fragments (dream)

broken silence…
the sound of my scream
echoes frame by frame
from the glass wall of
forgetfulness…
I am drowned
in the indigo of night.

the sky is falling down with the rain
beads are suspended in midair
gray sadness saturated my being.
a beat of life squeezed from my heart
as my dreams soaked into life
with a single teardrop
trough the fabric of my eyelids.

© 2011 by Nina K Orlovskaya

fragments (running ahead of the season. draft. memoir entry)

Running ahead of the season. Vienna, Austria. Fall, 1988.
Survival skills of a group have different dynamics than an individual. And, regardless how willful one individual could be, group instinct overrides the person’s will and wipe out individuality. How the individuality will survive the ordeal depends on many variables: past experiences, physical mental and emotional fitness, resilience, assimilating skills. Most of those abilities are innate and not as prevalent as we would like to think. And many of us, emigrants, would end up broken and not only financially. In simple terms, everyone would be affected differently and would recover differently. In Ukraine we would say something like: ‘goodness would shine brighter and badness gets worse’. Just a thought to deliberate in different time.
Group dynamics of the group, which I belonged to, at that time, was simply ugly. Lifelong friendships were easily broken. Years later, some of the broken friendships were rekindled and some were lost forever. New relationships, brief, demanded by the momentarily needs, were formed. Everyone was for oneself. And friends were made on a needed basis, a primitive survival method, dictated by the necessity of the moment. We did not expect to see each other in a week or two.
On the brighter side, it was not only the end of an old life, but also it was a beginning of a new one.
Those were breathtaking times. You don’t have to see your annoying aunt for your birthday. Ever. Your neighbor’s cat won’t ever cross your path again and you did not spend a second to plot his disappearance. People have known you as a timid and shy person. Guess what? No more, you are who you chose to be today and if you would not like it tomorrow you will change it again. No one has any expectations from you, not even you. You are in transit. And your life isn’t a steady flow but a rouring rain with violent gusts of wind. That was an intoxicating feeling. Something that changed me forever, broke the reasonably accepted boundaries and expanded me beyond any limits.
Life by itself was not that bad or dreadful. I had a place to sleep, food to eat, youth and heath (I just turned 30 y.o.), my husband and kids were with me. Kids were happy that they did not have to go to school anymore. It was funny to see them thinking that that was it, they finished their education. And when you are 9 or 12, the world does not extend beyond the horizon yet.
It was early fall in Europe, end of September, beginning of October, days were delightful, weather gentle: not hot anymore and not cold yet. The brief moment of gentle hesitation, as of Nature got stumbled and was not certain how to proceed further.
During those days I learned that people recycle, clean streets in front of their shops with soap, water and brush every morning. On occasions, till now I remember those moments and think of my existing business, located on the outer line of Detroit. If you have ever seen movie 8 Mile and I will give you my address, you will recognize the place. Sometimes I imagine myself to get up earlier, get a brush, soap and water and start to clean 8 Mile road. I can guarantee that the first driver with a cell phone, passing by, would call 911, and an ambulance would pick me up urgently.
I realized that people can be polite, just nauseatingly polite. In a public place they would talk in a low voice not to annoy others. I was coming from a part of the world where people talk to make a statement, announcement or simply to be the loudest in the crowd. I have never been in Vienna since, I got to go there and double check if I did not misinterpret that politeness. Maybe they were just uncomfortable around the crazy loud Russians. And we were walking in groups. We were afraid to get lost. If that was not intimidating, it was weird for sure. Some of us were braver than others, we grouped around them. The big city was frightening for me no matter in which country it would be, I was a village girl. I called myself Russian here not by mistake, but Ukraine was not known to the world. So we called ourselves Russians for simplicity, we still do on occasions if it serves the purpose and prevent further questions.
From my brief time in Vienna I had never suspected that Austrians are cold people, until one incident that happened somewhere in the middle of our transit. My husband Val (Valeriy back then) had some strangeness, for first he married me and stayed with me for very long time, until I finally got pity and granted him freedom. Back then, in Vienna, he liked to buy different treats for the kids every day. Mostly it was ice cream. I did not understand why they should be different each day, why not stick to the known and good ones.
One of those days, Val took a box of ice cream from the cooler. There were six pieces inside the box. It was rather unusual, but alas, what did I know. I opened the box, gave a peace to everyone, and held the box with the last two pieces to my chest.
The ice-cream was white(?), crusted with something that reminded me bread crumbs and not sweet at all, and it was frozen solid. It took me a few long minutes to finally bite through it… It was fish, a frozen raw fish!
Imagine, in the middle of the crowded market place two adults and two kids chewing uncooked frozen fish. In addition, a mother holding the box in such a way that if you are unsure what the hell they are eating, you can easily read the box.
As short and hot tempered as I am, I grabbed the fish from all of them and ran to the trash can, Val stopped me, ‘we can cook and eat it later for dinner’. The fish was really good.
What shocked me then, that no one from the crowd gave me any clue that I was doing something wrong, a smirk! a hint! Anything for god’s sake! Nothing! That was cold!
It was a dreadful story at first, but later it was just funny. And I liked to tell that story.
Over a decade later, my grown son came home from a bar one day and said “Nina, please, I beg you, stop telling the fish story”
“why. It’s an old story. I don’t tell it anymore”
“Last night, in the bar, one of the guys was telling a funny fish story about a family of stupid emigrants”
“What did you do?”
“ Nothing, I was waiting to the end, let them laugh as much as they wanted, and then I told them that it was my family…”
The story was too old to be funny anymore. But it stroke me how sertain things can follow you around as if they became a part of you. I am still thinking about the significance of it. It’s got to be there.
Three weeks of fall brought some changes: mornings were losing light, days got colder, trees were shading leaves, winter was closing in on us, but we were running away. We would be leaving for Italy in two days.
The next night brought fear into my daughter’s life, fear that didn’t let me to close my eyes for the night, but lucky me it was last night. As we were leaving Vienna, we were leaving our fear behind.

fragments (it was raining)

it was raining,
at your funeral.

…flowers in the mud,
wet dirt in my hand,
time floats in the puddle.

six feet of eternity
between me and you.

I could have saved you
yesterday…

I am still wondering,
where was I?

letters (run! revised)

gravity of will holds the objects imprisoned
gravity of love binds the spiral of escape
into the cycles of misery…

waters of the oceans curve the shorelines tirelessly
into the face of land.
sands of the deserts shift backwards
in search of original unity.
full moon in the bloody eclipse.
the lonely wolf howls from night.
death prowls on the fringes of life
for the weak, for lost, for lonely…
tears of rain roll from leaf to leaf
in the land of decaying corpses

run for the light, for tomorrow…
through the land of shadows,
over the shifting sands
in the moonscape with the lonely beast…
run for your life!!

fragments (forgotten, 3 short poems)

I
I walked the ridge
to the summit.
the cloud rested
on my palm.
the shadows…
left in the deep valley
by the entrance
into the underworld.


II
thought-
-like-
lightning

split the heaven
of my heart
in two halves
…bleeding.


III
fog sails
over the irises
into the dark horizon
of your pupils…
my tears rolls
from your eyes…

fragments (never ending journey: first days in Vienna)

Vienna, Austria. I lived there for three weeks. The days of confusion and shock. The memory of that time, even during its formation, was fragmented, unreal, dreamlike and emotionally overwhelming. All life around for the first few days had a quality of a foreign movie without translation and subtitles.

My mind was quiet, real quiet. It refused to trust my visual perception and I frequently would touch objects around, feeling them with my hand to make sure that they are indeed real. First automatic door scared shit out of me. I froze for a moment there, processing the surge of adrenaline in my body and suppressing my fight/flight response.

I acted normal, double checked every word from my mouth and every emotion on my face – I had two teenagers on my hands. When my mind questioned reality of my surroundings, their minds questioned reality of me and themselves. And they looked in my direction for reassurance. It was tense, but I acted casual.

For one thing, none of us, emigrants, who crossed the border of the country legally, were left without attention. Our basic information was taken at the point of crossing the Ukrainian border. A few terrifying hours “what if?…”. But it was just a simple bureaucratic procedure.

We traveled by bus to the train station in Prague and from there by train to Vienna. The security upon our arrival was tight and scary. There were no other trains there or any people, only soldiers with guns hanging over their necks. Every one of them had a mean looking dog, leashed but perhaps more alert than the handler. For some reason I thought about the war movies about Nazis and Jews. I give myself quick and meaningless reassurance “not to worry…” and I did not have much time to ponder mysteries of my mind because our last name was called and we were directed to one of the buses.

My family along with a few others was moved from the train station into a dormitory; just a tiny room that was probably built to accommodate one person, although it was just my interpretation based on nothing, which I doubted later.

Many years later I had to spend one night in Amsterdam in transit from Kiev to Detroit, I needed a good night’s sleep. I paid for my room $225, and I had certain expectations. Well it took me a few minutes before I was able to find the bed that was part of the wall and I had to pull it out to make it a bed. There were no towels. Call housekeeping! You would think so, but there was no telephone in my room and I was too exhausted to leave the room, so I went straight to bed after my shower.

Upon arriving in Vienna, the next day we got our temporary ID’s in English that was an excellent time to spell our names whichever way we wanted. And some of us spelled them so hideously that years later we changed them to something like Sarah Smith. Real story.

At that day we were processed. Processed… repeat this word and listen to the sound…

letters (threading waters)

my mind overstretched, overextended.
thoughts floating by the limits of sanity,
haphazardly attached to the origin
by the invisible umbilicus.

the cloudless sky and gel-like tranquility
encircled my being into the eye of the cyclone
that promises another disaster
when it will choose to circle out

from my soul,

from my heart,

from my life.

letters (whenever i am, I feel)

whenever I am, I feel
the warm breath of your presence.

wind braided into my hair,
lost in the depth of auburn silk…
current of your life and mine
synchronized by the ocean waves.

I touch the rain with my hands
and taste the salt of the memory
on my fingertips.

I hear the sound of silence,
whispered by the night
over the blanket of fog
rolling over the fields.

I paste my spells into your sleep,
for your dreams to wrap you tight
into a sweet cocoon of absence…

I can sit at the edge of your bed,
watch your trembling eyelids
and try to decipher your dreams

fragments (it was mid January 1989)

My airplane, a late flight from New York to Detroit, was landing in the middle of a snowstorm. My life at that time was unfolding by the moments. I knew what I left behind but nothing about what awaited me ahead. The previous day had seemed like a twenty-four hour whirlwind spent between two continents. That long and strange day started in the early morning at Leonardo DaVinci-Fiumicino
International Airport in Rome, Italy.

By that time I had learned to use visual cues to access my environment and managed to navigate the busy terminal without any major setbacks. I tended to follow crowds of people that spoke Russian, dragging my two small children and a couple of suitcases with all our possessions. I hoped it would be the end of my six month ordeal.

The long flight to New York was my first time flying. I quickly found out I have a phobia of flying and air sickness as soon as the airplane left the ground. Waves of nausea were pulsating within my body, like snakes attempting to free themselves from my abdomen, ending up being caught in my constricting throat. Swallowing my fears, I fought to keep myself together. I did not have the luxury to display them in front of my two small children who were more scared than I was. My demeanor only showed a comforting island of the certainty, sense and stability I had tried to give them at this point of their lives.

After landing in New York, we went through the long, burdensome procedures of immigration paperwork and were given a choice of our final destination - Salt Lake City, Utah, or Detroit, Michigan. My selection of Detroit was solely determined by it being a shorter flight and a name. It was definitely not a right moment in my life to think about saving time.

So, there we were disembarking in Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport, in the middle of the blizzard. My family’s new home in America. As difficult as it was for my children and I, my emigration was a breeze compared to the hardship of other immigrants. Luckily for us, my status as a Russian political refugee gave me certain privileges.

About an hour later I would be home... Hamtramck, Michigan, for the next three years of my life. Hamtramck... a heaven and a capital of new emigration from Eastern Europe. Everyone entered that place with such a wonderful impression. Only years after exiting however, we all realized it was a softer kind of hell.
Unfortunately not all of us were able to leave, with many being trapped there for the rest of their lives. I had to deal with the full extent of my reality and result of my choices. I chose Detroit over Salt Lake City. I picked the United States over every other civilized country in the world. I ended up in Hamtramck versus Vienna or Rome.

What I learned is that we never know where our hearts belong. And we are all too quick to judge.

It was the middle of January 1989.

fragments (patience) revised

What is patience, what is the definition and what is the interpretation, what is the truth about it and what are the false assumptions? The people who use this word, in most cases use it in a manner to cover up their incompetence and they use it “because they are incompetent”. So, what that means in turn, is that they present patience… as a false virtue, something to be worshipped.

Moreover, often laziness and unwillingness to perform under the pressure and to perform fast, hidden under the mask of patience. Waste of time is not patience even if it dressed like it.

In fact, a lot of people are unable to differentiate between the realities and cover-ups. And this is understandable. The average person lacks the tools he needs to understand his actions in the perspective of time ahead, in the moment when that action takes place. And this is only the time when the direction could be adjusted and outcomes could be changed.

However there is a true patience. If it understood correctly and cultivated, it becomes a virtue. It is the patience of a silent snake before the attack, a frozen tiger before the jump, a stillness of the finger on the trigger. A moment of hesitation before the final decision has been made, before the point of no return has been crossed.

There are certain elements required for an effective performance: knowledge, practice, ability, desire, determination and more. It is general knowledge. But then some runners run faster and win the prize, while others with the same skills and determination left behind. There is only one element which transforms the performance into art. And that element is missing in the later case. It is patience.

The patience allows the performer to capture the moment in time when the direction is favorable and all surrounding elements and events are aligned and synchronized.

One may think that the person who can execute swiftly, competently and effectively has no need of patience, because he has already swept through the method, process, or his practiced and organized manner of doing things, be they mental or physical. A person, who is patient, is a person who knows what he is doing and therefore executes his action immediately and with great expediency.

This perspective is logically sound; however it masks or mistakes the process of completion with the moment of initiation. When the decision is made, when the action is initiated, there are other elements that enter into play: swiftness, efficacy, lightening like movement.

A person of great knowledge and competency but impatient is a poster child for this disaster, because knowledge and competency are just like signposts but nothing ever repeats itself. Impatience is blindness versus patience is wisdom. Wisdom not to trust yesterday’s knowledge because it is outdated and never true anymore, there are the other unknown variables that entered the picture. Nothing is ever the same and nothing is as it appears to be. To understand this reality is easy but not enough.

The person must be aware, alert, self-critical and self-confident to stay on course, to use his ability to maximize and compensate for his shortcomings, to be able to stay out of the ditch. This problem, with enough effort, is manageable. Another problem is more complicated and beyond the control of any man. There are more active forces in play. Those forces confuse our language, teach us to misuse the meaning, replace our clarity with dullness. Those forces deliberately misplace the values and qualities; they simply keep us all in a ditch that progresses into the mass grave long before we die. A social conditioning is a name for one of them. And this subject is a topic for the next conversation. © 2011 by Nina K Orlovskaya

fragments (Coyote and me)

…”pull me out pull me out, let me dry at the wind”
screamed the boulder drowning in the river.

when you are a cookie in the cookie jar
it doesn’t mean you want to be eaten.
if you are an owl you want never ending night
and a sparrow wants a day to stay forever.

if you are me you don’t know what you want
and then you go and find a Coyote
and talk with him,
because this is the surest thing to do
if you don’t know…

although if I’m lost that would be unwise
to ask for directions, and not because he is a trickster
which is true, but because he is lost himself.
sometimes he sits under the canopy of a tree
and sings a never ending song…
for days and nights to dance in roundelay,
were the owl and sparrow clap with delight.
I would not interrupt…

and other times
I can find him lingering in the meadow,
making sure all the grass grows in the right direction
he may let me in there for a while
and let me to grow with the grass
In the right direction.
and, while I am growing, he’ll tell me a tale

he told me ones that I was a stone drowning
in the river, I start pleading for help
he howled from laughter. and then
he dropped a cookie jar in the river
and oh, sweet cookie heaven, I was the river.
he let me drink running water
and sent me to walk into the
world of setting suns.
© 2011 by Nina K Orlovskaya

fragments (life isn't a choice) Amy- chapter I.

Amy

Life is a choice, thought Amy, as she twisted the rattlesnake head and ripped it off with a practiced motion, separating it from its still undulating body. She spit out her distaste of the procedure and muttered softly “if not you, then me”before she tossed the head casually into the bonfire.

With a sharp knife she acquired from one of her rapists, previously hidden in the sand of her makeshift camp, she made an incision down the length of the weakly moving body. After pulling out the intestines before depositing them into a shallow trench, she willed herself not to vomit whatever still remained in her empty stomach.

Once the reptile had been skinned, she added it to the steaming pile of organs and covered them with dirt -- a fitting grave for the beast that would help to keep her alive that night. She cut the carcass into long chunks, piercing them with her knife before roasting it over the fire she made with the help of the survival skills she had long mastered.

The serrated knife used to be the property of Dan, one of the two bikers who gave her a ride, raped her, then left her to die. She remembered their faces, their smell, and she expected to meet them again. She hoped they were locals. If they were, it would make her revenge that much easier.

For the time being, Amy rested her ravaged body, silently ate her makeshift meal, and cleared her wounded mind. The biker's payback would come later. Right now, she needed to sleep -- to recharge. She put her head on her backpack, curiously left behind by her 'benefactors' and moved her bruised face away from the scorching heat of the midday sun, hiding her face in the slightly cooler shade.

She'd done it intuitively, without any thought, protecting the fragile filaments of life still remaining in her battered body. She rationed the water still left in her backpack, thankful for what had been left.

She would drink the rest when she woke up. Before she started her walk back into the town she never had a chance to reach.

While she waited for sleep to claim her, she reached out and touched the large rock nature apparently meant to be her gravestone. The spot where they left her to die sprinkled in a semi-neat row that extended into the horizon. She could smell their smoky residue still permeating her clothes, seemingly her soul, and vowed she would never resume the bad habit they seemed to thrive with. She wanted nothing more than a simple life but that had changed. Now she found her existence complicated by her assailants mortality and her own need to end it.

This cemetery, her assumed resting place, was a reminder of her own precious life -- one she used to take for granted lately. She touched the stone again with a loving caress, thanking the gods the two bikers were drunk enough to leave her alive, knowing their lack of sobriety had been the sole reason she was still alive.

Cemeteries, much like the greasy smiles on those flea ridden thugs, usually creep you out. You should have listened to your instincts and kept on walking, rather than take your chances with them.

Amy snorted out her disgust at her actions, feeling the first waves of sleep starting to take hold of her consciousness.

Listen to the whispers next time. They barely kept you alive this time. You didn't inherit them just to have two grunting gorillas kill you. One more mistake like the one you made today, could be your last.

letters (dissolved)

my silent tears dissolved into rain…
lights off… fire extinguished, died,
buried in the grave of dark pupils.

shadows playing roles
on the fringes of the candlelight..
the stage is empty.

I drink my last drink
with the ghosts of my memory.
last moments before the lights
last flicker flies away...

just a puddle of formless wax.
shall it rain… shall it snow…

the last teardrop filling my eyes
slowly, to the brim.

let it freeze…
© 2011 by Nina K Orlovskaya

fragments (when I was a bird)

when I was a bird,
I was free.
now I am walking
in the land of forgotten things.
I am a unicorn hunter.
call me a coward, if you wish
it wouldn’t change a thing.
I am not a bird anymore.


©2011 by Nina K Orlovskaya

letters (memory)

the memory of you
like a fog on a rainy day
shelters my soul from sunlight,
from a fresh breath of the air,
keeps me in a lethargic sleep.
my mind is snatched
and locked in a narrow dungeon,
that is you,
without hope to escape.
all attempts failed like a sandy castle
under the pressure of a heavy tide.

the memory of you hunts me
like a pack of a hungry dogs.
I hide breathlessly in the dark corner,
paralyzed by fear of provoking
their appetite, anger, instincts…

I submerge the memory of you
into the waters of the night
until it drowns!

letters (happiness)

Somewhere and sometime in the past, I have had nothing except a dream and I was happy and complete.
Now, many years later, I have everything I ever wished for plus an original dream and, as you guessed, I am unhappy. Logically speaking, if one has more, one must be more. In my case, I should be happier. First thing came to my mind, “worldly possessions bring unhappiness”, the thought acceptable and socially ingrained in our minds. On the other hand, I have examined the value of all the things I have, there is no value, and I can leave it all behind in the blink of an eye and sit on the curb of the road stripped off all my possessions, alone, clothed into my dream and it would not make me happy. I make this statement not from a philosophic standpoint but from the perspective of my previous experiences. On a couple of occasions I got rid of all my worldly possessions and not only material but also social, moral, mental, spiritual… I mean over night… literally… it definitely made me light as a feather and not happy.
Where did the happiness go?!
I have spent a lifetime, molding myself into the perfect image of me. It had expanded me beyond the boundaries of my imagination and I have not found happiness there either, just a dust, collected by eternity.
I look in the mirror, into my eyes and see that happiness only in a blissful ignorance, regardless what I have or don’t have. A dream is an illusion that fuel desire for life.
Certainly, I do not generalize. I express my own observation. I have no knowledge of experiences of others. My lifetime is barely a time to scratch the surface of my own being.

letters (guarding your sleep)

speechless…
touching your lips…
fearful
not to awake your memory.
wind
scatters my fingertips
over the sunset.

night cloaks shadows.
I’m watching your sleep
and your dreams, painted
in the shades of a rainbow.
your gentle breath caresses your nostrils.
your eyelids tremble…

letters (searching still)

searching still
in the blind darkness of my eyes
in the silent nothingness of my mind.
‘am I dead yet?’… question?… statement?...
singularity floats on the surface of nothing.
I hold on to it ‘am I dead yet?’
the glimmer of familiarity within the ocean of senselessness.
I have not known me:
my sight dissolved, drowned in the waters of darkness.
‘am I dead yet?’ screaming, terrifying thought-entity
curled into the circle of repetition,
my mind holds onto it with the despair
of a legless soldier that was left behind..
with the effort of a newly initiated blindness
of a blind man who starts to rebuild his world
around the unknown reality.
‘am I dead yet?’ has no meaning, but must…
otherwise the embryo would be swallowed…
it has no past, it knows no death. ‘am I alive?’
it increases itself cell by cell
into more…

‘where was I before?’ ‘I am intact… and separated
from the music, broadcast by the car radio into beyond,
from the sunlight, voices of the people
rushing from every direction
to aid in the scoop of biology
that used to be familiar…
trapped into the engineering marvel
that was reduced into the state of chaos…
first time alive, aware to the rhythm of the heartbeat,
that would be surgically extracted in a moment
and given for the recipient.’

…I will know it later,
when my mind will reconstructs the crack in time,
cementing it with the reality of imaginary tales…
last thing to go – first thing to return, considering the distance…
hearing, that would be it…
invasion of the sound into singularity
rebooted the system.
the radio was there and I was not,
I felt my heartbeat, my breath was back…
some memories… mind floats at the fringes…
flashing images of quadriplegia with horrors
worst than a death sentence…
I fought it… ‘wiggle your toes!’, was my only argument.
I refuse it, little comfort in the blissfulness
of not knowing…
‘wiggle your toes, coward!’ I caved in, gave up…
more effort that I have ever known…
I send the signal into my toenails…
o sweet triumph! It listened…
with beautiful response of symmetry and equality..
vision was back as a blur of light,
and that was not important anymore.
I have surrendered into the hands of others
I needed rest…
‘stay with me, stay with me!’ hard hits over my eardrums..
‘don’t drift, stay with me!’
so I did for a while… but then I thought
‘no more…’
…gone…

letters (coral vipers) 2nd version

cold blades of your words
to my bare skin,
knife into my pancreas.
the scarlet whispers
over my body,
as coral vipers burrows into the ground
beneath my feet.

your eyes…
your voice…
your smile…

tremors through my being,
crippling my emotions,
until I feel nothing.