What does it feel like to arrive anew in a country one was born into? To try on its seas of water and wheat for size, to trade a conifer forest for towering concrete, the present capital (Vilnius) – for a historic one (Kaunas) and to go back on that deal again? Let me tell you a secret. A country is a fiction. Belonging is a fiction. But who wants to browse in a fictionless library?
*
In the Beginning was the Phrase
Could I please go away,
the nine-year-olds need to converse in private
as do the adults at the funeral, the second, the fifth
Piano classes? Ballet?
At seven she’s “too old”
Choir – a joke? Did someone choke her?
Why don’t I take this sweater
mommy won’t fetch any better
at the secondhand stall
Shoes and coat too big? But free
Prom dress? Law degree?
who cares what I’d like
this is what we can afford
Guitar? I play but the basic chords
Why don’t I work
for the good of the country instead
the government paid for some of our bread
and needs sharp minds like these
just not the people
who carry them
*
You bitter bitch from the outback, – in my head, the ever-vigilant Sister Prudence of the First Femonationalist Truth Circuit adjusts her collar. What, or perhaps who, is chasing me all over these flat potato lands? What am I after? A dream? Does the dream have a name? Or a price tag? Sooner or later, they’ll get to me… No one is unbreakable.
I come back crying to the March sleet, a failure, down the snake ladder, back to square one. One piece of checked-in luggage, one carry-on suitcase, one backpack. Carry on – but how? One, alone in a nine-storied block soaked with too many stories I’d rather forget. This gray city doesn’t know the me, who is, and I don’t know anyone here. The vile, violent Vil-nius.
Where are you from? What rock have you been living under – not knowing the bus ticketing system, not knowing the names and back stories of the current political players, thinking you can just say what you actually think on live air? I’m an other that’s supposed to be one of us.
I drink in the cultural scene, making up for the decade lost, recap the best of – soon, though, the cup is empty. Empty, I drink some more, mostly burned-tire-flavored whiskey. Mostly, the local social circles close when a stranger approaches – what do you want, we’ve got all the friends we need. I used to dance, lindy-hoppin’ my way through Melbourne and Paris, Washington, D.C., and Charleston, Santa Monica and NYC. In Vilnius, the evening anti-socials tempt me to jump through the window I’m leaning against. The wall flowers never bloom here, we don’t even talk to each other while waiting for that ask, which almost never comes. A dance birthed by the poor Black youths across the Atlantic, learning from the old-timers, and welcoming the war veterans and interwar-aficionados – here it’s a peacocking competition of the alpha personalities in their prime.
The gospel choir distrusts my faith. The secular choir won’t take me in without a man – an oversupply of variously capable women. An oversupply of fear and tension. A shortage of sisterhood. Did I ever learn to be one though?
A shapeshifter. Adding one ginger cat – M. – to the mix. One deer-skinned drum. More than once, I turn into a heron mid-afternoon, neck first, then proceed to caress the sky with my feet. From a shoulder length blond to a ginger bob, shedding my eyeglasses as I preen my feathers – the children’s book illustrator is confused: should she redraw my portrait?
*
Is it patriotic to stay for land, despite the people? Užupis feels like a little village, a curve on the hip of the city: the river runs right under my bedroom window. As I wade through the slushy cobble streets of January, the wood-burning stoves smell of the Middle Ages. Sneaky gusts play on the wind chimes on the oak in the yard (I come back to ring them now a few times a year). Back in November, I had gathered handful of acorns from a sacred grove and planted them in a flowerpot, almost as a joke – within two weeks the joke was on me: a fresh grove sprang up on my windowsill mid-winter, taking over every newly emptied peach can, every pickle jar. Spring reveals that by my kitchen window a skilled proprietor’s hand had made flower magic, planting hyacinth, narcissus, and tulips to bloom, in turn, on the same spot, in consolation. In the bestiary, the firefox M. is joined by the vicious tabby B., and the deaf elderly bitch Y. – I adopt the latter for walkies, but no running, thank you.
*
“She wants to go to the seaside” – it’s not just the Kooks, seems like a portion of Vilnius is moving to Nida. It’s a test, coming in the harsh season to see if I get it, or if the sea gets to me first. My hermitage is secluded, rented from the original Kurši: the grandpa was a fisherman back when Kunigiškės was a border, patrolled nightly by the soviet troops. The family grazed sheep – the sister shows me her scar from the shears – and planted potatoes right about where the fancy new duplexes are sprouting up. Kunigiškės is, literally, Priestland – must have been Lutheran priests though. They don’t celebrate Easter here. Latvians consider them basic, and Lithuanians – alien. My othered kin? By the sea, we’re all mostly other, and it’s all temporary. We meet and part – like sand and water: now soaked in a mantra jam – we share silence, too; now dry, in low tide – we don’t bother to text.
Against the wintry roar, I can scream out my pains, one by one. I can sing in a full voice, and the voice of the sea protects mine from judgmental ears. The micro-seasons are marked by the bodies washed up on the shore: the strip of sand is littered, in turn, by seals, small migrating birds, bees, jellyfish, cockchafers… Some bodies show signs of movement. Some crawlies give me the creeps. How many cockchafers would a good Samaritan turn over? Should I measure the good by the time devoted, or the number of bugs saved, or the number I passed? Would a litigious American bug trial convict me of negligence as I turn away?
I befriend the night, as it comes early in winter. Walking to the sea through the forest in deliberate darkness, I’m surprised I never bump into a pine. For much of the winter and fall, I bike back from a yoga class in the city through darkness too – not as deliberate, the city council doesn’t seem to think it worth their while to light up the paths off season. The foxes don’t mind, and soon enough I learn their system of intersections and traffic lights – the silver glint of their eyes. My neighbor tells me one of them is mad. My neighbor tells me I must be mad for planting coriander instead of parsley – where is my sense of tradition.
*
I lose track of time. It’s not Covid-19 – it takes me a few years to grasp what the rest of the country has gone through. It’s because my only neighbors within a few kilometers’ radius in Šakiai District are the house martens. Not the British shoegaze kind nor the shoe doctor kind – the actual wild fat furries. I watch them feast on frozen grapes from the roof in a December flurry. In May, the elderly tabby B. may have snagged one of their babies… So sorry, didn’t mean to intrude. Indeed, B. must be the local terror, delivering headless rodents to my doorstep daily. M. the firefox brings them whole. I tend to toss them into the same nettle ditch, “better luck next life,” a little prayer as I send them flying. I wonder what the archeologists will make of that accumulation of tiny skeletons. A ritual site perhaps?
A midsummer meadow stands as tall as my chest, hiding a band of lazy deer and a shy fox. For the first time, my great-grandmother’s story makes sense. When I was a little girl, she used to tell me of her childhood: she’d wear a floral dress, and if she’d squat “in the grass,” no one could find her for hours – to a kid who’d only seen patches of urban lawn, this sounded beyond incredulous. I cross the meadow for a swim, sometimes a few times a day, followed by my entourage – B., M., and Y. (Be Me – but whY?). I usually hear two buzzards circling above (should I name them?) – then suddenly it’s three. It’s August. Granny cries as I show her the wood-burning stove and photos of me jug-showering outside in winter – a lifestyle she’d worked so hard to escape.
August abundance. I sit outside, watching the sharp sickle of the moon at work – I can hear the apples bumping onto the damp evening grass. Alyvinis, antaninis, borovinka, melba, pepinas, rojaus – alphabetically, they pass through my hands into pancakes, a pie, a cider press. Funny choice – to start sober with an aspiring cider maker. Abundance, greater than any hands can handle. Some of the bumps stay on the hill through November, where deer and thrush manage to enjoy a fermented bite without tumbling down.
Don’t you live in America? I choose the red clay of the hundred-year-old furnace as a background for my next live commentary on national TV.
Winter brings me to the nearest traditional song circle some thirty kilometers away. To and from, I’m often the only light on the forest road, crossed by deer and fox, and an occasional hare. Women arrive in long homemade dresses and bring homemade bread. I’m so other that I’m safe from fitting in or taking over someone’s spot – mutually curious, we probe with care. They teach me the sacred geometry of straw gardens and cross-stitching. For the next nine months, I stitch some peonies while collegial voices from across the Atlantic tell me that “immediate deterrence is failing” during conference calls and ask about my “exit strategy” from this “gray zone conflict.” Conflict is something no village is too small for. We gather herbs and make ointments, but I still get my Covid-19 shots. We drum together, but I cannot march to the rhythm of Family Values.
For years, I still come back to sing – ye olden winter solstice songs are particularly precious. They invite me to do a poetry reading. I bring a bag of contemporary Lithuanian favorites. What is queer poetry? How is women’s poetry different? I invite them to draw from the pile and join in the reading. Then we drum. As I leave, a chubby gray cat – F. – hitches my ride. A replacement for the departing Y.? F it, why not.
*
I turn the wheel – of Toyota and of Fortune – Vilnius / Kaunas / Klaipėda? Any place seems as good, or as bad, as the next, revealing its teeth, in turn, in a grin and a growl, only after one spends some time there. Middle ground. Midland. Kaunas. It’s not like I haven’t been there before, but feeling, groping the face of Lithuanian nationalism with my bare hands – conservative and proud – this is new. Almost everyone has family stories dating back to Smetona’s times. The queer archive research group offers a guided tour of historical gay bars and meeting places – one such island survives today, a blue house with chicken legs. I shudder to recall a high school visit to Kaunas: seeing a teenager kicked by a bunch of others in broad daylight on Laisvės Alėja, everyone walking past, wanting no trouble. May not have even been gay, may have been his hair. Might as well have been Jewish some sixty-five years ago.
On Palm Sunday the bishop holds mass in a red brick church downtown. They’re looking for volunteers to carry procession banners. I offer to help. Women are not allowed. It’s not me whipping you, it’s the juniper, a slap across the face. It’s the city of basketball and Maironis. During “Poetry Spring,” quite a few priests come out to read their rhymes. “Read something juicy,” – the organizer whispers as my name is called. The city of Zikaras and Nėris, Cvirka and Sruoga – their creaky wooden villas spring to life on literary evenings. “Does he come around much?” – I hear an elderly dame making casual inquiries about Sruoga’s ghost to the perplexed museum worker. One afternoon, I scale the neighborhood fence to peek at Cvirkienė’s garden – now abandoned, like much of her artistic heritage. One afternoon I peak at the local archive of museum paintings in storage – ripped and cobwebbed, the ghosts of the authors have probably forsaken them too. I cry in helpless futility.
It’s not just the rivers of tears and artistic heights that form the cityscape – hills and rivers carve out impressive reliefs all around. March to May, I scale the steep slopes of Jiesia, training for my first mountain hike in Nepal. My course mate is a mountaineer, scaling the snow-capped oxygen-deprived heights every summer with the national flag. Half of my Facebook seems to be climbing along with him online, mirror neurons tensing leg muscles emphatically. The painters don’t seem to be drawing for Lithuania though, not much co-feeling, co-frustration, co-poverty. Smiling like a five-year-old, I send him a picture as I, too, circle the basecamp. He doesn’t always summit. We all congratulate him for an instinct to live, to stop. No talk of failure. When I fail, my mother feels a failure, reprimanding me over a splash of mud on her Sunday best face and the family name (which one, I wonder…). When do we sign up to represent, and how do I opt out?
*
Is New Vilna, like New York, so much better than the old – York? Little Saint Stephen, and the birds (not so little) tell me this may not be my last address. Feelnius – the writing’s on the wall. Feeling is what this space is for. I may be too close to a bubble, first one and then another and another, to see a city for what it is. And still feel forever other. The probability of encounters in the most peopled place is a mental fig leaf – are we not all denuded and denied, sooner or later? The fig I had shed. Made it and been unmade. Happy to water it now. Next to the fig, I plant tradition (peonies and rues) and avant-garde (sea buckthorn and smoke tree), utility (rosemary and thyme) and utterly pointless curiosity (oxalis). I am invited to Nida to read poems about squirrel-encis Vilnencis, and in Naujoji Vilnia, seagulls shit on my texts and seals remind me of spring. I dream of silver firs from my childhood in Druskininkai, and thoughts of grandmother’s orchard in Alytus cramp my mouth in acidic memory. I keep searching for a narrative axis, a lesson to learn. I thank the earth that holds me, carrying this stubborn self from one place to the next. I thank the circles that open even a little. I invite others into otherness.
