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

The Solidity of Oceans [by Lera Auerbach]

Acrylic on Canvas by Lera Auerbach

 

1. THE SOLIDITY OF OCEANS

The ocean is still there where I left it. It will remain. It is solid (even though it’s not, but you know what I mean.) It’s dependable (it’s unpredictable; but also, dependable.) It has a smell; it can be touched and tasted. It exists. And that’s a lot – to be certain that something really exists in this world.

2. CREATION OF HUMANS

Once upon a time, there was a Creature. This Creature had a bet with another Creature that it is possible to drink the ocean dry. So, the Creature sat on the shore and started drinking water from the sea. It drank and drank until it had no room left in its belly, but it drank some more and exploded from within into billions of tiny creatures mostly made of water. That’s how humans were born.

3. JUST A MYTH

Perhaps, this greedy Creature never existed. Perhaps, it’s just a myth I made up. But the ocean existed, and it is still here. And I exist because I can feel the ocean. And you exist because you are reading this. So, there must be some truth in this myth. Or if not in this, then in another one. There must be some truth somewhere.

4. RED

One way to prove you exist is to let blood. What a weird way to say it – let blood. The blood is already there, inside of you, whether you let it or not. But what “to let blood” means is to cut yourself. If you bleed – you are alive. It’s that simple. Dead people can bleed too, but only at the beginning of their death. The longer they are dead, the less blood they have left. After a while, nothing red remains.

5. WHERE THE SOUL RESIDES

In old times people thought that the soul resided in the blood. But this didn’t make sense. Let’s say you donate your blood – does it mean you are donating your soul? No, the soul is inside and outside of your body because your body is just like a great painting – a mystery that can be studied and analyzed but never fully understood.

6. WHY WE CAN’T UNDERSTAND GOD

Anything we understand – we can destroy.
That is why we can never understand God.
We can only believe that He (She, It) is.
Or isn’t.
That’s all. 

What Remains? [by Lera Auerbach]

Ink on Music Paper © Lera Auerbach

 

 

What do I remember? 

Sounds, sound all around. 

I don’t know words yet, but I can feel melodies of phrases. 

Everything is music: the voices of people, the wind outside, the bell of the streetcar.

When people speak loudly, I want to cry – there are more sounds than I can hold! 

I have no space left to breathe and gasp for air.

The voices become quieter, slower, lower… 

I can breathe again.

 

(Volume) 

 

 

(2)

 

Mama is teaching her students. 

I am crawling on the rug.
I already know the names of the notes – Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-La-Si.
They are my friends. Each note is a different sound,
and each note is a different color. 

Mama is explaining how sound flies.

If sound can fly – where are its wings? 

Perhaps, they are invisible – the sound is flying and flapping its invisible wings.

How does the sound look without its wings?

Lying on my belly, I try to imagine the body of the sound, without wings.  

Instead of the body – I only see wings – wings of different colors.
‘Do’ is white with a rainbow overflowing on feathers, ‘Sol’ is golden, ‘La’ is red.

I understand now: the sound is the wings – long or clipped, colorful, wavy…
The sound is the flight itself and the trail of after-flight;
the wound left in the air, disappearing like ripples in water.

The sound is what continues to echo in the memory when nothing is sounding.

 

(What Is Sound?)

 

(3)

 

My mother is carrying me in her arms,
“Look at your stroller now. Look at it for the last time.
You will never see it again.”

I see the doorway to the bedroom.
There is my stroller – red, much taller than me.

But what is ‘never’? 

What a strange word – so heavy –
this moment is forever engraved in my memory:
the red stroller and my mother’s words.

 

(What Is Never?)

 

 

(4)

 

My parents do not buy a new stroller.
Instead, they roll me around in a folding carriage,
an accessory intended for a large doll.
I do not like that doll. I’m afraid of her –
her plastic complacency, her empty eyes.
But the doll’s stroller is helpful – I quickly tire of walking.

When I was born, the doctors said I had problems with my legs
and would not be able to walk.
For a year, my frightened mother took me for therapy every day.
I walked ahead of schedule. 

More than walking, I love flying while listening to music,
hundreds of winged creatures – sounds –
holding me up, not letting me fall.

 

(Canceled Sentence)

 

 

(5)

 

My grandmother, Alichka, walks poorly. 

Her legs are bowed like two letters C’s. Pain hides in each step.

Alichka brings me to the Tsvilling Square. 

(She rolls me in the stroller from the doll I do not like.)

On the bench, next to her, sits an old woman with a mourning veil. 

She is mourning for her son. There was a war. Yurochka was only ten. 

He was all swollen from dropsy and hunger. 

He asked for a gun, "Just shoot me, mama." 

The doctor said Yurochka would not survive the night. 

He did not survive.

Alichka: “Maybe you can help us tomorrow with Lera?

Her parents are at work; she’s too weak for a nursery,

but it’s so difficult with my legs.”

 

Marianna entered my life – the guardian of my childhood.

 

(Are You Still Watching Over Me?)

 

 

(6)

 

I'm three and a half.
I can already read words and notes.

I create fairytales and stories –
l tell them to my old Rönisch upright piano.

Without music, words lose their magic. 

If I stand on one leg and press the piano pedal with the other foot –
the wings of sounds become so long
they can fly far away into the great unknown. 

Yet I feel that all is distorted, not what it could be…
But what could it be? 

 

Where do the true sounds hide?

 

(Searching)

 

(7)

 

Too bad that seated, I can’t reach the piano pedals. 

Mama does not allow me to play the piano while standing.
She says it is bad for my professional education.
Luckily, she’s not home during the day, and Marianna doesn’t mind. 

While standing, I can press the pedal and paint an ocean of sounds.
The ocean is calm. The ocean is enormous.
The ocean is the bluest of blues in E-flat major.
Arpeggios of waves slowly float under my fingers. 

 

Now a lonely sail appears / amidst the blue mist of the sea…

Rebellious, it seeks out a storm.*

 

The melody of the sail is full of awe. The sail is thirsty for the storm. 

– Ah, you want a storm? I'll show you a storm!

 

In between the sea and clouds proudly soars the stormy petrel.

He cries out, and the clouds hear his joy in the bird’s cry of courage.

Thunder sounds in foamy anger, the waves groan with the wind in conflict.**

 

A thunderstorm rages in C minor – lots of pedal, clusters of thunder, glissandi of winds. 

 

The ocean was swollen and sullen

Its billows were boiling with fury.***

 

One still hears the theme of the sail,
but it is irreparably destroyed by its daring dream. 

It is drowning – the theme of the sail sounds lower and lower,
sinking to the bottom of the sea.

 

Now the storm has passed.
The ocean is calm again, as before.
Triadic waves splash softly as if nothing had happened.
Only far in the clouds – a memory –
one can hear the theme of the dreamy sail.

I sob with delight and horror at the drama
that just erupted beneath my fingers.

 

*Mikhail Lermontov

** Maxim Gorkyi

*** Alexander Pushkin

 

(The Monstrous Power of Music)

 

(8)

 

When Mama returns, I want to repeat for her the story of the brave, lonely sail. 

But the theme of the sail is different now, and the waves are not the same... 

I cannot repeat my story. As in a crooked mirror –
what was beautiful before has turned into its ugly caricature.

I’m crying, no longer with delight, but with shame: everything’s false again.

Where did the true sounds disappear?

 

(Where?)

 

(9)

 

Mama says, “If you wish to save ‘true’ sounds,
you need to write them down as soon as they are born.”
She hands me a Notebook for Music.

“How do I write them down? With words?”

“Why words? You already know how to write notes.
When you have ideas for words, you should use letters,
but when you hear music – you should use notes.
With the help of notes, you can always find your way back
and remember what you played.
Music notation is a time machine
to travel to the past and to the future.
Written music remains forever.”

 

“Mama, what is ‘forever?’”

 

(What Remains?)

 

(10)

 

Every morning I remember that I have to go to kindergarten and begin to cry.

Papa comes to my crib. He is holding a small empty jar.

I keep on wailing.

“Here, take this – it’s a piggy bank for tears. Tears are precious,

and they should be protected. If you are so intent on crying,

then cry into this jar and save your tears.”

I obediently cry into the jar, accumulate tears.

Each drop – like a caught note written in my Notebook for Music.

Perhaps music notes are unshed tears? 

 

Where are you, my piggy bank of tears?

 

(Unshed Tears)

 

 

Trying To Hold On [by Lera Auerbach]

Ink on Paper by Lera Auerbach

1. Alone

When you try to hold on – what exactly are you holding onto?

In the labyrinth, Ariadne left a thread for Theseus to help him find his way out after killing the Minotaur.

Just imagine – you are in the darkness, in complete darkness, and all you have is a thread left by a girl you barely know.
Can you trust it?
What choice do you have?
The thread is there to remind you that you are not alone.

But you are alone. Alone in a labyrinth where you need:

1)    to find the Minotaur,

2)    to kill him,

3)    to find your way out.

And all you have to hold on to is this flimsy thread.

 

2. Easy To Forget

It is not so difficult to find the Minotaur.

You are new to the labyrinth, and not accustomed to its smell. The smell of the labyrinth is foul. If you think the Minotaur leaves the labyrinth whenever he has to use the toilet – think again.

The Minotaur, like everyone else, is long lost in the labyrinth. Perhaps he once had discovered the exit but was so accustomed to the maze he felt frightened to step outside. His world was the labyrinth, and the labyrinth was all he knew – he did not wish for another world. The Minotaur was so used to the smell of the labyrinth – the stench didn’t bother him at all. He, the Minotaur, was the labyrinth’s beating heart, and the labyrinth was him. There was nothing outside, nothing at all.

Theseus was new to the labyrinth – the stench was shocking to him. He could find where the Minotaur slept (or, at least, Theseus hoped that the Minotaur was asleep) without a thread, but it was comforting to hold on to something in this darkness; something, that reminded him that there was a world outside of this place, outside of this nothingness, loneliness, and despair. When you are lost in the darkness – it is easy to forget that light exists.

 

3. Wrong Parts

Theseus had nothing against the Minotaur. It was his job to kill him, nothing personal. If anything, he felt sorry for the Minotaur. The Minotaur is a creature made of the wrong parts, the unfortunate relative of the Centaur.

Centaurs are wondrous. They combine the best features of humans (head with brains, torso, and hands) with the best features of horses (four strong legs that allow you to move faster than the wind with hooves which could be deadly in personal combat.) If Theseus had a choice, he would be born a Centaur – free from humans, free from gods, intelligent, and wild.

But what is a Minotaur? It’s a Centaur with all the wrong parts – the vulnerable body of a human with the head and brains of a beast. What could be worse? Only a she-Minotaur, although Theseus was not certain if a female Minotaur existed, he had never met one. Perhaps, they are killed at birth, so they don’t have to suffer through their miserable lives.

 

4. Holding On

Theseus is thinking about the unfortunate Minotaur while slowly walking toward the stench. He has seen plenty of female centaurs – beautiful creatures, just as dangerous as their male counterparts. 

Sometimes life is like that: you are walking through a dark labyrinth towards the beast you will need to kill (or it will kill you.) You have no desire to fight the fight, but the alternative is to remain in the labyrinth forever. You walk for such a long time that you start to wonder if you got it all wrong – and you are the Minotaur, and it’s your labyrinth that you must protect from intruders because the whole world is the labyrinth, and it is blasphemy to think there could be anything else, that there is such thing as “outside.” This thought is strangely comforting – it means that you don’t need to find and fight some unimaginable monster because the monster is you, and you are where you need to be – in the heart of your despair. 

Then you remember the flimsy thread you have been holding. You no longer remember why the thread is in your hand; all you remember is that the thread is there for a reason. It would be so easy to break it; you want to break it, you want to be wild, and mad, and frightening, but you stop yourself because this thread is important. You don’t remember why it is important, but it is; you know it, and you remember to keep the thread safe.

 

Invisibility Leaves Traces [by Lera Auerbach]

 

Ink on Paper by Lera Auerbach

    My grandmother Alichka, whose birthday I always remember as it coincides with International Women's Day in March, had a Singer sewing machine. It occupied all the wall space between the door and her bed. It had a pedal to step on for the machine to work. Just like my father's Lada car had pedals: a pedal for gas, a pedal for the brake, and even a pedal to make the car roar like a bear. 

    Alichka could mend things without the sewing machine. She had a special plastic mushroom for simple fixes. Let's say you had a hole in your trousers. Alichka would then find the thread of the color of your pants (she had a magical chest of various threads, needles, and buttons; her collection of buttons deserves a poem dedicated to them alone.) Alichka would take her plastic mushroom and place it inside your trousers right under the hole (you must not wear your trousers at that time, of course!) and stitch them in a way you would never guess that the hole was there. Unless it was in a prominently visible place, but even then, it would be noticeable only if someone paid close attention to your trousers. Which rarely happens. 

    Sometimes, there would be no hole yet, only a tear or just the traces of a future tear. Then it was not necessary to undress; you could keep your trousers on while Alichka mended the tear without her Singer machine and without her plastic mushroom – just with her hands. In such cases, out of superstition, she would cut a piece of the thread and give it to you to hold in your mouth during the entire mending procedure. It would ensure that the needle did not accidentally stitch your brain. Not sure exactly how the whole thing worked, but it must have worked just fine. Alichka often mended my clothes, and every single time I held a thread in my mouth while she worked, and I don't believe my brain was accidentally sewn. Or, if it happened, we didn't notice it. 

    When Alichka was stitching, her hands would leave traces in the air. Quick horizontal traces. Just as a conductor paints music with a baton. Conducting lesson 101: imagine you're a painter, and the baton is your brush. Invisibility leaves traces. 

A Fountain Pen [by Lera Auerbach]

Japanese Ink on Paper by Lera Auerbach

I think all poets should receive a fountain pen for each birthday. A fountain pen would remind them that someone loves them. It will also reinforce the notion that they're not impostors. Because when there are so many great dead people looking over your shoulder at what you are writing, pretty soon, you start to feel like an impostor.

Being a poet is a difficult profession.

Receiving a good fountain pen once a year would remind poets that at least one reader takes their poetic occupation seriously. One reader, just as one word, could make all the difference.

It would be so easy to save a poet. One could do it with relatively small out-of-pocket expenses by hiring them an occasional housekeeper, presenting them with a nice pen, and offering them publications; this way, poets can be clean, have a writing instrument, and feel needed, which is more than enough to get through tough times. And for poets, tough times are most of the time, even with some occasional pampering.

The End [by Lera Auerbach]

The Tree – Acrylic on Canvas by Lera Auerbach

 

THE END

(1)

It is hard to know how to start a book.  

Its ending is an even greater mystery. 

How do you know you’ve finished
writing the book you're writing?

After all, the end is never the end
(unless you die just as you’ve finished the last sentence.)

Some may argue that even if you (meaning the reader)
or I (meaning the author) die in the previous sentence,
even that would be no more of an end
than death (which is, in all fairness,
rarely the end of anything.) 

This is why suicides are so useless.
Because nothing really ends,
and a lot of new troubles begin.
Everything remains, even more than before
outside of your control (since you are dead
and can't do much about it.)

(2)

Why have so many poets killed themselves?

(3)

I have a young peach tree, which we planted in the backyard of our dacha in hopes that one day it would produce delicious peaches. When we planted it – the tree looked healthy and full of green leaves. Soon its leaves turned yellow and then fell. All of them. Instead of a tree, I had what looked like a naked dead branch sticking out of the ground. 

Perhaps it is not dead, I thought. Perhaps this tree is of a poetic, sensitive nature and, just like a poet, needs attention and nourishment. Instead of pulling the dead stick out of the ground, I bought fruit-tree vitamins – large spikes full of nourishment, which I pressed into the ground all around the roots. The next morning, the tree was still without any leaves, but it was covered in tiny white flowers – the tree was alive and grateful. 

If we could find every poet in the moment of despair and offer him or her some vitamins, perhaps not so many would end up killing themselves. And there is always the next suicidal poet waiting for some kindness. Even if he or she has not written a single line of poetry.

 

Out of Reach [by Lera Auerbach]

Ink on Music Paper © Lera Auerbach

 

When something is out of reach – sometimes it is just out of reach by a tiny bit, not close enough to grasp, but almost there. At other times, it is so enormously out of reach that reaching for it is altogether unthinkable. 

Jessye Norman was giving a masterclass at the Juilliard School. A student singer had difficulty reaching the highest note; it kept sounding flat and unrefined. The harder she tried, the worse it sounded. Norman stopped the student. She whispered to her, "The note is already there. All you have to do is let it sound. Just like that." And Norman sang a perfectly executed passage without any preparation.

 

A Lie [by Lera Auerbach]

Finek

My dog
whimpered
quietly
in his sleep.
His legs
were twitching –
he had a nightmare.

I woke him up
gently
with a lie:
“It’s all right,
I will never
leave you
alone.”

 

 

Sweet Tooth [by Lera Auerbach]

Ink on Paper by Lera Auerbach

I walked
around the house
in search
of chocolate.
(There must be
some chocolate
somewhere, right?)

No, I don’t think
it’s a sweet tooth
craving,
I just have
an excess
of dissonances
today.

Chocolate makes
dissonances
resolve.

(Or it doesn’t.)

Regardless,
somehow,
you feel
better.

(Or you don’t.)

Oh well,
At least,
you’ve tried.

 

Geography [by Lera Auerbach]

Watercolor on Paper by Lera Auerbach

I am looking at the world globe with my father.

He points and says: “This is where you are.”

“What do you mean? I am here with you,”
I respond, not understanding.

Father laughs: “You are here, but you are also there.”

“You mean there is a tiny copy of me who lives there?”

“No, I mean here is there.”

That did not make any sense, so I never learned geography.

 

Starting a Zuihitsu on (Un)deliveries [by Lera Auerbach]

Photo Credit: Lera Auerbach

(1)

At times like this, I feel sorry for postal workers.
It must be very stressful to be one.
To always have to sort things out while thinking of viruses.

One can easily distinguish a postal worker who thinks of viruses from the one who doesn't.
Those who think wear gloves and masks. But most of them do not; most of them are young and careless.

At the beginning of the pandemic, an entire hotel in China that was converted into a hospital for coronavirus patients had collapsed suddenly, killing everyone inside.
How does a building suddenly collapse? 
How does a human being? 
What is the breaking point? 
What is that something, usually insignificant in itself, that makes all the difference between life and death?

I think of Sylvia Plath.
How she returned to her dirty home (her housekeeper left), overwhelmed by unhappiness, with her two small children always in need of her care.
If she had returned to a spotlessly clean and welcoming house instead of a messy one full of dirty dishes and laundry, would she still have killed herself? 

Perhaps, but maybe not then.
Maybe the breaking point would still hold a while longer.

(2)

Last year there was a postal worker who was overwhelmed by his responsibilities of daily deliveries of packages.
He just had too many parcels to deliver to too many houses and not enough time allotted to do so.
Even if he worked past his hours, he still could not manage all deliveries and be often scolded by his superiors for the delays.

At first, he kept undelivered packages in the trunk of his car in hopes of delivering them the next day, but the next day he would have a new bunch of boxes, and soon the trunk of his car was too full.
After a while, he gave up on the idea of being able to deliver everything, so he left all packages he could not deliver in a shed next to his house. 

He hoped to deliver them one day when his daily load would be lighter, but such a day never came.
After a while, the shed was full of packages, and he had to keep the new ones in the garage.
He never opened the boxes.

In his mind, he never stole them, he just kept them for better delivery times.
It was not his fault that better times were slow in coming.

Nobody appreciated any of his past accomplishments (for he did make numerous safe and timely deliveries) when police discovered his shed and his garage full of packages belonging to other people.

He tried to argue that the packages didn't belong to anyone – they were still in transit on the way to their final destination, but some of them were in transit for over a year and, after all that time, were considered missing in action like lost soldiers.

(3)

Sometimes my poor head makes me feel like the trunk of this poor man's car with too many deliveries scheduled in too short a time, and I feel like giving up.

At night, I stare into all these packages in my head.
I try to imagine what lies within each.
I look at the names of people and imagine them as characters in my book. 

Then the clock chimes and reminds me that it is too late for everything.
Too late even to try. 

(4)

A dog doesn't know if something is too late. 
Unless it's related to food. 
Because, as far as a dog is concerned, food always comes too late and never too early.

(5)

Life is mostly unbearable. And full of wonders.
Partially, it is unbearable because it is full of wonders.
Just think of all the undelivered wonders the postal worker kept in his garage.

But many wonders would not fit into any packaging and can't be delivered because they are just too great. 

Like the night when Venus and the moon were so close together, and we sat on the bench next to the ocean and felt so happy about the present moment that it also felt sad. 

Great happiness is always sad because it overflows and spills into sadness; happy sadness because it is just too vast to stay happy.

The chorus of frogs after the storm is like that.
Also Gesualdo's music and the Montserrat cathedral – you almost hate it, it's so beautiful.

A good book feels like that: overflowing without beginning or ending, even without a middle, happening all at once and about everything and nothing in particular. 

The only thing that separates a good book from nonexistence is its two covers: that's not much of protection from nothingness, not much at all.

Viennese Traffic Lights [by Lera Auerbach]

In Vienna, they have same-sex pedestrian traffic lights.

Typically, traffic lights are sexist: they display a matchstick figure of a man that turns green or red and sometimes flashes nervously, trying to speed up pedestrians so that cars can start driving.

In Vienna, they replaced the matchstick man with two matchstick figures holding hands.
No, I mean touching hands since matchstick figures have no fingers. 

In some Viennese traffic lights, instead of a matchstick man, there is a matchstick woman figure. No curves, but a triangle of a dress. Instead of a flashing man, there is a flashing triangle of a woman or, even better, two women touching hands. 

Gay traffic lights appear only in the center of the most touristy areas.

"Such a progressive city," I thought.

"No," my Viennese friend Verena objected. "They are more intolerant than most; they just hide it better." 

My apartment in Vienna remains empty throughout the pandemic, and sometimes I imagine that a part of me lives there, but then I remember about the lockdowns and quarantines and feel gratitude for spending the pandemic away from any large cities – in the Middle of Nowhere, surrounded by nature.

With the flights cancelled, cars parked, restaurants closed, and theatres and concert halls paused in a year-long fermata, the traffic lights in Vienna remain working, touching invisible fingers of the matchstick figures made of lights and reminding us that human touch may still be possible again one day and isolation will not last forever.

 

From My Diary No. 3 – February 2020

 

Inner Voices – Oil on Canvas by Lera Auerbach

(1.)

I think of the mountain from Rafael's childhood.
Once upon a time, there lived a woman.
Her name was Soledad.
Nobody lives on that mountain now.
Nobody is left who remembers Soledad,
only Stella (Rafael's mother) and Rafael.
She's also in my memory.
And if you are reading this, she's now in your memory, too.

You may forget about Soledad as soon as you finish reading this.
Or, perhaps, I may make her a bit more memorable
or bring her name again later, so if you forget her now,
you will remember when you see her name later on.

Soledad was 82 years old when she died.
The house, high in the mountains, had no electricity,
and each morning, she would milk cows and look around for snakes.

Snakes loved the sun and would come out to lie on the stones.
Some of the snakes were poisonous, but they only bite if frightened.

Nobody knows how Soledad appeared and from where she came.
She was always living with Rafael's family, although she was not related to any of them.

Soledad never married.
Every night she would make bread in the oven,
enough for the whole family.
She would drink coffee all day long,
and her hands smelled of coffee, bread, and milk.

When we moved to our house in Florida, Rafael bought a machete to protect against the snakes.
He never used it, and the machete was lost,
just as so many things tend to get lost and never found again.

(Where do all these lost things go?)

 

(2)

Before coming to the Mayo Clinic, I was preparing to perform my 'Arctica' with the Oslo Philharmonic.
In my hotel room in Rochester, I had a piano, and after long days of tests and doctor's consultations,
I would return and practice for the upcoming concert.

Very few people knew I was at the Mayo Clinic. One of them was Enric Sala.
Enric is an explorer with National Geographic and my partner in the "Arctica" project.
Enric encouraged me to put my health first and not to postpone the surgery.
I don't know if I would have the strength to cancel my performance in Oslo without Enric's support and perspective.

Fortunately, the presenters found another pianist who was able to learn the solo part in time.
The performance in Oslo went on as scheduled.
I felt like the captain who abandoned the ship, yet the ship miraculously sailed on,
while the captain was left alone on the reefs, bruised and confused.

Each day in the hospital, some part of me was in Oslo, rehearsing with the choir,
rehearsing with the orchestra, practicing alone.
Another part of me was back in the Arctic, listening to its silence (which is never silent)
and trying to grasp the enormity of its solitude.

Arctica – the fragile giant, the North of the North.

Only a small part of me, the least real one, was in the hospital,
trying to walk around my room (ten steps in each direction)
while holding onto the IV stand.

I also used the IV stand in my symphony as a musical instrument –
it is how "Arctica" starts – with the sound of drops falling from an IV stand.
Sound of time passing, ice melting, seconds and droplets melting away.

(Sound of a hospital, of a medical emergency, of life passing or life renewing itself.)

 

(3.)

Generally speaking, quarantines need to be continuous –
since at any time in any given place, there are plenty of contagious illnesses.
One quarantine should melt into another.

Quarantines shouldn't be limited to viruses.
For example, when there is a spike in fatal crashes while driving,
there should be a few days per week when driving is forbidden.
Or at least limited to certain hours.
Let's say one would be allowed to drive between 2:00 and 5:00 AM at night
when nobody drives, but not during rush hours.
It would certainly balance things and improve statistics.

The researchers at the Mayo Clinic explained to me that Cushing disease
has only a 30% success rate of treatment by operation in Germany,
while in the USA, the rate of success is 100%.

"How could it be?" I asked.

"We operate on healthy people," the researcher explained. "In Germany, they wait
until you are damaged by the illness. Healthy people have a 100% recovery rate."

Statistics are a powerful thing.

For example, if there is a spike in divorces, let's freeze all marriages for a while.
Fewer marriages result in fewer divorces.

It's not a bad idea to quarantine all children; they seem to get ill much more often.
Healthy children equal healthy nations.

And definitely forbid people from gathering.

(Let's approach life in a way to improve statistics.)

 

(4.)

Why would anyone want to gather anyway? I never understood that.
Much better to stay at home and read good books.

Or you can listen to orchestral music using noise-cancelling earphones.
Noise cancellation is vital because this is how audible viruses (for example, news) get in.
The earphones don't fully protect you from noise, so when you are not listening to symphonic music,
you should wear earplugs with noise-cancelling earphones on top of the earplugs.

If someone asks you a question, just nod in response.
Nobody expects you to listen anyway.
Nodding is similar to clicking likes under social media posts –
you just add your support to the ego-boosting activities of your friends.
Nobody expects you to actually read their posts or click on their links (unless they contain cute animals, of course.)
After all, if you start reading and clicking on all posts of all your friends, most of whom you have never met,
you will never live to be 82 like Soledad, who lived alone in the mountain and never owned a computer.

The other positive side of a continuous quarantine
is that the Apocalypse loses its edge after a while.
One can scream, "We are all doomed!" only until one loses one's voice.
After a while, it's no longer believable.

But I'm worried about my parents. They are 82 like Soledad.
They don't fully understand the weight of the impending disaster, even though they have a computer and television and other viral spreading news outlets. They still venture outside and are reckless enough to visit various doctors wherein the waiting rooms they wait for sick people to spread more germs around.

Their refusal to quarantine themselves saddens me.

I have quarantined myself from everyone long ago, for that's what a writer must do anyway.

(It comes with the territory.)

 

(5.)

Can poetry and music, serious music, still be written?
In times when people have forgotten how to listen,
how to keep silent, how to remain still?

Perhaps I am starting to sound depressive.
As my doctors have warned me, cortisol deficiency can take its toll.

Every week, I receive a questionnaire from the Mayo Clinic.
The questionnaire is always the same.
It compares my attitude and feelings before and after the surgery.

I don't think my answers have changed so far, but I do not know for sure
since I did not keep my previous answers.
Probably, researchers may find my data disappointing.
They would like to see a graph. A graph is when lines go up and down.
Flat graphs are boring. Flat graphs are unremarkable.
Like rubber ducklings in a bathtub of a polar bear hunter.

Keep it together, I say to myself.
But I am worried that I may not be able to keep it all together
and may turn into a soundwave or break into tiny particles
that no longer make any sense and can't be reconstructed.

(I wish I could go to that mountain and meet Soledad,
who never, I am sure, worried about becoming a soundwave.)

 

 

From My Diary – February 2020 No. 2 [by Lera Auerbach]

Home © Lera Auerbach, Oil on Canvas

(1)

The doctors warned me that I might get depressed after the surgery.
Before the surgery, my tumor was producing five times more cortisol than normal. 

After the surgery, it would take months before my remaining adrenal gland would start producing enough cortisol.

In between, I will feel tired and low even though I will be taking hydrocortisone pills.
Ideally, I will be able to taper them off slowly, reducing the dose every week.

"It will be a long and tiring process," the doctors assured me. 

"I felt tired and depressed before the surgery so that it will be nothing new," I tried to reassure my doctors.

"Yes, but before, you felt tired and depressed because you had too much. After, you will feel so because you don't have enough. It's very different," the doctors seemed concerned.

The doctors seemed tired. And somewhat depressed.
But they were also excited because they would get to cut my tumor off. And cutting tumors is exciting and admirable.
And then one gets to experiment with those tumors once they are cut and out.
No patient asks for a tumor back or expresses the wish to keep it for a souvenir in formaldehyde on a shelf in a library
or on a bedside table. So, the doctors get to play with other people's tumors and write papers about their findings.  

(2)

My clock lost its hands and could no longer tell time.
"It's okay," I reassured doctors. "I understand the complications."  

"You may no longer feel like yourself," the doctors continued.
"I'm not sure if I feel like myself now before the surgery," I said. 

It was true. I could not tell if I felt on top of the world, or downright miserable,
or even if it mattered at all how I felt. I no longer knew.

After the surgery, I discovered that my tumor was made of fear.
That's why it was producing so much cortisol: the fight-or-flight hormone. 

Now, while the remaining adrenal gland is still half-asleep, I seem not to feel fear.
No, I don't feel particularly brave, but rather… indifferent.  

Fears are hopes in disguise.
Have I lost hopes too?

(3)

One of the scars on my belly is bigger than the others. 

Sometimes, I dream it becomes unglued, my belly opens up,
and my insides start falling out for everyone to see. 

Last night I dreamt I was having surgery, but the surgeon kept forgetting what kind of surgery it was
and kept waking me up to ask over and over again. He was also not sure if he had my name right.
Drugged by anesthetics, I kept misspelling my name until I, too, was doubting if I was the right patient. 

(4) 

It is now two weeks and three days since my surgery, and I can no longer see the surgeon's initials
marked on my belly next to the four scars. Strangely, I miss them. 

The scars also look different. The glue has partially fallen off, and under the bond, there is some pink skin 
senza the red-and-black drama of stabbing wounds.

The remaining glue looks dirty and gray, like the residue left by Scotch tape.
My belly still looks inflated; for the surgery, they filled it with gas and fluids. 

I do not know how to answer how I'm feeling because I do not know what I am feeling and, more importantly,
how I'm supposed to be feeling. The best thing to do with feelings is to transport them. 

I know what I'm feeling if I hear it in music or read it in a poem.
But without art, without its forms, how can I name the unnamable?  

After the storm, the choir of frogs sings "Alleluia"
while Venus and the moon are getting ever closer each night this week. 

(5)

Anything can become anything can become anything. 

I love nights because nights hide; you can imagine something magical,
and there is no evidence to the contrary. 
That's why witches preferred to fly at night. Shady characters. 

But if flying on a broomstick seems childish,
why is wearing a cross with a brutally murdered Jew any better? 

Each religion pulls the symbolic blanket of righteousness on its side.
My god is the only true god; my beliefs are the most believable. 

My friend Burcin in Minnesota said, "I believe in butter. Because butter makes everything better." 
But probably even 'I believe in butter' belief could find its opposition. 

I believe in music. But does music believe in me?

I am here but also absent. 

 

 

From My Diary – February 2020 [by Lera Auerbach]

Suite del Ocells © Lera Auerbach

(1)

At first, the days were numbered.
They were numbered before the surgery and then after.

Going under is a bit like dying, but you know you will wake
and that you are not entirely alone in this.
You welcome the temporary oblivion that anesthesiology provides.

What if we knew for certain that reincarnation is real?
Would it change our fear of dying?

The days after surgery are marked by progress,
life stripped to its essentials.

The body learns how to function again, how to adapt,
and you are just grateful for any sleep you can get.

You long for things to return to normal, or at least their appearance,
even though you suspect that the new normal and the old may never be reconciled.

The news from Europe and Asia is full of numbers and statistics:
the new virus ravaging through China has made its way to Europe.

I don't turn on the TV in my hospital room.
Instead, I open the All Good Things book on my Kindle.

I enlarge each painting or drawing and drown in each image, appreciating its beauty.
The book is a personal anthology created by Stephen Ellcock –
one of the very few people I follow on social media.

(Every day Stephen posts images that speak volumes;
images that reassure me that not everything is dismal and there is beauty
hidden in the open, just waiting for someone to give it form.)

(2)

Today is the 24th of February 2020.

As I write this, I feel the longing for the present moment – this moment in time.

Last week, I was in the hospital at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.
It was snowing, and February felt as cold as the Februaries of my childhood in Chelyabinsk.

I remember waking up in intensive care after the surgery.
The pain was overwhelming.
If I have to endure this pain all my life, I would rather die, I thought.

There were two men in intensive care in hospital beds like me
and some shadowy nurses. I couldn't see them clearly:
everything doubled in my eyes and made me feel nauseous.

One of the men was moaning.
The other was interrogated by doctors or nurses
who kept on asking him if he had ever had a heart attack.
They just kept on repeating the same questions,
but the man didn't seem to understand them.

Or did I dream this up?

When I woke up, nobody was next to me.
For a moment, I thought I had already died and this combination
of pain, nausea, loneliness, and moaning was hell or purgatory,
or whatever is waiting for us in the forever beyond.

I drifted in and out.

Then there was a nurse next to me.
She kept on repeating the same question over and over again,
"Can you rate the level of your pain on the scale from one to ten?"

At first, I could not understand what she was saying.
How can you measure pain? The enormity of it.
And how would such a scale look?

How would one take all this shapeless pain and put it on a scale?
Wouldn't the pain spill and fill the entire room, overflowing?
I was drowning in pain, and I was asked to measure it?
How do you rate your drowning experience?
Unbearable?
Almost unbearable?
Almost bearable?
When everything doubles in your eyes – does it mean that your pain doubles too?

I found it difficult to speak or to find my tongue.
The nurse put something soothing on my lips.

"How do you rate your pain on the scale between one and ten?" she asked again.
She didn't seem to be annoyed by my silence.

"It is ten," I managed to whisper.
Then I thought again. I was able to withstand it somehow.
It means it could have been worse.

"Maybe nine," I corrected myself.

"I'll give you more painkillers," said the nurse,
and a sickening wave of nausea took me into its current.

"All is doubled," I managed to say;
and heard before being carried into oblivion:

"She has a very low pulse…"

"Still high pain…"

"Too long…"

(Too long...)

(3)

Before the surgery, they strip me naked.
Completely naked. Underwear and all.

I put on a robe that has an opening in the back.
The robe doesn't close well.
I feel like a baby just born into the world, completely defenceless.

There are many people.
They come and introduce themselves:
surgical team, anesthesiologists, nurses.

Each person asks my name and date of birth,
what surgery I am having, and on which side.
They know it, but it's the protocol –
I'm told it's for my own safety.

After continually repeating my name and date of birth
for each new face entering the room, I start to feel strangely removed from myself
as if I'm saying the name of someone else, not my own.

Indeed, this particular combination of letters and syllables feels almost random.
I'm me, but not my name.
But if I'm not my name, then who am I?

I think about it while I lay naked,
waiting for the nurses to roll me into the surgery room.
They roll my bed through corridors so fast I get dizzy and cold.

In the operating room, I notice that I'm the only one not wearing a mask.
I remember: they will put some kind of a breathing apparatus
into my nose and throat after I fall asleep.

They will also put a catheter, make four openings in my ribs
for the instruments and the camera.
And I will not feel or remember any of it.

One of the surgical assistants lifts my robe and, with a marker,
writes something on my belly on the right side,
just around the place they will cut.

Later, I discover next to the angry-looking scars,
two large black letters, TM.
Why TM?
For some reason, I remember this abbreviation from some time ago
when I was learning transcendental meditation.
But transcendental meditation has nothing to do with it,
although perhaps it is also some sort of anesthesiology.

TM stands for Trevor McKenzie, the name of the surgeon.
The letters, written in a sharpie, remain next to the scars for weeks after the surgery.
I feel tattooed or branded, but it doesn't upset me, I find it rather amusing.

Everything is so strange – it must be happening to someone else.
Not me, but to the person whose name and date of birth
I recite mechanically to everyone who enters my hospital room.

The initials of the surgeon's name on my belly feel more like a sculptor’s signature.
Let your initials signify your responsibility, welcoming my future without the tumor.

(I shall be your greatest masterpiece, my surgeon.)

(4)

The time in intensive care with shadowy nurses and moans feels endless –
dark void, unbearable, unending.

The next time I wake up, I'm in the hospital room,
I can see the snow falling through the dark windows,
it's late evening.

Where did this day go?
We came to the hospital early in the morning.

Rafael is in the room.
My lips are so swollen I can't talk.
My lips are blocking my voice.

"All shall be well," repeats Rafael.

I feel empty and light-headed,
so I let my mind fill with this thought.

All shall be… shall… Why shell?
Does it mean all is not well now but will be well in the future?
Does it mean that this thought is a shell?
And if it is a shell, what is the real thought within its protective embrace?

But I'm too tired to open the shell.

(I drift into sleep again.)

(5)

Today is exactly two weeks since my surgery.
Two weeks felt like two months. Or two years.
But not entirely in a bad way.

My previous life feels distant, not quite real.
Yet my life now is even less real in its normalcy, in its un-remarkableness.

The bloody mess is all around, yet nowhere to be seen.
IKEA's designs are maddening.

There are 80 cases of coronavirus in New York now.

(People have stopped consuming Corona beers out of superstition.)

(6)

The scars on my belly do not have stitches or threads, only glue.
The glue is still there after two weeks.
In one of the four scars, it's starting to peel off.

"In a year or so none will be visible," Rafael assures me,
probably concerned over me being concerned over my scarred appearance.

I'm not concerned. The scars make the surgery real.
Without them, it all seems to be a dream within a dream.

Maybe some part of me is forever stuck in the purgatory of Intensive Care,
trying to measure the unmeasurable and weigh the unthinkable,
while someone in monotone keeps on asking about a failed heart?

Can someone attack your heart?
Can your heart attack someone?
Can your heart be broken?

(Even the smallest feather could tip the point.)

(7)

I was ill, I had surgery at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester,
and I had to cancel my upcoming concerts.

Finally, I returned home to pick up my life but found that in the meantime,
the world, too, had fallen ill.

Unlike me, the world is steadily getting worse and not on the mend at all.
People went mad with fear of catching a deadly virus,
and panic is spreading across the borders.

Rafael bought 25 dry army breakfasts that are supposed to last for 25 years.
Then he bought 25 dry army dinners and a massive bottle of water.

"We should probably buy more cat food," he said.

(After all, Aya, our cat, may not want dry army breakfasts for years to come.)

(8)

I wish to make the world around me understandable,
but everything around me, every object, contains something
that refuses to be defined.

I write in order to understand, not vice versa.
But understanding, if any, is fleeting and cunning –
a red fox-demon, a clock with cut-off hands of time.

(I stand empty-handed.)

 

 

 

The Broken Mirror of Facebook [by Lera Auerbach]

© Lera Auerbach

Something peculiar occurred on the night of October 13th, 2020: my personal Facebook page disappeared. It was abruptly deleted by Facebook with the warning that this action was permanent and irreversible.

I have used Facebook since 2008. During these years, I have never received any warnings or suspensions. I am not involved and do not comment on political matters. Mostly, I use Facebook to share my art, poetry, and music. So, I was at a loss as to why my page was removed. The explanation I was given is that, according to FB, I was impersonating a public figure. In other words, I was accused of impersonating myself. Before killing my page, Facebook asked for proof of my identity. I uploaded a copy of my driver's license, and a few seconds later, I was informed that my account was permanently closed, and I was irrevocably banned from Facebook.

I maintained two pages: a personal page with 5000 friends and a professional Artist-page with around 25,000 followers. While my personal page disappeared, my fan page remained frozen in time, with the last post on October 12th, as my connection to the fan page was removed together with my personal account, which administered it. I had no way of accessing or posting on my fan page even though it was still published.

I felt a strange emptiness as if some part of me died with my page. I never considered myself addicted to Facebook, although addicts rarely admit their addiction. Yet, I probably spent far more time on FB than I should have, never realizing the extent that FB had become embedded in my life.

I am a private and introverted person by nature. On my FB page, in the short description about myself, I wrote, “Hermit in search of a hermitage.” As a concert pianist and conductor, I enjoy performing in large halls, leading hundreds of people in an orchestra, and facing 3000-plus people in the audience. I love the magic of being on the stage, but behind the spotlights, I am a hermit, at least as much as my profession allows it. I'm shy. I don't speak much – unless it is a public speech. I don't go to parties, and I'm terrible at small talk. Strange as it may seem, when I'm not on tour, I can spend weeks without ever talking on the phone. Over the last few years, I use email less and less. Facebook became my primary connection to the world; its messenger replacing email and phone.

Yet, Facebook also became an overbearing presence continually feeding information, acting as Orwell's Big Brother – predicting my likes and dislikes with frightening insightfulness, bringing to my attention offers that would feed not my needs but my desires and, yes, seeping away my time and concentration. Often FB’s feed would appear with precise knowledge of my most recent conversations, thus giving an uncomfortable sense of being spied on and analyzed by something or someone on the other side of the screen.

Although FB was stealing my time, it was also a source of wonders and even miracles. It resurrected my dear childhood friend with whom I lost contact for over 20 years. It provided fragile but tangible strings of connections. I built new friendships that spilled into real life. My friends provided a sense of support and gave feedback for my research. Over the years, I built an international network of like-minded people, musicians, writers, artists, choreographers, actors, translators, orchestra directors, art collectors, and poets who inspired and stimulated my work. In addition to music, I'm also a writer and a visual artist. My friends on Facebook often served as first readers or first audience for my works-in-progress.

Facebook is not the real world, but it is one of its mirrors. It reflects different things to different people: it can become an irritable and alienating discourse or a sharing of inspiration. After my life-threatening illness and surgery at the Mayo Clinic in the first months of 2020, immediately followed by the global pandemic, I have been in personal quarantine and complete isolation since February 2020. Four out of five people in our family are immuno-deficient and at higher risk for COVID-19. During this time, Facebook more than ever provided the sense or perhaps only the illusion that I'm not alone.

After my page disappeared, I spent the first couple of days in disbelief. I expected that at any moment, my Facebook page would reappear since it was so obviously a mistake. There was no customer support, no telephone, no email to make a complaint. I asked one of my friends to post what happened to me on her page, hoping that someone from Facebook would see it and do something about it.

“You must have done something wrong,” one of my friends said, “Facebook couldn't just kill your page like that without any warning.” Another friend, a curator, told me that once her account was suspended because she posted a sculpture by Michelangelo, which Facebook considered nudity.

“But my account was not suspended; there was no warning. It was just removed from existence,” I insisted, “besides, I have not posted anything that AI could consider indecent or offensive.”

“Perhaps, it was your poetry,” another friend suggested. I write poetry in the Russian language, and, unfortunately, there is no feature on FB to turn off automatic translation. Automatic translations of poetry are dreadful, and many of my bilingual writer-friends complain about it. My friend suggested that perhaps in its automatic translation, something in my poem could have triggered the AI Centurion of Facebook's morality. But I could not imagine anything in my poems that, regardless of how flawed the translation may have been, could have given Big Brother a warrant for my guillotine.

Over the next few days, I was astounded to realize that every person I shared my story with assumed that I must have inadvertently done something wrong. This reaction was so prevalent that I also started to think that I must have indeed somehow made some mistake and that the verdict Facebook gave me of "impersonating a public figure" was just a cover-up for some deeper-rooted cause. Yet, I could not think of any posts that could have been the reason. I also noticed that whenever I approached someone about my Facebook problems, they seemed reluctant to get involved as if I was infected with a plague, and the plague could spread into their lives.

In its less severe virtual form, the situation reminded me of what my parents and grandparents faced in the Soviet Union. As a child growing up in Russia, I knew all too well that our phone-line was tapped, that every word we said needed to be self-censored before uttering. At that time, when someone was visited by a KGB agent, all friends assumed that he or she must have done or said something wrong. The person would then start suspecting that perhaps he or she indeed said or did something wrong; perhaps, too much was said during a birthday party, or maybe so-and-so could have misinterpreted words, or that a private conversation was overheard. In 1937, the KGB came to arrest my grandfather Isaac and his brother. My grandfather's brother refused to follow them, claiming there was clearly a mistake. The KGB agent said if he refused to go, they would shoot him. He insisted that he was innocent, and it was a mistake, so they shot him dead. Then they turned to my grandfather, asking if he would follow them. He did. My grandfather was accused of being a Japanese spy and sent to Gulag for many years. His only crime was being Jewish. I was not sent to Gulag, but I was removed from my home page of Facebook, banned from re-entering it, without any avenue of appeal for justice. I was accused of impersonating a public figure. By the same logic, I may have been accused of being a Japanese spy as well.

Another friend suggested that perhaps someone did this to hurt me purposely. A couple of years ago, my website was hacked, its contents erased, a skull with crossbones appeared with the slogan "Death to Jews." I don't involve myself in political matters. But I don't hide my Jewish roots. As an artist and a public figure, there are always those that dislike who I am or what I do. I'm not sure what's worse: for this micro-universe, which you have carefully built over 12 years, to be destroyed by a random computer mistake or to be specifically targeted by someone who hates you.

Psychologically, it felt strange being suddenly and permanently removed from the Facebook world I had become so dependent on without fully realizing my dependency. Every time I opened my computer, the Facebook URL would appear, and sometimes, without thinking, I would press the return button only to enter a blank page with the notice that this account no longer exists; or I would touch the Facebook logo on my iPhone only to be reminded of my expulsion. My husband also has a Facebook account, although he doesn’t use it much. We have mutual friends. At times, I found myself tempted to sign into his account just to visit my friends' pages to see what was new in their lives, but I always stopped myself. I did not want a peephole into the lost paradise.

Over the past years, I did consider quitting Facebook more than once, but there is a significant difference between being expelled or leaving of your own free will. The only other time I was away from Facebook for any length of time was during my Svalbard expedition with National Geographic. I was researching my ARCTICA symphony, for which I was commissioned by National Geographic, The National Symphony Orchestra, and the Oslo Philharmonic. There was no internet connection so far North, and I enjoyed a wonderful sense of liberation and isolation – while looking forward to sharing this incredible adventure with my friends. Upon return to Longyearbyen, the most northern airport in the world, I was finally able to connect to the internet, and through Facebook messenger reached my friends in Greenland. On their instant invitation, instead of flying to Miami the next day, I flew to Nuuk to continue my Arctic research. The facility of connection through Facebook made this miraculous change of plans possible.

I read Rilke's line "Excess of being wells up in my heart" in one of my friends' posts. "Excess of Being" became the title of my published book of aphorisms. Another FB friend, David Lehman, a poet and the editor of the Best American Poetry anthology, posted a question about a phrase from Nijinsky's diary, which he needed for his upcoming book. I had recently read Nijinsky's journals, and I answered his question. Later, we became friends and had a joint poetry reading at the well-known KGB poetry bar in New York. On his invitation, I became a regular contributor to the Best American Poetry blog. On Facebook, I met Marilyn Nelson, a wonderful poet who became my close friend and collaborator. In 2021 our joint book of poems for children "A is for Oboe" will be published by Penguin-Random House.

Facebook became not only a source of distraction and procrastination but also a wondrous matchmaker. And now I missed it. I felt a sense of loss as if suddenly I had lost all my friends. During the pandemic, with its isolation and travel bans, losing access to my Facebook network of friends increased the sense of alienation.
Where were my friends? My 5000 friends and 25000 followers?
Did any of them notice my disappearance?
Besides a few people whom I contacted in the hope of reaching Facebook powers to review my situation – nobody seemed to notice my disappearance.

When the execution of my page happened, I was in the middle of a Daily Reflections project: posting every day a newly made recording of my poetry and a new work of art. The project was meant to continue daily for one year – leaving something creative born from each day. Did any of my friends notice that these daily reflections suddenly stopped? (I did not stop the project; I continued posting daily but on YouTube.)

The first person to notice I was missing in action was my father. My parents are staying with me during the pandemic – a rare occurrence since I usually travel worldwide to give concerts. Although we are rather close, they seem to be more informed of what I am doing through my Facebook posts than from life.
– What's wrong with your Facebook? – My father asked.
– It was removed.
My father was in disbelief.
– You need to speak with Mark Zuckerberg!
– How? I'm not on Facebook. Besides, he probably receives thousands of messages.

More days passed. I didn't hear from anyone. Nobody noticed I was gone. Ten days later, a friend called asking why I'm no longer among his Facebook friends. He claimed that I was the only reason he was on Facebook in the first place. A choreographer contacted me. He was wondering if somehow, I was upset with him and blocked him on FB. We were in the middle of discussing and planning our next collaboration when suddenly, all my messages and my account vanished from his view.

Through a mutual friend, I was introduced to someone who works at Facebook. If this person would vouch for me, perhaps Facebook would review my case? But he said he could not vouch for me, and the Facebook system would know that he did not know me personally – we had not corresponded before, and he wasn't among my friends. Vouching for me could cost him his job even though he knows and trusts our mutual friend and believes that I was not impersonating myself, but actually, I am myself and have been myself for the last twelve years on Facebook.

As days passed, the sense of disbelief and anger turned into grievance and loss. I kept on telling myself none of it is real. My real friends are still there. Facebook is nothing but an illusion and, ultimately, a huge waste of time. Still, I felt sadness as if someone, perhaps part of me – my virtual self – had died. And there was no funeral, no closure. My death went unnoticed, as if I had never existed.

On the 21st of October, it was my birthday. Last year I enjoyed over 500 birthday messages. This year besides my family, my birthday remembered three friends, one journalist, and my publisher from Hamburg, who always sends me very thoughtful and eloquent wishes. A day later, one more friend emailed me a birthday card. That's it. I was not surprised. It was what I expected. 500 greetings are an illusion. Six are reality. Yet, I also knew it was unfair to think so. I'm not any better. I have friends but rarely remember when their birthdays are; I relied on Facebook to remind me.

Facebook is a mirror but a mirror that changes its functions. Sometimes it prettifies your world by sending you illusory flowers and kittens. Sometimes it shows you the ugliest side of people whom you thought you knew well – their comments on current events make you wonder how the same person could combine seemingly disparate personalities. The broken mirror of FB works only one way as in an interrogation chamber: Facebook seems to know more about you than you know yourself, yet you have no idea who is watching you and how to contact this invisible someone – or something – to ask for justice.

In the same week my FB page vanished, I discovered that my credit card was hacked, and a large sum of money was withdrawn. Also, the internet connection in our house stopped working. All of these events were unrelated, but altogether I felt more and more isolated and vulnerable. There was life before Facebook and before the internet, I told myself. And not so long ago. We are so dependent on computers now, but in my childhood and student years at the Juilliard School in New York and Hannover, Germany, I didn't own a computer. I managed without it and managed well.

Slowly the internet problems were solved, the fraud perpetrated on my credit card was reported and resolved, but Facebook remained absent. I noticed that I rarely used the internet those days. Instead, I dove into writing. Since all my concerts were canceled in 2020, I concentrated this year on literature. Usually, I would write most of the day with some Facebook interruptions. I write by hand, then type into a Word document and then edit. I enjoy writing by hand, although a computer is a necessity and a very handy tool for editing. Since my Facebook collapsed, I have been writing almost non-stop, filling one notebook after another, changing the ink in my fountain Waterman pen daily. I have finished the second book of my novel, "Note by Note"– memories of my early childhood and started the third. Being fully immersed in my childhood – a world without computers and Facebook – I could fully appreciate how rich and sensitive that time was. As a child, discovering the world through music and art, I felt more present, alive, and aware than now, being split between virtual and real worlds, torn between what appears and what is.

Perhaps, I was indeed impersonating myself on Facebook. If so, who is more real? My avatar-face shown to the world, to my friends, fans, and foes, or the real me – a hermit in isolation, seeking connection, yet also fearing it.

On the evening of October 26th, inexplicably, my Facebook account resurrected. There was no message, no explanation, no apology, no warning – nothing at all. The page just reappeared with its last posts dated October 12th, as if the previous two weeks disappeared from my life. I don't know how it happened and who intervened. I asked several people who might know someone on Facebook to help, but I probably will never know who saved my account from extinction. Whoever you are and everyone who tried to help – my deepest gratitude.

It felt peculiar to visit my page and find it as I left it – as if seeing an old house you no longer live in. In one of his interviews, Solomon Volkov said that he had two immigrations in his life: one from the Soviet Union to the United States, and the other from the USA to Facebook. I don't share his sentiment. Yet, during these days, I realized that most of my professional contacts happened through Facebook. I realized that Facebook is a source of inspiration and support. I also realized that I became too dependent on it, forgetting that I am only a guest there, even on my own page; forgetting that there is the other side of the screen which is not seen in this one-way mirror; forgetting that this mirror is no longer just a tool of connection, but a spider which feeds on your time, who reflects you not the real world but the world you believe in, the world according to your likes, feeding you information that confirms your beliefs to keep you hooked, to keep you hungry for more likes so it can continue to feed on your time.

I looked at my page, but I didn't feel like posting anything. I didn't feel like saying hello to my 5000 friends and 25,000 followers, real or imaginary, who were just fine without me.
I visited a couple of friends whose pages I see more often, but I didn't feel like clicking likes. I felt balancing on the edge of the Matrix, not sure if I wanted indeed to return there, now that once again I had a key into this forbidden garden of social delights. By now, I felt free from my FB addiction, from needing its daily dose of fake relevancy, its noise of the gigantic fugue of voices demanding my attention, crying to be appraised. Was I happier without it, now guarding the entrance voluntarily? I was grateful to be given back the choice and to be able to glance into this mirror, but I also appreciated my privacy and freedom even though freedom doesn’t always equate with joy.

The great choreographer John Neumeier, with whom I closely collaborated in creating three full-length ballets with my music, doesn't have an email. Well, actually, he has an email address, but he rarely uses it, if ever. He doesn't have Facebook or other social media pages. Not having them is a luxury, and sometimes I feel jealous of it. What confidence and inner freedom, what a secure network of friends and colleagues one must have to remain free of virtual attachments. John is over 80 years old, and he is as active and creative as ever – a living legend in his field.

Can I afford the hermitdom I seek?

 

 

Dislocated in Time [by Lera Auerbach]

Photo by Lera Auerbach

 

(1)

The problem with the future is that it is unforeseeable –
the great unknown is full of opportunities for dreadful disasters.

Their multitudes are inexhaustible.

The stars are the pores of our reality.
They shine because that’s how we see the light of another world. 

The Arctic fox dances its foxy dance, pretending to be a woman,
pretending to be a nurse. 

The seal waits underwater. It knows it is being hunted. 

The stars are not the pores; they are pills,
round white pills the woman-fox is giving me.

Pills for pain, pills for sleep, pills for blood pressure,
pills for muscle aches, pills for adrenal gland function,
pills for inflammation or rather against inflammation,
pills for/against nausea. And steroids.

And more pills for pain. Killers of pain. 

(How many universes did I swallow today?)

 

(2)

Everyone is very kind to me. So kind, it breaks my heart.

Everyone is doing their best. Or his or her best. 

I feel generous with the pronouns. I think pronouns are so yesterday. 

So are all nationalities, religions, sexes, and any other boxes of definitions, including self-definitions.

If everyone were so kind, there would be no need for any of these limiting concepts. 

I understand how beautiful it would be, how connective, how whole and wholesome,
and it breaks my heart that it is not yet universally so.

I cry from the unbearable weight of my love that I cannot express. 

My husband, concerned, asks if I’m in pain. 

“No, on the contrary,” I try to explain what I feel. “I understand what it means to be ‘we.’ 

I am the seal; I am the fish it ate; I’m the polar bear waiting for the seal to breathe; 

I’m the polar bear hunter, waiting for the polar bear to strike the seal. 

I’m the polar bear hunter’s mother, wishing to feed the polar bear 
so that the bear could feed her son one day; I am the polar bear hunter’s girlfriend,
enjoying the safety of the aroma of the Lancôme perfume.

I am the surgeon searching for the patient who has his initials drawn on her belly. 

I am the patient praying to be her surgeon’s masterpiece.”

(“You are on drugs. It’s the painkillers,” says my husband.)

 

(3)

Where do all lost things go? 

Perhaps, lost things are dislocated not in space but in time.

It is why something may disappear and then later appear right in front of your eyes –
where you have already looked for it and more than once.

Instead of moving in space, they fall into the holes in the fabric of time.

Because time is made of porous material and things may fall through. 

Sometimes things reappear, moved back by some internal tides; 

at other times, they disappear without a trace, 

and new strange things appear instead. 

It is hard to hold on to your belongings when they keep falling 
through the porous realities of time and space.

It’s quite difficult, especially lately, to hold on to myself 
with all these electrons, protons, and neutrons misbehaving as particles 
and waves the moment you try to observe what they’re doing. 

Just think of all the effort my poor self needs to put together 
in order to hold some kind of a recognizable shape of a body 
instead of just becoming a soundwave or melting into a puddle. 

(No wonder I feel exhausted all the time.) 

 

(4)

Yesterday I learned there is such a thing as repulsive gravity.

By repulsive, I don’t mean ugly or unpleasant. 

Apparently, gravity can be not only attractive, 

thus attracting things ever closer the way earth 

doesn’t let us float away and fall into space, 

but also repulsive, meaning always repelling things 

further and further away. 

In all likelihood, this universe was made by such repulsive impulse, 

resulting in the Big Bang and all its consequences. 

It is why we are still expanding, universally speaking. 

(Just think of it: all we are is a hiccup of some repulsive shudder.)

 

(5)

Time in the hospital – sleepless nights, leg compressors, IV drips, 

blood-pressure measurements, vital signs checks every hour, medications. 

You wish to sleep, but your sleep is continuously interrupted by machines, nurses, 

and your own body. You melt one drop at a time and float restlessly in the night. 

And you still need to repeat your name and date of birth 

each time you are given the meds. You swallow a bunch of stars 

and start feeling that the repulsive gravity which made the Big Bang 

is just around the corner, and the reversal could happen at any moment.

You are internally running extremely fast while not moving at all. 

(And you’re still naked under the hospital robe.)

 

 

Making of an Opening [by Lera Auerbach]

"Opening" by Lera Auerbach

 

1. The Absence of Trees

You know
you're getting closer to the North
when trees disappear.
The world without trees.

At first, you don't notice that the trees are missing. 
Then you feel the absence of something important,
but you are not sure what it is.

By the time you understand that the trees are gone,
you are too far North to turn around.

(After a while, there is no way back.)

 

2. Unborn Music

In the Arctic they say –
this world is porous,
that's why there are
Auroras in the sky.
You can glimpse the light
of the other worlds
through the tiny holes
in the material of our world.

Shamans can travel
through different worlds
in search for answers.
They fly through the pores
and find their way back.
Sometimes such flights
are not possible, thus
many questions still
remain unanswered.

A dermatology-inclined friend
explained to me once –
when a pore is clogged,
nothing can go in
or out until
it explodes. At times,
I feel like a blocked pore
that needs an explosion.

(My cat gently examines
the strings of the piano
as if sniffing unborn music.) 

 

3. An Opening to Breath

I need an opening to breathe.
Is that what writing is –
the making of an opening? 

Far in the Arctic,
a polar bear can wait
for hours and hours next
to the breathing hole
made in ice by a seal. 

A seal needs to breathe.
Sooner or later, it will come
to the surface to gulp air.
That's when a polar bear,
if quick and attentive,
can kill the seal.
That's when
a polar bear hunter
can kill the polar bear

who is hunting the seal,
because you cannot
see white on white.

They say in the Arctic,
“If you see a polar bear,
it's the very last thing
you will ever see.”

(There are no cats in Svalbard.)
 

4. Quiet Chuckle

A book can only lead to another book –
a trail of steps in the snow:
reassuring but disappearing before your eyes.

Why do we voluntarily subject
ourselves to harsh conditions?

Why?

I gave my Arctic friend Gaya
a fancy perfume bottle from Lancôme.

"This is so perfect," she beamed.
"Polar bears hate French perfume."

(Her boyfriend, an Inuit, a polar bear hunter, only chuckled.)

  

5. Trail of Breadcrumbs

If I cannot weave a protective blanket of words,
I could at least leave some breadcrumbs.
Breadcrumbs could be useful. 
Not as useful as a hot meal in good company.But still. 

Breadcrumbs can help you find your way back.
That is if you can turn around.
If not, breadcrumbs could feed your followers.
Maybe your followers could rescue you one day.
They could also drown you or feed you to the polar bears.

(But one shouldn't assume a pessimistic view.)

 

6. What’s Not Allowed in Svalbard

The reason why no cats are allowed in Svalbard
is, perhaps, because cats have nine lives.

Before you come to Svalbard, you sign an entry form.
Many things are not allowed on Svalbard.
For example, feeding polar bears.
Or dying.

If you die, you will be fined, 
because dying is not allowed in Svalbard. 

(Dying and bringing cats.) 

Silent Music [by Lera Auerbach]

Leitmotifs Photo by Lera Auerbach

 

 

At the Marlboro Music Festival, returning home at night –
my door was covered by moths. I opened the door quickly
as not to let them in, but at least twenty managed to fly in –
into the light of the dining room's lamp.

 

Today I found them dead all around the entrance,

dried angels, almost transparent in their fragile death

with the powder – angel's dust – still on their wings.

 

I think of them while listening to Chopin's mazurkas –

so fragile, so transparent, immortal in their captured beauty.

I gently lift the dead bodies of white&gray moths
from the floor – sliding them into an old glass jar.

 

There they shall rest. They look alive.

Most have their wings open, as if in flight.

My fingers are covered with the powder from the wings.

Their silence is music too.

 

When I wake up tomorrow morning

– they shall still be here, under the glass,

frozen in their death, as in a dream

hearing the music only they can hear.

A protective blanket of words [by Lera Auerbach]

 

Arctic Dreams - Photo Credit: Lera Auerbach

(1)

I learned that a friend of mine was going through a tough time. His mother died, and he had debilitating neck pain. He needed to write the obituary and arrange for the funeral. His mother had dementia. Was he able to say goodbye? I did not ask. 

I don't know which scale would measure grief. Such a scale doesn't exist. 

Physical pain is easier to manage. If it is yours. Because at some point, the pain stops defining you. 
Grief buried deeper, so deep it can't be torn away, it becomes you.

In the Arctic, old babushkas, when they become unable to take care of themselves, hope to be killed by a polar bear. When they become too ill and weak, they look for the bear to eat them. I asked why. Being devoured by a wild animal didn't seem to me like an attractive way to finish life. 

"The bear will be nourished by eating me," explained an old Inuit woman. "The bear will become strong and fat. Then one day, my son will kill that bear. My son and his family will eat the bear's meat, make healing mixes from its fat, and make trousers from its fur. Thus, through the polar bear, I will nourish my son and keep him warm, even past my life, even past my death."

Post mortem motherly care.

(2)

A few years ago, I travelled to Greenland and stayed in Nuuk in the apartment of a polar bear hunter. A polar bear hunter's home looked like an IKEA house made by children constructors of adult sizing. Everything was modern, functional and perfectly unremarkable. 

A photograph on the wall showed a polar bear (or rather its fur) covered in blood, soaking in a bathtub. I realized it was the same bathtub in which I had showered that morning. It had rubber ducklings as lucky ornaments. Perfectly, chillingly, unremarkable bathtub.

(3)

"I wish I could make a blanket of protective words to shield you," I wrote to my friend, whose mother died after suffering dementia for several years. 

“A protective blanket of words” could be a definition of poetry. 
“Could be” because, like everything else, it rejects any definitions. 

Poetry is no different than spell-making or alchemy.

As if words could make a difference. 
As if anything could still make any difference.

In the world gone mad with apocalyptic craziness and fear, can words remain protective talismans? 

(4)

Bears in the Arctic are suffering from global warming. They're skinny and weak; they couldn't kill even old babushkas on their suicide mission. 

If I could stitch a protective blanket of words, I would make one for the polar bears, another one for the suicidal babushkas on their mission to feed the polar bears, and the third one for the polar bear hunters. I would then make a gigantic frozen quilt for the Arctic to protect it from climate change and even a bigger blanket for the entire world to save it from madness. 

Every stitch would be a word of love, a talisman against impending disaster. 

But I never learned how to make blankets or quilts. I can mend sounds and strings but not threads. The thoughts made of words are unravelling, and I can't weave them together.