Love Makes the World Go Round or Love Around the World

Here on the village farm in the food chain or pecking order cats are above dogs and below chickens. They are just barnyard animals that are tolerated only because they kill mice and insects. Insects are part of their diet, and they snatch about at all crawling jumping creature and snack on them. Cat seem an irritant to be tolerated as the have some purpose in the farms eco system. Feral and starving they cry incessantly and always underfoot begging for food. A swift kick clears the path.

When I arrived at my home there were two young kittens. Skittish little things that had been summer sport for the visiting girls (aged two and four). With no toys for diversion the cats became their entertainment. They chased the cats screeching and flailing. Thwarted in their efforts to catch them the girls would find sticks and play a game of cricket using the cat as their ball. Wisely the kittens took cover and usually were the victors in “Let Get the Cat”.

The cats had two very different personalities. The tabby was the whiner who was relentless in his complaints about his hardscrabble life. If one tried to temper his fate with affection he would bolt, thinking we humans just giant versions of the tormenting girls. The sib was more affable and forgiving taunting patiently with her cat charms, brushing near a leg for a cuddle. She much more accepting of her destiny rarely went begging or fussing. Homily all spattered black and white so perhaps she compensated with personality.

Like the summer girls with little to engage me about the house and being I was preverbal like them I found myself interested in these cats.

They became my farmyard entertainment and perhaps a touchstone to my own isolation. Many a night before in my life a cats purr had balmed me.

I waited out the sweeter cat and when she skimmed by I seized her. (This is never done by adults here as the have a rational fear of fleas.) I got her. It felt like a big catch. I just held tight, tighter till she settled. I patted her a bit. She seemed to want more than food; she wanted the ever-illusive nutrient “love”.

She purred. Thus began the courtship.

I saved bits of scraps from dinner and fed her. She had appeared frail, seemed to have some barnyard ailment or perhaps due to her life style a failure to thrive.

She fatted up and became sprightly. She curried favor with the household by just being in their midst without complaint. They began to abide her being about.

She disowned her cat mother and began to follow me about like the little lamb that went to school with Mary.

I called her Mitzi as it sounded like the Georgian word Mets, which means mine.

Somehow I had acquired guardianship. If I had a sit she would join me, sublimely finding a moment to ease up to my lap. All in the household became aware of this cat.

The village chats about the teacher and her cat. Now folk joke and tease me asking if I am taking her with me to America?

On cold nights she sneaks into my room and does not even purr just all quiet so I do not ban her from my quarters. Having no heat her little cat fur seems some comfort.

As one must with love I must ask myself some tough questions. My questions about Mitzi mirror what I ask my self as I begin towards the climax of my time here. Did I make a mistake with this cat? Did I take it in only to abandon it? (Or have I just been a meteor in the life of this village, an autumn diversion to distract from life’s more pressing issues.) The cat reminds me of the student Luka a high functioning special needs boy who follows me around the school carrying my bags. He was also hungry, just to know how to hold a scissor and how to draw a circle and for someone to remind him to wash his hands.

He all all messy with a runny nose but has blue eyes that shine like the sea that glistens in the distance. Intuiting my frustration due to language barriers he often steps in and directs the other students in their native tongue. “Dagit! Chumy”, (sit, quiet) says Luka with great authority.

Every day when the school gate clang announces my arrival this boy runs to greet me.

As I type this cat is laying parallel to my body.

The cat will live, but will he thrive? Will Luka get kicked out of class being an irritant as he is so desperate for intervention he never quiets?

I will not know the endings or answers to these haunting questions. What happens when I walk away from this land, this boy, this cat?

I have hope that on winter nights when Maya rest weary and alone on the couch near the fading heat of wood burning stove that Mitzi will nestle near. I hope that Maya (who I have secretly witnessed sneaking food to Mitzi) just pets her a bit and that this loving little cat makes Maya forget her loneliness the way she made me forget mine.

And Luka, having been clearly my favorite I hope retains some status. And if not I just hope like hell that he believes a little more in love and Luka.

As always in love, I refuse regrets. Come here little thing, Modi, come, come…” And the cat purrs.

On the Road

I walk every day. Every day I can.

I circle the village. Out the filigree iron gate, to the left, past the school that sits on the crest of the hill.

I go east, then south, then north then west. The walk is never the same. Some days I can see the snow on the summits of the mountains. Often to the west is the glimmer of the black sea.

I see the same herd of goats most days, but they frolic differently each day.

Often I encounter my students who joyously bellow “Hello Teacher.” Some days I am given gifts by the grandmothers, perhaps a pumpkin, or a battered apple.

There are always cows, but never the same cows. They rove these pastures freely and can be waiting around any bend.

I once followed all the roses that were scattered on the lane thinking it was from a wedding only to end up at the cemetery where the gravediggers were tossing the red dirt to blanket a casket.

I pass stray dogs, fishmongers, and farmers harvesting fields. It is all a circle.

I have walked since I got here, every chance I could.

After my twenty-two hour flight from Detroit I arrived in the wee hours of dawn. A group was spirited away to The Ballazi Palace Hotel, a gilded lily gone dank, and dowager. It smelled of Vodka and cigarettes. Strains of haunting music from the grand piano would waft through the lobby giving the place an aura of Steven King’s The Shining.

Our room had a high window with bars where once in the night I could hear the sound of someone urinating just under it.

The training was intense, cult like. We spent ten hours in a fluorescent-lit room with no air conditioning. It provoked such anxiety that the volunteer with Asperger’s would become like a parrot and prattle ceaselessly about her worldview. (This is baffling was when asked where she was from meaning which state or country she chipperly replied each and every time “Earth”.)

So I was in this lock down with no promise of finding redemptions and no chance of coffee.

I did not know the lay of the land, did not see daylight, and felt caged.

And thus began the walks. I set my alarm early, dressed in the grey of the filtered dawn, went into this unknown and unknowable land, and walked.

The first day out down an alley road I discovered a cow pasture. The next day out I found the shop across the way where I could get Turkish Coffee. There was sludgy river nearby that looked as lovely as the Seine to hungry eyes.

I encountered strangers who saw me wear my citizenship by the sporting shoes on my feet.

My roommate with her dreads, her dark skin  stirred a commotion. It was as if a Nubian Goddess had arrived in their land.

And I walked.

And the day I was delivered to my host family I put on my shoes and began the village walk about.

It is my prayer life now. I compose emails in my head, say hello to cows, and kiss the old toothless woman. Up hill, down the incline over the crest I walk. I see the moon take its mark in the sky, and constellations that do not navigate me.

I know little here. There is less noise now. I do not really talk to God. I do not particularly listen to God. Well I do listen but even this God voice in my head seems to have a different language. Though I live in great silence, I am not exactly a contemplative. Things are not mystical, but always enchanting some how.

Putting one foot in front of another is home.

Back across the oceans, under the same moon, I walked there as well. And so I walk still, at home in the walk.

And so I walk still, at home in the walk.

A Poem

Black Seas,

shadow

stories.

Ancient strains

seized by

waves,

salt cured

in healing water.

The sand, they say

is curative,

tends the ache

of bones.

Bones that

leave their

marrow in

the earth.

Bones that

bend past

breaking, stooping

to seize

what was scattered

to the earth.

The beach is strewn

with debris,

discards from revelries

imbibed to forget

the ache,

of the boneless heart.

There are no

orphans here,

all are oplaket,

family.

Like the binding

rope that seals the newlyweds,

the teary brine

of ever brown eyes.

binds in union,

moored before God.

Little leave-takings

from one mothers

womb

to another.

How do we breath?

When the sea takes our breath?

Yet it’s pulse.

reminds hearts

to beat,

again.

Again, the wave

greets the shore.

Again the mother fluid

rocks the unsettled souls,

enticing home

those who were lost.

It’s a sMall World After All

Saturday. We have had Friday to shake off the week. The sun on a crisp autumn day inspires. I ask my host sister/daughter in this pigeon language of mine if she wants to go to Poti to the bazaar. She is sixteen so the yes is resounding.

The bazaar is Georgia’s version of the mall. It is full of fishmonger’s who shout from stalls, farmers in hawking fresh produce and any sort of made in China product one could imagine.

She is excited by the prospect. There is a flurry in the bathroom, and she steps out in the shortest skirt and the highest black boots. She has got her girl on.

We traipse down the pot-holed road, past the pig she has just brought swill to. We navigate around the ruts, puddles, and cow dung to wait for the rusty van that will escort us to Poti.

As we sit midsection-riding bumps and curves like sport there is a constant ding from her cell phone. And then a flurry of fingers in response.

As we walk through the cratered asphalt of the bazaar, her ping phone is ever present. Ding, ding, flurry flurry.

We stop in a café for a coffee and a respite. She is silent with me. She I preoccupied with the messages on her phone. She is so occupied with this far away love that she is oblivious to the coke and Pizza, which are long in arriving.

She becomes sullen. I am thinking she is bored or upset with me. We rush our stops as I can discern her hurry. In our haste I forget parcels of coffee and goods at a vendors.

At all times she is tethered to the cell phone and its pulsing’s. We board our crowded transport. Arriving in our village we pant as we rush up the hill. Her boots do not slow her gait. She quickens like the family’s cow does when nearing the gate of home.

Though I have had companion I have been without company through the day. I have that lonely that one gets in a crowded room. Our pleasure trip has become a burden for us both.

I understand though as she rushes the gate and takes the home phone to her bedroom that it is not just love that spurs her on but she is using up all her very precious cell phone minutes.

And here in this world ever so far away is one I have known and lived before.

Some Days

Life here…

If I were a whiner (which I have been) what I would gripe about is …

• · I think I have fleas in my bed.
• · The kitten that left them there has tape worm.
• · The part of the house where the bedrooms are have no heat.
• · To get to where the heat is and to the bathroom I must go outside and cross to a different part of the house
• · It rains and rains and in the night I must get dressed to not have a rain shower enroute to the bathroom
• · The toilet does not really flush.
• · The toilet paper must go in a separate bin.
• · There are soup days when for all meals there is soup, sometimes with chicken livers as the stock, most often with cabbage, but breakfast , lunch or dinner there is soup.
• · To get to where the shops are I must travel in these minivans called marsukas (This week one hour long ride had 23 people in it. (seats 12) half were hunched over and butts were in my face and when you share common space with farmers you do not breath through your noise, but then if you breath through your mouth you can taste it.
• · My hair color is mono chromatic out of a box and the cut is all choppy to go with my untweezed eyebrows
• · There is cow dung and chicken dung everywhere, probably on my shoes from Nordstrom’s
• · The TV is on most of the time, most of what is on I do not understand, except when I understand there is trouble in my homeland, and I do not know what it is.
• · They internet is slooooooow and gets slooooooower near the end of the month.
• · Oh and if I have any glitches with technology, it is not that folks do not speak English or I do not speak Georgian it is no one has computers here.
• · And for sure Apple has not made it into this market and thus it is a problem that must wait.
• · I knew I had to be cute and professional, but did not anticipate that I would have to more of the time be dressed for a chilly farm life.

And I could go on and on but then it is also true that:

• · I can walk down the road and be spontaneously invited into a home for coffee or wine or even a meal.
• · It does not matter that we do not speak the same language, long toasts are made.
• · We toast men. We toast women. We toast my children. We toast friendship. Each toast must begin with a new glass of wine made from their vineyards.
• · Unless of course there is much to toast as there was last Sunday and a man called us into his home, where we drank and toasted with 20 year old cognac, ate the honey from his hives and drank dark Turkish coffee
• · I am a farm princess here
• · I have not done laundry, cooked, did dishes or cleaned house since I left on August 10.
• · That the stars guide me at night on my trips to the bathroom.
• · This little cat who I named Mitzi sits at my feet and purr’s adoringly.
• · While I was at a pet shop the vendor who was delivering dog food took in his car to a vet so I could get meds for the cat.
• · That when the rains cease and the skies clear I can sees snow on the peeks of the nearby mountains.
• · That I have never tasted sweeter fruit, more flavorful vegetables and that they can do things with their non-hybrid corn that defies taste.
• · And then the ceaseless kisses, continue, the toothless grandmas, the students who leap up like kangaroos to kiss my cheeks.
• · Though a grueling ride there is a soundtrack on the mini buses that just quells all
• noise. All are patient with the crowded conditions or the cows who stop traffic to cross the road or the stupid American ( I ) who cannot even yell stop in their language.