March 21, 2005
first day of spring
hello brotherly and sisterly lovers.
somebody told me that the tourism industry was trying change the city motto from "the city of brotherly love" to something less "gay-sounding". i don't think it worked, but i was searching about it online and i found this funny thing about how virginia, based on some of its ridiculous anti-gay legislation, ought to change its motto from "virginia is for lovers" to... "virginia is for procreative sex between married heterosexuals in the missionary position with the lights off" or "virginia... this ain't massachusetts" or "virginia... thanks for not being gay"...
mwa! anyway. i'm in philly this morning, i'll be in virginia tonight. it's overcast but it is now officially spring and i'm driving down into the heart of it, where the bubbly springs bubble and the smokies are smokin' and i can clean my poor darling car who has had cold little feet all winter.
i went on gene shay's radio show last night (wxpn) which i've been wanting to do for a long time. the man is an angel, also he has a bunch of adorable interns. also while in this fair city i got to do a philadelphia folksong society house concert, which was really something. as SOON as my set was finished the society broke out their instruments and began several different campfires in different rooms of the house, without the fires, of course. in any case folksingin' is alive and well in philadelphia. and now... and now... it's monday morning, i go to play my gracious host's incredibly beautiful martin guitars, and then to push off. until soon,
anais.
march 12th, 2005
the pursewarden affair
hello people.
greetings from the turnpike motel in southern maine. i NEVER stay in motels because i really canât afford it, but i was driving along, wondering how to get in touch with a friend who could put me up, thinking how the new england winter really messes with the great american dream of *living in oneâs car*, when it called to me from the side of the highway in vacant neon tones. i took a room for two nights- a gift to myself- my birthdayâs coming up! itâs beautiful here, clean and warm and silent except for the neutral sound of traffic, like wind or surf. motel owners are so darling. if the music career doesnât pan out youâll know where to find me.
and itâs so GOOD to have a room of oneâs own, itâs got me writing, itâs got me wishing i could stay forever! i am quite happy today. i have these peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. i have this harmonica. i have this bottle of wine and no corkscrew and i may in fact have to push the cork in... gram parsons has a line: ãspend all day at the holiday inn, trying to get out of bed...ä
o, pursewarden
have mercy on my heart!
maybe i donât want to call it ãartä
just because you nailed it to the wall
maybe iâm a critic after all!
what news? i spent a good deal of time at home in vermont last month. there were some auspicious goings-on, for example, the buddha-lamb was born. there was one very old ewe ãmarked for deletionä (i mean that lovingly, not disrespectfully) that escaped from my dad whilst he was trying to put her in the truck along with ten old ewes bound for the slaughterhouse. she was wily enough that my dad gave up and let her stay on another year. somehow this ewe got pregnant much earlier than the others, and gave birth last week to a single ram lamb in the freezing dark of night. my brother, who happened to be walking up the drive-way at night, heard the lambâs cry and went up to the field to see, and there was this lamb, alive against all odds, with his old mother who had no milk. so my fambly took him into the house and fed him by bottle until they found some young unsuspecting 4-H person to take him on. the whole thing smacks of good omen-ness. springtime, faith, etc. but here in maine thereâs a blizzard on. itâs dark in the middle of the day. and i am a wintry tumbleweed. this is a weird time of my life in which every few days i resolve that i must absolutely move to some big metropolis immediately. and i announce these intentions to everyone i meet, but havenât made it happen. um... what else...
all youse in the south, i am coming for you, check the calendar. my big jolliest wishes to all.
January 29, 2005
vermont, the independent republic of
oooooooo, vermont is cold, cold, cold as can be, "cold as a witch's tit," as my godmother always says. i come home and all is as i left it. o little green subaru of my heart! o tights and sweaters long neglected! my parents dancing barefoot to bluegrass at the american legion hall. my brother and susannah working stealthily away at various radical and studious pursuits. grandpa at dinner in his bathrobe and the bright red tarbush i brought from cairo, grandma delivering plate upon plate to the table, recipes gleaned from far and wide. and outside the glitter of sunlight and icicles, the sheep and the sheepdog indistinguishable, the drive plowed, the evergreens ever-optimistically nodding their branches "yep, mmm-hmm, ayuh." egypt recedes in the memory like a falling watermark.
i haven't been thinking about w. very often. the initial shock of his re-election made me turn to other news, other ideas, other public figures, in a fit of disbelief and maybe denial that he was STILL THERE, his face was still all over television and would be there throughout most of my twenties. just before i left cairo i had this angel of a cab driver. he shared his sunflower seeds, we had a sweet and spirited conversation about how the american and egyptian peoples are brothers; we agreed about how "fi farq kabir bain ash-sha'ab wa al-hokuma" (there is a great difference between the people and the government) and etc. he is totally down with the sha'ab al-amriki. happy silence. then he says without a trace of anger but only sorrowful confusion, "but... tell me one thing. the american people VOTED for w. a second time. why did they do that?" oh, why? i mumble something about the problem of business being in bed with government, the problem of the big media. "the big media are owned by..."
"jews?"
"no, not jews, but... moneyed people, you know." and on and on. his sweet animated face under a woolen cap. mouthful of smoke and sunflower seeds.
his question ringing in my ear: WHY did the american people vote for w. a second time? how exhausting it is, having to look like IDIOTS abroad. last year it was all fine and good to say the election was stolen, to commiserate even with europeans re: this analysis. but this time it is front page, bold headlines, no doubt, america votes destructive arrogant idiot into office- A SECOND TIME. why? "moral issues," or, "the influence of the christian right," or "the influence of neo-conservatism," or "the failure of the vote-counting machines..." yada yada. all of the arguments eating their own little tails. most of all, it probably comes down to FEAR voting w. back into office. o america. we will have to be very brave these next years. we will have to figure out how to be brave, because i think there will be plenty of fear- justifiable AND manufactured- to go around.
i was planning to wax eloquent on your asses but in fact i am suddenly half-asleep. anything else to report? well...
my mom and i are going on a fad diet tomorrow. please don't inform the righteous sisterhood. i am busily booking the spring and summer and if you have any exciting gig ideas, don't hesitate to contact me. today i am listening to early simon & garfunkel, and father simon has a sermon for us all. it is above and beyond the kind of line anyone is allowed to write these days. it goes as follows:
"life, i love you. all is groovy."
put THAT under your pillow tonight.
~deine anais.
Posted by Anais at 05:32 AM
January 20, 2005
censorships
such a morning like no other morning! get this.
so i ended up doing this interview egyptian television, a brief interview on a cultural program set up by a journalist i met at a party. i had to wake up at an unheard of hour to get to the station, it was just getting light, the streets were empty, but outside the mosque near my apartment there was a crowd praying in the street. today was a huge holiday, eid al-adha, when animals are slaughtered according to hilal and everyone eats too much meat. i walked several blocks to find a cab. people were in full, generous holiday spirit, very sweet, an old man offered me a cookie, i offered him a section of tangerine. the interview was in arabic, not really my strong suit, and i'd been trying for the past 24 hours to figure out how to say something in this interview that is "SHWAYA siasia"- a LITTLE political- that could express my own opposition to american foreign policy in the region without sounding like an idiot or reinforcing anyone's knee-jerk anti-americanism. i felt it was an important gesture, no matter how tiny, not only to represent the diversity of american opinion but also be an example of how someone can (ideally) be critical of one's own government on TELEVISION! but it was kind of a balancing act; on the one hand i was thinking i ought not censor myself- "wwafd- what would anne feeney do?" is what was thinking- and on the other i had visions of ending up on the front page of some wierd islamist opposition newspaper. so i ended up with something like "i'm worried about the state of international politics, and the policies of my goverment in this region, i'm worried about the misunderstanding and distance between the american and arab peoples..." and for this reason, cultural exchange is important... yada yada, music as international language, yada yada... also i played a couple verses of the "two kids" song- hadn't planned to, but i was describing the collaboration with the syrian poet who wrote the second verse and the hosts asked me to. all in all it was very lovely and we talked most of the time about simple things, heart-as-opposed-to-head things.
THEN it was the ripe old hour of nine a.m. and i was determined to witness some of the eid al-adha goings-on, so i took a cab to the saida zeinab district. there i first watched a huge ram get skinned and gutted completely. he was massive and he lay in a pool of bright red blood on the sidewalk with marbles for eyes. after the throat is cut and bled and the animal dies, a slit is made near one hoof and then a man blows into the slit as though he were inflating a balloon. and the animal DOES inflate- the skin separates from the muscle, then it is punched down like rising dough- and then the skinning commences. the young men doing the butchering wore jeans and rubber boots, no gloves. people were very kind and offered me free tea and cigarettes. i told them about our sheep farm. this was very interesting and pleasant. a few blocks away, at another shop, i watched the slaughter itself: this sheep had all four hooves bound, and he was very much alive when i arrived, i looked right into his eyes, and his nose was wrinkled in the way our ewes' noses wrinkle when they are in labor. the throat was cut, the blood came gushing out onto the sidewalk in front of my feet, but it took longer than i could have imagined for the animal to die- he kept kicking when the men tried to begin the inflation process. this was all fascinating, horrifying, inspiring, by turns. how is that in one instant, a beautiful, sentient, creature becomes MEAT? i marveled at this noble killing process happening right on the SIDEWALK, in broad daylight, little kids and entire families watching. even i, who grew up on a sheep farm of all places, had never seen such a thing. i wondered what percentage of americans had ever witnessed a slaughter- our own little cultural censorship, eh? to have never smelled the scent of really fresh meat, to have never seen the color of that blood except in the movies. and cairo was red all over!
THEN as i wandered on past the throngs of poor people clamoring for the free plastic bags of meat which is handed out as charity (in truth, as someone pointed out to me, most of cairo's population is poor enough that this is the ONLY time they eat meat all year! imagine the richness of it.), past the cows and sheep still marvelously alive, tethered to wooden posts, past the fruit stands and closed shops, i saw something i have NEVER seen in ANY part of the middle east- a kid, looks to be maybe fifteen, sitting on a bench as i was walking by, wearing kind of an eighties jacket, had his fly wide open and his erect penis in hand. i gasped out loud, i was so surprised, and then told him "shame on you, shame on you!" as i walked quickly away. but a few streets later i noted he was following me (his jeans zipped at this point), and i shouted some more things at him, and finally ended up CHASING him down the bloody street until he disappeared. a little kid came up and said "i saw you on tv!" wierd. i hailed a cab. i was thinking about this eighties kid, what could have driven him to such perverse boldness... it's a wonderful thing about cairo and much of the middle east that despite the non-stop bullshit and cat-calling, crime is virtually non-existent, and flashing doesn't really fly. hard to be discreet as a flasher in a city so crowded. my first thought was that maybe he had been eating meat for the first and only time this year, that he had become emboldened and intoxicated by it, that he HAD to express it somehow! then all the usual thoughts about what happens when you cover something up- it always pops out in wierd ways. i read an article once by a certain grossman about how the act of killing and animal slaughter is to today's america what sex was to the victorian era- that we cover it up as fully as possible, but it always finds its perverse way back into society. it made sudden sense... women covered head-to-toe, the eighties kid with his cock out, the sheep kicking on the sidewalk, a tarantino film, state suppression of the media, writers made into martyrs and enemies, boring pop music, boring folk music. i won't try and tie things together too much- this is not academia after all, but a blog! but it was a hell of a morning. i went home and took a three hour nap. bless you, readers! kul senna wa antum taibeen. i'll be states-side next week and i'll update the calendar.
Posted by Anais at 08:27 PM
January 09, 2005
end of the quartet
hey captain a-rab
taxi cab driver
queen mab arrives
in your backseat again
drunk as a djinn
high as a minaret
asking for cigarettes
laughing at nothing!
went up for a couple of days to alex, as i was nearing the end of durrell's "alexandria quartet" and wanted to make a proper pilgrimage. stayed in a really, really cheap hotel without enough blankets ("you know you're a grown-up," a friend said once, "when you stop staying at cheap hotels". the same friend said, "you know you're a grown-up when you don't feel you have to finish your beer just because you paid for it") but with a brilliant balcony view of sa'ad zaghloul square and the corniche. i read durrell furiously in cafes and restaurants. also i ate fish and enjoyed it. a guy showed me how to shuck the exo-skeleton of a gambari (shrimp) with grace- the head comes off easily. then there is a split up the back, which you stick with your fork. then with your knife you remove one side of the shell, flip the shrimp, and remove the other. it seems to me if the gambari is smaller and there is no split up the back, you should stick the belly instead of the back. but then there is the problem of its little legs. this may all be elementary to you, dear reader, but i choked on a fishbone once as a child, developed a kind of a phobia, and only now am i developing a taste for seafood. it is always an adventure! most of the places in durrell's alex aren't there anymore, but some are- the cecil hotel, trianon, pastroudi's, and the streets- nabi daniel, fuad- are of course still there. there was a proper mysticism about the visit.
but now i'm back in cairo, and kind of at a loss because i've been reading the quartet for what seems like a long time and suddenly there is a great gaping hole where the books used to be. can one be nostalgic for books? if you can recommend something, go ahead. only i think it should be something stark and masculine if possible. well, ishta aleikum. cream on you. that sounds dirty in english but in arabic it is a genuine well-wishing compliment. i'm going back to my flat for olives and tamarind juice and arabic grammar. the flat is cold and maybe i will sit around in my leather jacket.
my jacket fits me like a glove
i wear it in and out of love!
keep warm all youse. hey usa, i'll be back at the end of the month, keep the home fires a-burning. deine anais.
December 26, 2004
the god abandons antony
a gift! the following is a poem by constantine p. cavafy (a greek alexandrian poet). let it be known that my dad in his keen literary way picked up on the fact that leonard cohen's song "alexandra leaving" is an approximation of this poem. let it also be known that one of our two rams is named antony. he is beautiful, with kind eyes, quiet steaming breath, and a scent of lanolin.
and in case, like me, you might benefit from a little background re: the poem, it's like this: the musical procession is the sign that marc antony's god, bacchus, is abandoning him- meaning, the game is up, his love affair with cleopatra, his love affair with the city of alexandria- and the romans are coming to kick his ass. how to deal with that gracefully... enjoy.
The god forsakes Antony
When suddenly, at midnight, you hear
an invisible procession going by
with exquisite music, voices,
donât mourn your luck thatâs failing now,
work gone wrong, your plans
all proving deceptive÷donât mourn them uselessly.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that is leaving.
Above all, donât fool yourself, donât say
it was a dream, your ears deceived you:
donât degrade yourself with empty hopes like these.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
as is right for you who were given this kind of city,
go firmly to the window
and listen with deep emotion, but not
with the whining, the pleas of a coward;
listen÷your final delectation÷to the voices,
to the exquisite music of that strange procession,
and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing.
- Constantine P. Cavafy (1911)
Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard
Posted by Anais at 05:09 PM
details, practicalities, geographies
christmas in cairo! a woman singing some kind of epic arabic folk song in the living room of a christmas party, one hand at her ear, tucked under her long, dark hair, and it is as though she is WAILING for every broken heart on earth, none of the guests can move to re-fill their plates or glasses, so arresting is her song. in the middle of the night, men working in the street with sand and concrete, the beautiful slow motion of their rough hands. cats on the torn-up sidewalk. cats: a black kitten named "justine". also a kitten trotting happily round an open air cafe with a gigantic cockroach in her mouth. a table-top, empty colored glass bottles and flickering candles. the viscous red of mulled wine. the brilliant felt green of pool and snooker tables. journalists, american journalists, their simultaneous bravery and child-like-ness. the three-dimensionality of politics in a place so near to jerusalem, baghdad, darfur- three-dimensional in that it is about details, practicalities, geographies, as opposed to so much shuffling paper. a short-legged donkey on a four-lane highway. the buoyant tune of "feliz navidad"- everyone all smiles at the end of a night of dancing on tables and chairs, a shimmering crowd, sweating buckets, the hurried smiling waiters, the flashing of cigarette tips and earrings. my housemate singing every verse of "good king wenceslas" in the shower. a small hungry boy begging for change; i give him some and he asks for more and i say (in arabic) "impossible- i'm poor!" then realize what i've said and feel like a real asshole. kohl powder bargained for at the market. the ebony bottle and tiny wooden applicator. MOUNTOLIVE and the erotic expatriate literary mythology i admire most. et cetera!
Posted by Anais at 04:31 PM
December 12, 2004
holy daze
salaam, you guys,
this is a blog! but let's call it something else, something tasteful, a journal found lying on a park bench, an open letter, a public record, a famous correspondence...
i'm in cairo, it is so, so good to be back. for two weeks i was on tour with a rock project called "circus guy's rocknroll revue"- the tour had its inevitable ups-and-downs, but ultimately it was really wonderful. we played american rock, arabic folk and pop, and some educational songs- part of the project (which was sponsored by the state department!) involved promoting solar and wind energy, and we played a couple of solar-powered shows. i learned a fairouz song i've been wanting to learn for a long time- "habaituk"- and for a week our angel of a driver, eimad, coached me through the verses. our two best shows were in cairo proper, people twisted and shouted in the aisles, and in the arab world there is a beautiful ethic of clapping BETWEEN verses the way you might say "amen!" mid-sermon, very encouraging! can we start doing that in the states?
then the band went home, and i moved into an apartment in zamalek, a beautiful, spacious place with antique chairs and a wraparound balcony eight floors up. i'll be a houseguest and then a subletter until the end of january.
people like to bitch about cairo, the crowdedness, the pollution, the black dust that settles so quickly over every inch of a place, but truly i'm humbled by the dignity of this city, the old men frowning over chess, backgammon, newspapers, cigarettes and turkish coffee, the frosted green stella bottles, the laundry that hangs like pirate flags from the windows of houses, the uninhabitable inhabited, the friendly, muscular morning, the whispering neon night. oooooooo! i haven't been reading the news. i learned the norwegian troll-walk last night. in another life i'd be a norwegian troll. vigourously warm wishes to you. ~anais.
Posted by Anais at 11:41 AM
