Liturgy

A boy and a girl, very little
sat down on the steps
of the kiot
amidst the marshmallow innocence
of pink chrysanthemums
at the footsteps of a Golgotha
made of painted wood
where every turn of the carved ornament
is a new adventure and a new island
and the carpet on the floor rises
in the brilliance of dazzlingly beautiful
flowers and trees
with the dulcet music falling from the skies
in the soft even light of the golden candles
the oak floors melt into the ocean
and above their heads
rises like a sail
The Holy Mother with the eternal Child
smiling gently,
tenderly,
a devastating, heart-stopping smile

Low Tide

Somber cinereal disconsolate skies breathe wet heavy breezes
Over the slick leaden mirror of salty waters, trembling in cold and fever
The tide carries away the last whispers and long-broken promises
Adorning the sandy strips in shiny necklaces of broken shells and dead crabs,
The concentric circles of life and death, ephemeral and eternal.
Acacia trees on the dunes and crabgrass spread hungry nets of roots,
Among the sharp pungent odors of decomposing seaweed
Round pieces of polished glass, the green tears of the ocean,
Sparkle in longing for the by-gone waves,
And by the piers the boats crowded, narrow, nervous, like a flock of seagulls,
Like young girls in white dresses, in the wind, their hair undone and flowing
Their long slender arms lifted in a gesture of prayer and hope for the wind
And freedom, their hearts unevenly beating in presentiment of a new dawn.

Birthdays, Cowboys, Indians, and Goiko Mitic

Well, I have officially finished my 53 round trip around the Sun. We celebrated this meaningful event in the most childish manner possible - I threw a Cowboys and Indians party! It is precious though to watch young and not so young people turn into children again... Please, do not tell me you have never built a teepee or shot arrows or walked the path of war!
I certainly did. Together with my best friend Alv we researched Native footwear, clothing, art and mythology... We chose to be the Blackfeet... I cannot believe I now live so close to the actual Blackfeet tribe! Now, why Blackfeet? The answer is James Willard Schultz, a wildly popular author in the USSR in the days of my childhood, a virtual unknown in the USA - even though he lived here in the end of the 19 century, wrote here, has become a Blackfoot himself and wrote a painfully truthful and poignant memoir "My life among the Indians".
Most of the Soviet children (and, by the way, German children) of my generation see Indians as martyrs and heroes, and the face that they see is that of... a Yugoslavian actor Goiko Mitic, he was our Chingachguk, and Vinnetu son of Inchuchun...

Tulips. Central Asia.

The irrepressible lark fills the warm air with a joyous trill,
the lusty grass gulps the sun in,
red headscarves and silk dresses burn against
the pristine verdant hills.
Tulips bleed onto the road
in bunches, clutched by dirty-faced urchins,
and on the back seats of dust-covered cars, or
woven between the spokes of old jingling bikes
upon which olive-skinned boys
with almond-shaped eyes,
carefree, boisterous
ride past.
By the side of the road
loom
mulberry trees
with the stumps of their chopped-off arms
that haven’t yet shot into the sky
the new arrows of branches and leaves.
The earth is still heavy and moist,
the brooks are still ringing with cold crystal
young girls on the roadside hide timid smiles behind their narrow mahogany palms

Arboretum

Yet again the giddy sakuras drop their tender pink petals
Onto the furious lusty green underneath;
Trembling tiny leaves
Tender like the touch of a new-born baby
barely opened their translucent bodies
to the unfamiliar warmth.
A young couple lost their chaff of clothes:
in the brightness of this day they are two luminescent angels
completely engrossed by each other,
their light skin breathing warmth and
a slender hand unexpectedly traces
the slight depression of his chest.
Circles on the water
run from the bare feet
sending shocks and sighs away
like heartbeats among the creosote-soaked piles
rocking arrogant yachts in their white solitude,
still further,
where the wild ducks are courting each other
where the dead cattails, silvered by the frost,
fall in a jumble of slain stalks,
where the blackbird sends a high-pitched cry
to claim his territory,
crimson badge on his sleeve,
on a thin branch in the wind
dark, as a coal drawing, waiting for his mate.
The flight of a hawk cuts the azure space of the sky,
his shadow sliding along the bars of a joyful chorus
like a dramatic pause.
Pink petals in my hair, I stand at the gate of the fall

Time and phenomenology

Most of us have contemplated Time at some point of our lives. Have you not experienced the existentialist Angst while pondering the ultimate end of self? Or mayhap you considered the transient nature of the Universe itself? Have you ever wondered why some moments of your life you remember with such clarity and vivid details and do not seem to remember other ones at all?
Philosophers from Aristotle and St. Augustine to Heidegger, Al-Ghazal to Lenin, scientists from Dekart, Newton to Einstein grappled with the notion of time. For some – time is the objective quality of substance. For the others – a means of internalizing the outside reality by the subjective conscience…
Aristotle defined time as “a number of change with respect to the before and after”. His time is unbroken, consisting of infinite number of instances between any two instances.
Augustine's time is, on the contrary, made of separate instances. Augustine’s inquiry into the nature of time arises from his attempt to understand how God, who is in Eternity, could create the world, which is in time. Like Plato, Augustine wants to understand the relation of Being and Becoming. Because God creates time itself along with heaven and earth, Augustine argues that it does not make sense to ask what God was doing “before” creating.The creation of time and becoming must somehow be a timeless act. Augustine also presents what is perhaps the first phenomenological description of time, observing that the past and future are never directly experienced as such, but are only known as certain types of experiences in the present.
“Thus it is not properly said that there are three times, past, present, and future. Perhaps it might be said rightly that there are three times: a time present of things past; a time present of things present; and a time present of things future. ...The time present of things past is memory; the time present of things present is direct experience; the time present of things future is expectation. “(Confessions, 11, XX)
“...see that all time past is forced to move on by the incoming future; that all the future follows from the past; and that all, past and future, is created and issues out of that which is forever present. Who will hold the heart of man that it may stand still and see how the eternity which always stands still is itself neither future nor past but expresses itself in the times that are future and past?” (Confessions, 11, XI)
Augustin’s time exists as long as the universe, created by God exists; dying, we are freed from the chains of time and would be able to view the totality of Creation…
Dekart and Newton view time as flowing evenly, and Einstein as relative and changeable. Husserl's Phenomenology views a continuum of experienced time similar to viewing a space continuum and demands a conscious reflextion; the retention of the past and the foreshadowing of the future are, in essence, the present. The flow of time becomes the intentional flow of experiences, a subjective passage that can be faster or slower...
The retained past – however subjective it may seem to the outside viewer,- is quite objective to me, the insider... The Heraclites river suddenly stops in its flow, and I enter it again and again watching my winged shadow flying ahead of me on the pale tiles at the bottom of the swimming pool, as I re-live this moment today, yesterday, tomorrow...

The Hedge

The tall dusty hedge divided the world
Into “my own” and “theirs”
Bitter-smelling dark leathery leaves
Deliniated the safety of space
And held the uniquness of the moment
Where a three-year-old boy
Is lost in baking his sand pies.
The softness of warm light and the thickness of time
At the bottom of the brook red worms wriggle among naked roots
The water between my fingers is clear and same always
In that instant I am forever ten
And my mother is still wearing a beautiful short dress
Standing in the doorway
With a song on her smiling lips.
A transistor radio and strange noises of the unfathomable planets
Under the golden moon
When loneliness is a gift you prayed for
And night belongs only to you
And you belong to the night...
And on the other side – noisy footsteps and loud voices
And the abysmal clanking of a trolleybus
Speeding along in a reckless abandon,
And multitudinous roads
Convoluted, endless
That lead you away
from your own self.