The Best American Poetry

Silent Notes [by Lera Auerbach]

Silent Notes. Photo by Lera Auerbah

 

When pianos are not played,
they become very sad,
they collect silent notes.
Unplayed music floats –
invisible dust of overtones.
The dead are waiting expectantly:
so many keys – 88 – all untouched. 
The day of silent music
sheds the signature of uncaptured Time.

(“What are you practicing now?”
my mother asks me quietly.
Her eyebrows raised. I shrug.)

from the archive; first posted 10/15/21

Who Will Stop the Mad Man? [by Lera Auerbach]

My mother was born in 1940 to a Jewish family in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine. As Hitler's army marched East in 1941, my grandparents abandoned all their possessions (including their beloved library and cherished collection of musical instruments). They boarded the train – heading towards Siberia. The news of ghettos and the fate of Jews in Hitler's territories had reached them – all they could do was to flee into the unknown.

A few years earlier, my mother's grandfather, Berl Fishbein, the head of the family, was tortured to death by Stalin's secret police). His only "guilt" was being born Jewish. While my family evacuated, their train was bombed by Hitler's armies. Another tragedy occurred: the family lost my mother's grandmother Ettel Fishbein in the confusion and chaos. She was grief-stricken after the death of her beloved husband, frightened and confused over all the changes and sorrows that the war and evacuation brought. Somehow, after the bombing, she was no longer with my grandparents on the train. They never found her and never learned of her fate. 

With my one-year-old mother, my grandparents deboarded in Chelyabinsk – a closed industrial city at the gateway of Siberia. I was born there some thirty years later. They never returned to their abandoned homes in Ukraine.

In today's war, the invading army marches from the East, and more than a million Ukrainian refugees head West – to Germany in a mirror retrograde of history.

Earlier this year, I wrote a cello concerto, Diary of a Madman, inspired by Gogol's famous short story about Poprishchin, a government clerk who gradually descends into insanity. The concerto was premiered last month by the Munich Philharmonic, Giedrė Šlekytė, and Gautier Capuçon. Nikolai Gogol (or, more correctly, romanized from Ukrainian – Mykola Hohol) – was a genius writer, born in Ukraine, father of Russian language literature, and a visionary far beyond his time. I have been fascinated by his work all my life. Ten years ago, while composing my opera Gogol, I read and re-read everything he ever wrote. After my opera's premiere in Vienna, I received an open letter from Russia calling me "Vrag Naroda" (Enemy of the People) – the same terminology used against Shostakovich and many other artists years earlier. My website was hacked, erased, and replaced by the slogan "Death to Jews" and a skull. It felt terrible, but I was not afraid – since 1991, I lived in the West, and since 2001, I no longer had any relatives in Russia. I was responsible only for myself, my words, and my actions. 

While composing the cello concerto Diary of a Madman, I did not think of Vladimir Putin. Now, Gogol's tale carries an eerie resonance. Diary of a Madman is a story of a lowly government bureaucrat with a minimal, easily forgettable personality. In his increasingly demented diary entries, Poprishchin claims that a state cannot "be without a king." As the storyline progresses, he becomes increasingly mad, starts having delusions of grandeur, and, finally, on the "43rd of April of the year 2000" he believes himself as the King. (V. Putin was first elected president of Russia on the 7th of May of the year 2000. Gogol wrote his story in 1835!) Finally, Poprishchin ends up in an insane asylum. 

Perhaps, Gogol, the visionary and one of the greatest writers who ever lived – could see beyond the 19th and 20th century – into the heart of the 21st, where we are doomed to continue the eternal tale.

I think of my grandparents and my child-mother in Ukraine, leaving everything behind, heading into the unknown – evacuating from the onslaught of Hitler's army. Could they have imagined that eighty years later, the land of their birth would face again a very similar nightmare and that refugees would now head West to Germany to save their children?

Gogol's visions and nightmares become a reality, with the whole world turning into a lunatics' asylum as the great tragedy unfolds. Who will stop the Madman? 

from the archive; first posted by Lera Auerbach on March 04, 2022 at 06:59 PM 

My mother was born in 1940 to a Jewish family in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine. As Hitler's army marched East in 1941, my grandparents abandoned all their possessions (including their beloved library and cherished collection of musical instruments). They boarded the train – heading towards Siberia. The news of ghettos and the fate of Jews in Hitler's territories had reached them – all they could do was to flee into the unknown.

A few years earlier, my mother's grandfather, Berl Fishbein, the head of the family, was tortured to death by Stalin's secret police). His only "guilt" was being born Jewish. While my family evacuated, their train was bombed by Hitler's armies. Another tragedy occurred: the family lost my mother's grandmother Ettel Fishbein in the confusion and chaos. She was grief-stricken after the death of her beloved husband, frightened and confused over all the changes and sorrows that the war and evacuation brought. Somehow, after the bombing, she was no longer with my grandparents on the train. They never found her and never learned of her fate. 

With my one-year-old mother, my grandparents deboarded in Chelyabinsk – a closed industrial city at the gateway of Siberia. I was born there some thirty years later. They never returned to their abandoned homes in Ukraine.

In today's war, the invading army marches from the East, and more than a million Ukrainian refugees head West – to Germany in a mirror retrograde of history.

Earlier this year, I wrote a cello concerto, Diary of a Madman, inspired by Gogol's famous short story about Poprishchin, a government clerk who gradually descends into insanity. The concerto was premiered last month by the Munich Philharmonic, Giedrė Šlekytė, and Gautier Capuçon. Nikolai Gogol (or, more correctly, romanized from Ukrainian – Mykola Hohol) – was a genius writer, born in Ukraine, father of Russian language literature, and a visionary far beyond his time. I have been fascinated by his work all my life. Ten years ago, while composing my opera Gogol, I read and re-read everything he ever wrote. After my opera's premiere in Vienna, I received an open letter from Russia calling me "Vrag Naroda" (Enemy of the People) – the same terminology used against Shostakovich and many other artists years earlier. My website was hacked, erased, and replaced by the slogan "Death to Jews" and a skull. It felt terrible, but I was not afraid – since 1991, I lived in the West, and since 2001, I no longer had any relatives in Russia. I was responsible only for myself, my words, and my actions. 

While composing the cello concerto Diary of a Madman, I did not think of Vladimir Putin. Now, Gogol's tale carries an eerie resonance. Diary of a Madman is a story of a lowly government bureaucrat with a minimal, easily forgettable personality. In his increasingly demented diary entries, Poprishchin claims that a state cannot "be without a king." As the storyline progresses, he becomes increasingly mad, starts having delusions of grandeur, and, finally, on the "43rd of April of the year 2000" he believes himself as the King. (V. Putin was first elected president of Russia on the 7th of May of the year 2000. Gogol wrote his story in 1835!) Finally, Poprishchin ends up in an insane asylum. 

Perhaps, Gogol, the visionary and one of the greatest writers who ever lived – could see beyond the 19th and 20th century – into the heart of the 21st, where we are doomed to continue the eternal tale.

I think of my grandparents and my child-mother in Ukraine, leaving everything behind, heading into the unknown – evacuating from the onslaught of Hitler's army. Could they have imagined that eighty years later, the land of their birth would face again a very similar nightmare and that refugees would now head West to Germany to save their children?

Gogol's visions and nightmares become a reality, with the whole world turning into a lunatics' asylum as the great tragedy unfolds. Who will stop the Madman? 

Who Will Stop the Madman – A Gogol's Prophecy [by Lera Auerbach]

My mother was born in 1940 to a Jewish family in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine. As Hitler's army marched East in 1941, my grandparents abandoned all their possessions (including their beloved library and cherished collection of musical instruments). They boarded the train – heading towards Siberia. The news of ghettos and the fate of Jews in Hitler's territories had reached them – all they could do was to flee into the unknown.

A few years earlier, my mother's grandfather, Berl Fishbein, the head of the family, was tortured to death by Stalin's secret police). His only "guilt" was being born Jewish. While my family evacuated, their train was bombed by Hitler's armies. Another tragedy occurred: the family lost my mother's grandmother Ettel Fishbein in the confusion and chaos. She was grief-stricken after the death of her beloved husband, frightened and confused over all the changes and sorrows that the war and evacuation brought. Somehow, after the bombing, she was no longer with my grandparents on the train. They never found her and never learned of her fate. 

With my one-year-old mother, my grandparents deboarded in Chelyabinsk – a closed industrial city at the gateway of Siberia. I was born there some thirty years later. They never returned to their abandoned homes in Ukraine.

In today's war, the invading army marches from the East, and more than a million Ukrainian refugees head West – to Germany in a mirror retrograde of history.

Earlier this year, I wrote a cello concerto, Diary of a Madman, inspired by Gogol's famous short story about Poprishchin, a government clerk who gradually descends into insanity. The concerto was premiered last month by the Munich Philharmonic, Giedrė Šlekytė, and Gautier Capuçon. Nikolai Gogol (or, more correctly, romanized from Ukrainian – Mykola Hohol) – was a genius writer, born in Ukraine, father of Russian language literature, and a visionary far beyond his time. I have been fascinated by his work all my life. Ten years ago, while composing my opera Gogol, I read and re-read everything he ever wrote. After my opera's premiere in Vienna, I received an open letter from Russia calling me "Vrag Naroda" (Enemy of the People) – the same terminology used against Shostakovich and many other artists years earlier. My website was hacked, erased, and replaced by the slogan "Death to Jews" and a skull. It felt terrible, but I was not afraid – since 1991, I lived in the West, and since 2001, I no longer had any relatives in Russia. I was responsible only for myself, my words, and my actions. 

While composing the cello concerto Diary of a Madman, I did not think of Vladimir Putin. Now, Gogol's tale carries an eerie resonance. Diary of a Madman is a story of a lowly government bureaucrat with a minimal, easily forgettable personality. In his increasingly demented diary entries, Poprishchin claims that a state cannot "be without a king." As the storyline progresses, he becomes increasingly mad, starts having delusions of grandeur, and, finally, on the "43rd of April of the year 2000" he believes himself as the King. (V. Putin was first elected president of Russia on the 7th of May of the year 2000. Gogol wrote his story in 1835!) Finally, Poprishchin ends up in an insane asylum. 

Perhaps, Gogol, the visionary and one of the greatest writers who ever lived – could see beyond the 19th and 20th century – into the heart of the 21st, where we are doomed to continue the eternal tale.

I think of my grandparents and my child-mother in Ukraine, leaving everything behind, heading into the unknown – evacuating from the onslaught of Hitler's army. Could they have imagined that eighty years later, the land of their birth would face again a very similar nightmare and that refugees would now head West to Germany to save their children?

Gogol's visions and nightmares become a reality, with the whole world turning into a lunatics' asylum as the great tragedy unfolds. Who will stop the Madman? 

 

Interview with Tzimon Barto: Languages, Poetry and Education [by Lera Auerbach]

 I am always fascinated by people who are masters of more than one profession.  I interviewed Tzimon Barto for the Best American Poetry blog. His passions and knowledge run deep. Tzimon Barto speaks seven languages fluently, reads ancient Greek, Latin, and Hebrew; his love of poetry is contagious, his ideas about education are inspiring.

      

For a taste of Barto's music-making here he is performing Mozart's Rondo for Piano and Orchestra in A major with the SWR Symphonieorchester and Christoph Eschenbach.

 

Growing a Book [by Lera Auerbach]

 

© Lera Auerbach - Monoprint

 

A tree is never just a tree.

Physical distance one can measure.
But what about the distance from oneself?

(Too far – and numbness spreads.
Too close – and you fall apart.)

A book is a tree:
it needs to take hold,
to find nourishment and water.

In its early stages it is fragile,
while the hurricane season is coming.

Where do all unwritten books go?
Completed manuscripts waiting for editors?
Lost publications waiting for readers?
Forgotten lives?

Like a child, a book requires sacrifice.
Its birth is painful.
Ultimately, it is never yours.

Who are you?

You are only its tool –
(and a highly imperfect one at that.)

Borderless Creativity [by Lera Auerbach]

Insomnia © Lera Auerbach 2013

It is undeniable that creativity is one of the most important aspects of any profession. For an artist being creative is a matter of life or death. If you are not creative, you can't be an artist. Music emerges from silence, poetry from a white page, painting from a blank canvas. The artist brings to life ideas, sounds, images, giving form to that which was formless before. Yet that silence, that blank page or canvas - it is not empty, it is full of infinite possibilities.

I remember the first time I performed a piano concerto with an orchestra. I was 8 years old and very excited. Standing backstage, I was waiting for the orchestra to finish tuning. The chaotic, wild roar of the symphony orchestra tuning felt miraculous to me; it was my blank canvas as it contained limitless possibilities of music-making.

But the world of infinite possibilities can be also frightening, confusing and intimidating. The blank page can glare at you and leave you incapacitated, immobile, shrinking with each passing minute. How can one deal then with limitless freedom when everything appears possible, yet full of invisible walls that stifle your imagination?

The craft of an artist (and here I mean any artistic expression, be it a musical composition, literature or visual arts), requires building forms, structures within which a work of art can operate, the frames of space and time which it can inhabit. It involves creating certain restrictions within which the work can be free to emerge, and against which it can rebel, in other words, creating frames which can be altered, but nevertheless allow for creative thought to flourish and realize itself.

So, how does one sustain creativity in art when the Muses themselves are known for their disloyalty and fickleness? In my case this involved acting against the advice of my teachers, and following my calling against all odds.

I began playing piano and writing music when I was 4 years old. Soon my teachers presented me with a Solomonic dilemma: "Do you want to be a composer or a concert pianist?" I was told that in our age of specialization one cannot be both a virtuoso performer and a serious composer so I had better choose soon and focus." When I was 12, I wrote my first opera, which was staged and toured in Russia. When I mentioned this opera to my piano professor, who was a wonderful teacher by the way, he said rather sternly: "I don't want to hear anything about it. I don't care what you do in your spare time as long as long as it doesn't take away from piano practice."

Perhaps as a reaction to this, I started writing poetry and prose. Soon enough, my publishers informed me that I can't be publishing both poetry and fiction, that doing so would only confuse the readers and I would not be taken seriously. At the Juilliard School in New York, the pressures to choose only grew. Even today, after countless performances worldwide and with more than 100 compositions published, some of my well-wishers are still concerned that I may be spreading myself too thin. My response to that? I started creating visual art. As always -- I could not stay just with the paintings. Quickly I added mixed media, photography and sculpture.

It's not that I have not tried to limit myself to one form. And heaven knows, even one career in music is hard enough. But every time I tried to do so, the weight of a blank page became unbearable and I would feel depressed and accomplish less than when I allowed myself to fly freely with the child-like approach that everything is possible. My friends think that I am a workaholic, but I am not. I am a chronic procrastinator, always guilty of not doing something else. Yet somehow everything gets done with illusory effortlessness.

Experiencing art through its different forms helps to gain a fresh and unexpected perspective. Often we are unable to see what is right in front of us, but through the metaphor of art we recognize our own face. This is why a melody or a line in a book can move us to tears, as it becomes personal, and through sharing this experience we realize that we are not alone. Often enough, by immersing oneself in art, one may find solutions for seemingly unrelated problems.

And one more thought. There is no such thing as progress in art. Art does not follow the principles of Darwinism, at least not qualitatively. Picasso is not better than Rembrandt, Stravinsky is not better than Mozart, Pasternak is not better than Dante. Art changes and evolves so that the artist becomes an instrument and representative of his time. In one of his early interviews, Steve Jobs said that all his work will become obsolete by the time he is 50. Unlike art, technology becomes outdated almost overnight. Any scientific discovery, with time, will be found either obsolete or incomplete, whereas a work of art can remain relevant and whole throughout centuries.

In our fast-paced ever-changing world, art reminds us of our humanity, of that which is timeless and always relevant. Art communicates through the universal language of human emotions and thus, while representing its time, it is also capable of transcending it. Music of Mozart, words of Shakespeare, paintings of Da Vinci continue to inspire us, to move, to touch and to transport us beyond our daily routine; they are as powerful now as when they were created. Through these works we continue the dialogues between the centuries, as we individually attempt to answer some of the essential universal questions: Who are we? Why are we here? What is the meaning of life? What happens when we die? Why is there so much suffering, cruelty and war? These are the unanswerable eternal questions that define our existence. In the cosmic frightening vastness of silence of these unanswered questions, and facing the perpetual terrors of history, it is Art and Culture that become the frames allowing us to justify our existence and creatively flourish in any field we choose. Our art and culture give meaning to our lives and become our legacy. 

I know the price of Silence
When on the threshold of sound,
It congeals in the contour of emptiness
Blends with the beating heart.

The air is charged with fear
And opens into voiceless space.
Hypnotized by incorporeality,
The wind unfurls its wings in dance.

 ilence parches the mouth
As I catch it on my lips,
Mesmerized by the muteness of sound,
The dreary whiteness of the page.

From the archive; first posted February 28, 2014

The Art of Falling [by Lera Auerbach]

Papa takes me to figure-skating school.
The school has classes every day: running, choreography,
floor gymnastics, figure skating. With skates over my shoulder,
we come to the school half an hour before the classes begin.
Putting on skates is a ritual. Papa ties the laces
very tight. I am wearing a woolen dress,
tights, and a gray hat with a visor and a pompom.

“Well, how was it?” Papa asks after my first lesson.
I am covered in snow from head to toe.

“I don't know. We were taught how to fall.
For the entire hour. Fall – get up. Fall again. Fall, fall, fall!”

“To learn how to fall,” Papa says seriously,
taking off my skates, “is an art form in itself.
Who knows, maybe it was your most important life lesson.
If you learn how to fall – nothing can harm you.
If you learn how to fall – you can be fearless.” 

 

MARIA - Dialogues on Stabat Mater [by Lera Auerbach]

Some works have parallel lives. In 2006 Musikfest Bremen and Lucerne Festival commissioned me to write a piece for Gidon Kremer and the Kremerata Baltica. As soon as I started composing it, I knew that it would be reborn as a theater work one day. I did not know at that time how or when. I thought of Maria, the Grieving Mother, and the Other Maria – the mysterious one who remained in the shadows, the two outlines becoming one, blending their voices in never-ending dialogue where one voice echoes the other. This weekend, in Nürenberg, Germany, will be the world premiere of the new ballet Maria, choreographed by Goyo Montero with Diana Vishneva dancing the principal role. How did it happen?

On May 14, 2019, I met with Diana Vishneva for dinner in New York after attending an art exhibition together. I have known Diana for many years. I wrote my ballet Tatiana (after Pushkin's Evgeny Onegin), choreographed by John Neumeier with Diana in mind, and she has danced it numerous times since its creation. Diana visited me in Florida earlier that year to explore our future collaborations. That spring day, in 2019, on the lower side of Manhattan, we spoke about my idea for the ballet Maria based on the music of my Dialogues on Stabat Mater. We talked about different ways how to make the ballet Maria a reality and who could be the ideal choreographer to realize it on stage. We both, at the same time, breathed out: Goyo Montero. I called Goyo from that restaurant, and he said: "Yes!" 

Dialogues on Stabat Mater is an experiment. I wished to create a frame, a dialogue, an outlook from our own time on the same subject as Pergolesi's celebrated masterpiece. And to base this dialogue not so much on the differences of cultural and harmonic esthetics between the 18th and 21st centuries, but rather on their similarities, which is much more challenging. The image of the grieving mother is universal, just as pain is universal, although its expressions may vary based on cultural or religious backgrounds. 

Dialogue can happen at different levels. Is it a dialogue between different times, a beginning and an end, musician and audience, soli and tutti, loneliness and understanding? Perhaps, after all, the difference is not that great between vocal and purely instrumental, sacred language and the vernacular, monologue, and dialogue? Any prayer is a dialogue even though the addressee may not appear present. To whom am I addressing this?

 

No Boundaries [by Lera Auerbach]

Sometimes I wish to press the knife against my skin and let out blood
because the world is growing within me, overflowing; it overwhelms me –
for how is it possible that the world is within me while I’m within the world?
Where are the boundaries between us?
Where do I end, and the world begins?
I step barefoot on the ground and feel the rotation of the Earth.
I’m falling through the universe at breathtaking speed while not moving at all.

 

The Audience [by Lera Auerbach]

 

If I were dead, I wouldn’t want to stay around. I would fly to some other realm where I would no longer be myself but everything else at the same time. A happy, joyful radiance of a realm. 

But I wouldn’t be able to jump there if my heart was too heavy with worry for my loved ones who are still living in this world. I would have to stay around to see how they are coping. The living become the responsibility of the dead. Maybe, if I stayed around, I could still help them somehow. 

My dead grandparents and their parents and the parents of their parents und so weiter slightly move their invisible bodies making room for the new arrivals. They watch how I write these lines in English – the language they never spoke and slightly shake their heads.

 

Making an Inventory [by Lera Auerbach]

 

Bruegel's Sky - Fragment [Photo by Lera Auerbach]

To live, one must make an inventory:

Item 1: The sky. It is everywhere.

 

Item 2: People. There are many of them.

 

Item 3: It is hard to believe, but there are still birds. They occupy space between people and the sky. Sometimes they touch the heavens; sometimes they touch the earth.

 

Item 4: Conceptual thinking.

 

Item 5: Garbage cans. Discarded objects, personal treasures no longer loved such as broken limbs of dolls.

 

Item 6: Cars. Be aware of them.

 

Item 7: The rest of the world.

 

The dead are watching the shadows caused by light. 

Inside of each shadow, a small invisible death is practicing the art of dying.

 

The Cat of Montserrat [by Lera Auerbach]

My memory: meeting a Montserrat cat –
she is sitting beneath Pablo Casals’ sculpture –
the true owner of his bronze cello
with whiskers sniffing mountain air.
It is Fall. It’s sunny, but the air is already
keeping a promise of the storms ahead.
I am now worried about this cat –
the cat that guards Casals and his cello.

Who will feed her during the winter?
Who will brush her tricolored coat?
Who will make her feel safe in the mountains?

I beckon the cat to follow, promising
to take good care of her if she lets me.
But the cat sniffs Casals’ dusty shoes,
raises her tail, and turns away.
I feel abandoned. I pray to the Black Virgin
to protect this proud feline. I ask Casals
to keep watch and play sometimes
for the cat’s hunting pleasures
El cant del ocells (The Song of the Birds.)

The air shimmers with hidden music.
The cat catches overtones – and the horizon shifts.

 

 

The Layers of “To Be” [by Lera Auerbach]

Labyrinth - Ink on Handmade Paper by Lera Auerbach

The verb “to be” is very short, yet it contains layers of existence.
It is possible to hide in these folds – that’s the secret of survival.
You share hiding spaces with ghosts, and ghosts become you.
You speak for them because, generally speaking, ghosts cannot speak.
But you can. Words flood your mind, and your heart can’t mend
broken words and broken promises. Your heart murmurs between the beats,
and the dead encourage it to keep on beating.

If I raise my hand – would my fingers touch the invisible hand of my nanny Marianna?
Or my grandma Alichka? Can love just disappear with the departed
or some crucial nothingness stays around, protecting you in moments of despair?
You can’t see the thread in the darkness, but you can choose to believe it’s there –
to guide you through the labyrinth of your own making.

The Shadows of Memories [by Lera Auerbach]

Untitled [Oil on Canvas] by Lera Auerbach

 

1. Forgetting Ignorance

The world is created anew. I often fail to see it and think as if it was still the old world that I knew. I forget my ignorance.

My mother doesn’t own a computer and doesn’t understand how the Internet works. It’s all mundanely miraculous and miraculously mundane to her. I try to explain but realize that I don’t understand it either. I can navigate it, but I do not know who or what is staring at me from the other side of the screen.

 

2. Reflection

I spit out blood from my bleeding gums and, looking at the sink, see my death.

 

3. The Shadows of Memories

One can think about so many things and nothing at all.
How can nothing be something?
How can nothing be?

Can a shadow cast a shadow?
Perhaps within each shadow lies a deeper shadow, just like within the first death, lies the second death. 
If a person can be born more than once, it’s possible that after he is dead, he dies again – a death within death from which it is impossible to return. In this second death, he loses not only his memories but the shadows of memories.

When did Eurydice die?

Songs in Minor Keys [by Lera Auerbach]

Leitmotifs [Photo by Lera Auerbach]

Every day I give birth
to my death. Each death is different.
They flutter around like moths.
I find them in dusty corners, in drawers,
or trapped in the spider webs
hanging from the ceiling. My deaths
can see my ancestors and talk to them.
My deaths sing to each other
children's songs in minor keys.
They prefer lullabies.
I fall asleep, listening.

Creation According to the Cat [by Lera Auerbach]

 

 

Oil on Metal Roof Tile [by Lera Auerbach]

When God created animals, He first asked each animal for their permission. But He never received the Cat’s blessing. The Cat just didn’t answer, and God took the Cat’s silence as “yes.” But the Cat simply needed some time to think whether to enter into existence. It needed to look through the open doors of creation and then decide if it wanted to be in or out, but God was in a rush and didn’t pay enough attention to subtleties. So, He created the Cat along with all other animals. Later, the Cat reprimanded God. The Cat said that it was going to answer “no,” that God created it against its will, and that God needed to compensate it for all the pain and suffering since the creation of the world.

It is why God bestowed the Cat with nine lives. This way, it could have additional time to decide whether to stay alive or not. That’s why the Cat, unlike others, can move through time – it understands its porous nature and knows how to slip through. The Cat doesn’t like closed doors. According to the Cat, a good door is a door half-opened (or half-closed depending on the perspective.) According to the Cat, one should always see both sides and be free to change one’s mind at any time. According to the Cat, things only pretend to be solid, but in truth, they are mostly empty spaces, and one needs to learn to see through their illusory solidity.

According to the Cat, one needs to learn how to disappear and, even more importantly, when.

 

The Еgg-matryoshka of Death [by Lera Auerbach]

Untitled - Japanese Ink on Handmade Paper [by Lera Auerbach]

1. Forever Present

Is there one more death within death?
And then one more death inside of that one?
And so on, so on, so on, infinitely dividing and dying again and again within each new division? The egg-matryoshka of death – the deeper we look, the smaller it becomes, indefinitely so. Et cetera. Et cetera.

Our time extends in both directions until nothing is left except the present everlasting moment.

 

2. Forgotten Memories

What happens to all forgotten memories?
Memories that are forgotten more than once?
Memories that lost their bodies of words and images?
What would happen if words lost their meanings and definitions?

My father is drawing the map of the dead.

 

3. The Kingdom of the Dead

The Kingdom of the Dead is far greater than the Kingdom of the Living. It is not surprising – all who are living, sooner or later join the Kingdom of the Dead, and as far as we know, the opposite doesn’t happen. If reincarnation exists, it still requires a new body, and the new body will sooner or later die – one can’t argue about that.

The dead are everywhere – we breathe them in with the air.

My father marks the graves of our deceased relatives on his hand-drawn map of the cemetery. I am supposed to find them one day. I wonder if I ever will.

 

4. Falling

The words fall from the sky like leaves from a tree.
Do fishes go to school?
I count visible stars – there are more of them than my fingers and toes combined, so I stop counting.

My father complains there are no longer any stars in the sky. He is holding my mom’s hand to stop it from shaking.

I feel I am falling,
falling,
falling…
while failing to make a wish.

 

5. C-sharp

The note C-sharp is what binds all stars and holds this Universe together.
At night you can hear C-sharp quietly buzzing. I imagine it as the endless string connecting and holding together heavenly objects, vibrating, and shimmering.

My umbilical cord was never tied correctly. If I could press my eye to my belly – I could probably see through my untied belly button all that is inside.

 

6. Flossing the Dead

Sometimes the dead are so thick in the air – it’s hard to breathe.

You feel your heart trying and trying to pump blood, but the air is too thick and heavy. The dead get stuck between the teeth, and no flossing can help.

The air bleeds history, and you can’t escape it – even in your loneliest hour, you are never alone.

 

 

The Loyalty of Toes [by Lera Auerbach]

Philippe Faraut's Sculpting Feet [Video Still Frame]

 

1. The Loyalty of Toes

You need to fall, and more than once, before you learn to fly.

Do the words fail me, or do I fail the words?
Words are strange beings, for they are certainly “beings” with their peculiar moods and caprices.

If toes are the fingers of the foot, why do we call them “toes” and not “fingers”?
And why are the fingers not the toes of the hands if the opposite holds true?

In Russian, there is only one word for toes and fingers – pal’tsi. If you want to be specific, you can say pal’tsi na nogah – “fingers on the legs'' or pal’tsi na rukah – “fingers on the arms,” but the word itself remains the same.

It’s surprising how rarely we think of our toes, even though they are always there for us. There is something very loyal in the toes’ devotion. The fingers could lead you into trouble, but not the toes. Toes have no agenda of their own. If anything, they may even help you escape the trouble that the fingers may cause. Yet, we rarely acknowledge their existence or notice their individuality.

2. Vanity

Back in Russia, I used to wear nylon stockings. It was considered impolite to have bare legs. The pantyhose tore easily; it was difficult to mend them unnoticeably unless the run, as they said, was in a place hidden from view.

I was fifteen. I didn’t like to wear stockings – they itched, but many girls wore them even in the winter while I wore two pairs of woolen tights, called gamashi. Winters in Chelyabinsk were brutal. Stockings felt out of place – a summer butterfly amidst the snow. How vain one must be, thought I, to endanger your health like this – just so your legs could shimmer naked through the nylon and appear thin and delicate.

Was I vain too? I did wear pantyhose in the warmer weather when, in fact, it was too warm to wear anything. Perhaps I was.

3. Emotional Body Parts

I wonder if different parts of the body can feel emotions. I don’t mean physical pain. Pain is not an emotion – it is just pain. It can cause emotions, of course, and often it does. But could, for example, toes feel happiness or grief? Could my toes feel misunderstood, sad, or lonely?

Every few weeks, my father trims my mom’s toenails. He does it slowly and carefully as her toenails tend to grow into the skin. He applies red nail polish and carefully blows on her toes as if blessing them individually in some archaic ritual of creation.

I examine my toes – the skin seems flaky-white, dry. I think my toes feel unloved.

 

4. Greetings

The multitude of things is overbearing. Each object needs acknowledgment.

– Hello, drawers.
– Hello, hairbrush.
– Hello, toothpaste.

Everything is made by someone or something, assembled, put together. Yet, I fail to put together my own body parts.

– Hello, toes, – I say to my toes and bend them.
It looks like they are nodding their heads in greeting. If toes had heads, that is.

 

5. For-granted

My mouth is dry; I greet the water. The water likes to be greeted. It tastes better in gratitude.

It’s easy to take body parts for granted. Their feelings get hurt, and that’s when we feel pain and have no choice but to acknowledge their existence. If you have a bellyache, you become aware that you have a belly and intricate intestines with all their wiring inside – even if you may not know precisely how it all functions. After all, if you didn’t have a belly, you couldn’t possibly have a bellyache, even though we’ve been told that phantom pains in missing limbs do exist.

 

6. Why Toes Feel Sad

The toes say “thank you very much” when you take off your shoes. The toes are mostly very polite, unlike the fingers. The fingers can be rude and prideful. The toes are humbler.

Babies like to touch their toes. Babies are compact and generally friendly to their body parts. They wiggle their toes and say hello to them. Or they say some other greeting in their baby-tongue. They try to put toes in their month. Their fingers and toes often touch each other.

But then we grow and get taller and taller until the toes are so far away from our eyes that we forget about their existence, and that is why toes often feel sad. Oh, the quiet sadness of the toes. At least they have each other for company. I wonder if it is enough.

Navigating Through Dreams [by Lera Auerbach]

Japanese Ink on Paper © Lera Auerbach

1. The Air We Breathe

This year we all learned how to wash hands. Perhaps, we didn’t learn but only made a lot of noise. Washing hands, sanitizing, staying in quarantine, balancing lockdowns. Victims of our vocabulary, we hold on to the relative calm. Death is everywhere, but it is also nowhere; it’s the air itself.

The ghosts are shimmering as if trying to conceal tiny openings in the world’s material – the porous nature of time and space. This year we learned not only to wash hands but to count our loved ones. Just in case they disappear through an invisible opening and slip into another realm.

 

2. The Need To Function

The world is a gigantic tuning fork, connecting distant galaxies the way overtones connect to the fundamental tone. Each moment everything is being created anew with each vibration.

One wouldn’t have any problems if one didn’t have to exist in the world. If you are just a soundwave and not a particle – do you have any concerns?  No. The problem is that we exist as both – soundwaves and particles at the same time, and more often, we choose to behave like particles, thus needing to function somehow.

The pull of gravity is at its strongest in the morning when you just returned from the abyss of nothingness. (The ghosts are shimmering as if trying to conceal tiny openings in the world’s material.) 

 

3. Navigation

What happens to the world when we are asleep? We assume that everything stays the same – the room, for instance, doesn’t turn into another room. The furniture remains with all its scratches or other peculiarities. We assume it is the same furniture, but how can one be sure of anything?

In the Quantum Universe, it is quite possible that in our sleep, we slip into some parallel dimension and wake up in a different universe altogether that only looks the same but is not. This is how and why divorces happen. One day, you may realize that the person next to you only appears to be the one you fell in love with, but in fact, is a stranger from an unfamiliar realm.

How to navigate safely through dreams?

(This year, we learned not only to wash hands but to count our loved ones. Just in case they disappear through an invisible opening and slip into another realm. Just in case…)

 

Block-flute [by Lera Auerbach]

 

Marianna and I are at a summer retreat.
I am five years old. I have a wooden recorder
with me, a block-flute. I blow out melodies.

My parents left – they have some urgent matters.
What urgent matters could there be during the summer?
I play my flute. Igor is here with us. 

He is a genius, a chess prodigy who has won
chess games against the former world champions.
He is my brother, and he has very long legs. 

When Igor walks, I must run after him like a dog.
I quickly get tired. Igor puts me on his shoulders.

I imagine myself as an eagle, a stormy petrel, a seagull.
Igor runs; I fly after him – I am the wind.

The wind plays the flute. Grownups lie.
I know – my grandma, Musenka, is dead.
That’s why my parents left.
I will never see her again. Ne-ver.

“Iga, do you know?” I ask, landing my flight.
 “No,” he answers seriously.
Igor is almost an adult. Grownups lie.
(He Knows)

Double Bottom [by Lera Auerbach]

Ink on Paper by Lera Auerbach

 

When I was twelve, my parents took me camping near Lake Inyshko.

Supposedly, in this lake, Yemelyan Pugachev buried his stolen treasure. The treasure was never found because Lake Inyshko has two bottoms. The first bottom appears solid, just like the floor of a lake, but it’s not – there is a deeper depth beneath it with more water. The treasure sunk under the first level into the depth of the unseen.

My life seems to be like that – it appears solid, but beneath the first bottom, there is water again or different skies that conceal my labyrinth. When I misstep, I sink and find myself in the labyrinthine second layer of Lake Inyshko. I become lost like Pugachev’s treasure. I forget there is a world outside. I hold on to the thread of words and sounds, but I don’t know for certain if I can fully trust this thread.

Is the thread protecting its weaver or does it simply using the weaver’s abilities to manifest its own existence? Am I the weaver of the thread I’m weaving?

I like the notion of letting things go. Letting go makes me giddy; letting go turns me into a disobedient child. But every mischief is followed by a punishment.

Whom am I punishing?