Tenho Uma Rosa

I received a note from a childhood friend who attached a video of Cristina Branco singing Fado in Macau which was Portuguese territory till 1999 and now it is called the Last Vegas of Asia. Few people pass by Hong Kong without a short stop in Macau.

My friend did not know how much Fado had touched me during my visits to Portugal. As I watched the video and listened to the language I learned to guess given my knowledge of Italian, French and Spanish, a few old lines came back to take me back.

“Com àgua e mel”… Somehow I recall hearing that line sang by La Grande Dame de Fado, Amàlia Rodriguez on cassette from a ginjinha kiosk in Lisbon.  Water and honey against all the pains of life.

Then, I heard Branco whisper “secreto rouxinol” and I recall telling my friend in Lisbon that I never really understood why the nightingale was so often the bird of poets. Perhaps it is because the lonesome male often sings at night when all other birds are asleep?

I do not know. But there are poems that have stayed in me perhaps because they found a curious respite in my wondering soul. For example, there is a poem to the Rossignol by Paul Verlaine (Poèmes saturniens) that starts:

Comme un vol criard d’oiseaux en émoi,
Tous mes souvenirs s’abattent sur moi,
S’abattent parmi le feuillage jaune
De mon coeur mirant son tronc plié d’aune

It is a very famous poem for anyone who was educated in French literature. I recall many of the lines, but it is a poem where the song of the bird has not changed – what has changed is the poet, the man who lost his first love, and perhaps the man who lost love.

Another famous poem about the nightingale is by John Keats, who dedicates an ode to the nocturnal bird. It is again a melancholic poem, where the poet feels numb, as though he was under the influence of a drug he had just taken. He tells the nightingale that he is not jealous of the singing nightingale but that  “drowsy numbness” is grateful for the song that makes his too happy.

Again, I am not sure why the nightingale was chosen for the poem, but here are the opening lines:

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains 

 My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, 

Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains 

But not all rouxinol poems and songs are melancholic. I remember how my kids used to love listening to Cinderella sing “Sweet Nightingale” a Cornish refrain from the 1800s. Cinderella, Drizella, Lady Tremaine and Anastasia made that song memorable in its joyful simplicity.

… So, from the Cornish song to the sad Fado songs sailors’ wives sang to those who left from Lisbon or Oporto, the nightingale came back to tease my memories tonight. I am sure there is a rossignol  singing in a forest somewhere at this moment, and that would be a lonesome male hoping for a mate.

… At sunrise, no one will remember his song.

July 7, 2019

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2019

Black and White Photos Are Mostly Gray

When you push on a wound

The bleeding does not stop

It just opens the wound wide

So you can enter and be alone

You should not hope for a welcome

Old wounds heal but never close

You should not whisper nor shout

The space has been open for a while now

When you push on an old wound

The wound holds you back tight

There is no pain anymore

But here is still a name

That

On every pulse of pain

Makes the old wound alive

On every tear of space and time

When you thought you will forget

That when you push on the wound

Again

The wound will come alive

July 2, 2019

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2019

When a Boy Learns About Cooking

The transformation of any ingredient into a new taste is metamorphosis. Herbs, grains, muscle, fruits, even exoskeleton do not end their existence with the harvest. When homo erectus discovered fire, cooking by fire started about 1.5 million years ago. Ötzi the Iceman found in the Alps in 1991 had eaten grain, herbs and deer meat. More than 5,300 years ago, Ötzi may had even made bread by cooking einkorn wheat over fire.

.. I started watching my mom prepare food when I was a few years old. She would make me stand on a stool next to her in the kitchen and talk to me about food. Not only she was able to keep an eye on me, but taught me lessons that may have shaped many of my habits.

First, all ingredients have a story to tell but only when allowed to share it with other ingredients. “Chick peas have little to offer by themselves” she used to say “but put tahini, olive oil, garlic and salt, and the peas get a new life.” Indeed, a story needs many tellers, many actors and a creative story teller to put them together in a unique way.

Second, be frugal. After almost 60 years I remember my mom looking at the left over cuttings of meat and vegetables and thinking “how I can use them in a new dish?” Nothing went to waste while cooking, and nothing went to waste when served on the table.

The third lesson that affected my behavior over the lucky life I have had was that of believing and celebrating seasonality. Indeed, lamb was a dish for spring, beans for summer, fish most of the year and fruits rarely in winter. Born on the Mediterranean, cooking creativity was dictated by the seasonality of the ingredients’ availability. Which meant that jams, preserves and canned food were an art inherited from ancient civilizations that started with the storage of millet and the drying of meats.

These three lessons -- co-existence of ingredients for a new taste story telling; frugality; and, the respect of seasonality have made me a more flexible person during my life on multiple continents, my professional work in a couple of dozen countries, and the acceptance of all new modes of thinking and expression as the essence of creativity.

As I get closer to the sunset of my days, celebrating seasonality becomes more important. Not the seasonality of ingredients but the seasonality of our body and mind. To accept the change of seasons and what they bring to our energy, expectations and promises we once made is the secret spice in the recipe of new tastes we need to discover.

… Interestingly, I always remind myself (and some others when they are in a mood to listen) that agriculture started to grow hops for brewing beer! Indeed, the water was often polluted and dangerous to drink when communities took shape. Beer was drank instead of water, in lieu of water and as a wholesome drink. So civilization owns a lot to beer!

Finally, frugality and creativity also mean that observing and understanding natural processes may cut down on our interference with ingredients storytelling. For example, the South American fish dish ceviche uses the acid in lime and lemon to actually cook the fish. There is no heat or fire used.

Similarly, it has been discovered that early humans drank the juice of naturally fermented wild grapes during when the grapes ripe in the Fall, eliminating the need for fermentation (of course there were no large volumes of alcoholic drinks exported during the Paleolithic…)

… Today, I thought about my mother and how she shaped parts of my life by making me stay on a stool next to her when she was cooking.

And I felt grateful, once again.

July 1, 2019

Lonesome Wheatberry

Rotee is more than bread – it is livelihood in India

Nan is not the name for bread – it is survival for a Kurd

Agnus Dei is more than a song – it is the prelude to Fractio Panis

But breaking bread has no meaning when the bread is soft

Wine and bread have shaped the culture of loving

Yet dough is inelastic when Gluten is left out

It makes people inflexible and unkind

Since few fear celiac disease when their stomach is empty  

And going to bed hungry, dreaming of crumbled bread

Bran and germ have to stay in the bread

To celebrate friendship, trust and union

With a world in fear of hips that bear promises

And meals that quiet colicky children going to bed hungry

Breaking bread is not a tradition

But a promise to feed those who cannot break away

From the celebration

Of goodness

PS/ The picture is of Rocky, my sweet companion of 14 years who passed away recently. He always waited for a piece I bread I would break and share with him at dinner.

June 21, 2019

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2019

Wraparound

I chewed on my pencil #2

All morning

The words came

And left

Without helping

Me say

    My muse had a name

    But no promise

    Had deep pain

    But always smiled

        So I chewed on my pencil

        And scratched my dog’s ear

        Words came and left

        And laughed

          On their way out

June 20, 2019

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2019

Simple Audiences who Left the Show Early

I could have been

The boy who was always a man

In a quiet short sigh

Before knowing when to leave

Without goodbye

I could have stayed

In that vast space

Where a name echoed

And walls surrounded themselves

Like ghosts exposed to death

I could have kept the fire

In hope of cold nights to come

But I poured all the tears I had

And let the fire die

Shivering like wet wood

I could have stay in the port

When the storm was still afar

But the slow swell of the waves

Stressed my syllables

And I could only echo

The name

That in the vast space had lost

Its fear

To

Escape

June 16, 2019

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2019

Looking Into a Passing River

Hera took Echo’s voice

So she can only repeat

What others said

… I have seen Gothic cathedrals

From Warsaw to Barcelona

Stone elephants in the Church of Santa Maria

de Belém in Lisboa

Yet Narcissus never saw

In Echo what in Donacon River

He found

… I left my hope in the Lady of Lourdes

A sunny day in Singapore

And admired the Grand Mosque of Hayatnagar

In Hyderabad

But a voiceless nymph

Never feared that I would knew

About myself in reflection

So there was no funeral for a watery

Grave

Just a flower

Purple within

White leaves surrounded

Six petal-like tepals

Surmounted by a cup corona

En guise of goodbye

June 2, 2019

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2019