonfires, like the Persian purification rituals held at night on the Spring Equinox? 

On March 20, 2013, Persians around the world, as well as inhabitants of many countries in South-East Asia celebrated the holiday of Persian New Year dating back to the time of Zoroaster, three thousand years ago. This time of new beginnings, new hope and plans for new future, is marked by a 13-day holiday, with intense celebrations held on the 
night of the Equinox, when the day and night are equal and day starts to become longer than night. Families gather around bonfires and those brave enough to do it, jump over the fire with a prayer, to leave the old worries and troubles behind and leave them to burn in the fire, and to take into the new year the vitality and brightness of flames. In 2010, the UNESCO recognized the holiday of "Novruz" ("New Day"), added to the List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

The purification by flame is also a vital part of the Passover Celebrations, commemorating an ancient event of Exodus, the liberation of the Jewish people from Egyptian slavery. Before the solemnities can begin, each household is thoroughly cleansed and purified of all leaven bread and bread crumbs. On the last night before Passover, a search is conducted by candlelight, and the leaven bread remnants are burned before the celebrations can begin.  The fermentation of the leaven breads is a symbol of the festering of old memories, obsessive thoughts, regrets and guilt that need to disappear. A new beginning and true freedom of heart are not possible without leaving behind the burden of the past. What better way than burning the remnants of old, or jumping over the fire?

Christian Easter also focuses on fire at night. The Easter Vigil begins from starting a huge bonfire outside of the church and from blessing of the fire and of the Paschal Candle, marked with symbols of Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, and with the symbols of the year that it will serve the faithful, its flame a symbol of the burning presence of Christ. The congregants gather in darkness, broken only with the single flame of the Paschal Candle. This light spreads as more candles are lit, from one person to the next, until the entire congregation is a sea of flickering candle-lights. This is one of the most effective symbolic rituals of the Church - the drawing of spiritual light from ancient Fire, the sharing of Light from one person to the next, in unbroken chain of the faithful, each protecting his or her little flame and sharing it with his/her neighbor. 

The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre-
To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.

T. S. Eliot - Little Gidding, from Four Quartets

Listen to Eliot's own reading of Little Gidding (16 minutes)

My meditations on the Divine Fire led my thoughts along a less elevated path, starting from a parking lot at my son's school:

Incandescent (Via Positiva)

How gently and lovingly
You wake in my heart,
Where in secret you dwell alone ~
         ~ St. John of the Cross 
            The Living Flame of Love

The car was pulling out of the parking lot
When friends texted my son —
A sixteen-year-old, six-foot baby
"Is that your sister, or your mom?
She’s hot!" He looked at me
And waved at them, laughing.

Consumed by divine flames
I was not careful. I did not close
All doors, all windows.
Fire got in.

The Divine Pyromaniac
Set the world aflame
Filled me with fire
Infinite.

I’m a conflagration of grace.
The presence shines brightly,
Dissolves, liquefies, forges
A new being — one
With the One
Beyond.

Translucent blaze
Engulfs me, suffuses all
With one feeling
One thought —

Fire flows through my veins —
Brightness — Fire


(c) 2012 by Maja Trochimczyk
Reprinted from Meditations on Divine Names (Moonrise Press, 2012)

The Eggs of Easter

In Polish homes, the week before Easter is the week of Spring cleaning - washing windows, curtains, throwing out unnecessary things, sorting through the clutter. The cooking begins in earnest on Good Friday, that is the day of most solemn and dramatic celebrations in the Church and the most austere Lenten meals at home - pickled herring and potatoes... 

For the Slavic peoples, Easter food is all about eggs: colored beautiful dark red by cooking them in onion-skins, and scraping patterns with needles.  Ukrainians, Poles, Russians, Slovaks, Czechs, Slovenians, and Serbians all have their traditional patterns of decorating Easter eggs. Thus, the new beginnings of the spring have another, equally ancient symbol: the egg. The Romans started things "from the egg" - ab ovo...  

On Easter Saturday, before the solemnities of the Easter Vigil, Poles bring beautifully decorated baskets of food and eggs to be blessed and later shared at Easter brunch. My basket is decorated simply with fragrant orange blossoms from my garden. 

Since I have not written yet any poems about Novruz (or Norooz), Passover, Easter, Easter eggs, or even Easter Bunnies, let me wish everyone a wonderful celebration of new hope, new beginnings and a personal renewal in serenity and joy this spring. I'll sweeten my wishes with a little confection of a poem about one of my most favorite desserts, zupa nic. My mother used to make this ice-cream substitute when there were no ice-cream stands anywhere and a line would form for the rare supply of real vanilla ice-cream at the grocery stores. We had to make do without, thus learning the virtue of ingenuity.

The Taste of the Sky

My mother's zupa nic - soup nothing
had puffy clouds of egg whites
floating in a yellow sea
of delight. I chased them
with my spoon that perfect summer.

I'm floating now
in thinning blue
of Technicolor sky
a meadow for
ten thousand cloud sheep
I cannot count while they
cast shadows
on tidy little gardens
of tidy little houses
of tidy little people

They go about their daily chores
folding sheets, baking bread,
I'm cooking up a storm
of dreams that will soon vanish
like clouds in my soup nothing

The Taste of the Sky - After Magritte, Digital collage by Maja Trochimczyk

What else? If you want to read more about Polish holiday food in poetry, my "mazurka" and "mushroom" poems are posted on the Village Poets Blog, in a report from the March 2012 "Bite Me" Art Exhibition at the McGroarty Arts Center in Tujunga. The Village Poets Poetry Reading held on March 16, 2013 also included poetry about food read by Dorothy Skiles, Marlene Hitt, Joe DeCenzo, Bryan Story, Alice Pero, and Rick Wilson (who read verse by Kathabela Wilson).

http://villagepoets.blogspot.com/2013/03/bite-me-art-exhibit-at-mcgroarty-arts.html

http://villagepoets.blogspot.com/2013/03/more-poetry-at-bite-me-art-exhibition.html

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Photos of fire, Easter basket, orange blossoms, and yellow sky (C) by Maja Trochimczyk