I am such a Brazilian woman-1

Front Cover

Hey,

I am such a Brazilian woman

Crying, laughing

Hoping, fearing

Hating, loving

Me, you

And all in a such a big way

 I Am Such a Brazilian Woman

 by Iara Czeresnia and Ze'ev Barkan

To my father and mother, Zezinho, my children and life

English translation of the original Hebrew script by Ze'ev Barkan

Poetry translation edited by Avril Meallem

Hebrew Edition Iton 77 Publishing House, Tel Aviv, Israel, August 2017

©

Iara Czeresnia & Ze-ev Barkan

iara.czeresnia@gmail.com

zeevveez@gmail.com   Tel. -972-2-6785636

Chapter 1 First Kiss

Iara:

Shalom Ze'ev,

I am Iara Czeresnia, the Brazilian friend of Shachar. I learned to speak Hebrew when I was 13 and now, when I am 50, I learned to write and read in this wonderful language. Not that I did not know anything and it was a kind of miracle ... it was somehow kept inside of me. I lived in Israel between 1965 and 1969, so I learned to read and write a little. So, this is also the language of my childhood. It was fun to read what you wrote on the Internet about the senses. Bye - Iara.

Ze'ev:

It makes me very happy that you read and loved what I wrote. I am also always delighted to be in touch with lovers of the Hebrew language.

Iara:

Here is the first poem I ever wrote:

The words dance in my mind

Zoom in zoom out

Like clouds

Cover the sunlight

Darken my thoughts

Where do they lead?

To pain, loneliness, yearning

Words are born

When there is nothingness instead of being

There is no chair,

But there is a word for the picture in the mind

Of a chair which is not there

Then there's a chair in the mind

And the loved ones who are not here

Their names bring them, or the longing for them?

Their names remind us that they are not here

When will they be?

Will they be?

Every new road is an invitation

For the time to bring me new roads

Where do the new roads lead?

I'm immersed in horror

Ze'ev:

Amazing! This poem has depth. It is true that it speaks in simple words, but it has originality, it sounds beautiful. One can feel that the person behind the poem is a creative person. If you have or will have more poems please send them to me.

Iara:

Here is what I wrote in Portuguese, a memory from Klil, I was there with Shachar a few months ago, and then translated it for him so that he could understand:

Slowly, the sun brightens the blue of the Mediterranean that spreads far away, the mirror of the silence and the strange peace that dwell in my loneliness. A modest balcony, a swinging hammock, the fragrance of the morning mixes with the tobacco smell of a lit cigarette and the smell of fresh hot Turkish coffee. The birds sing with the sounds of the wind, giving birth to the day. The memories of a goddess dancing in the evening, a cloth in her hand, on the same balcony, turn the floor into a ballroom. Always the distant sea, takes salty tears out of my eyes, bits of the same sea. Gracias A La Vida!

Ze'ev:

I've polished what you wrote and now it's a poem which you can send to Shachar if you want:

The sun brightens

 The blue color of the Mediterranean

 That spreads in the distance -

A mirror of the silence and strange peace

That dwell in my loneliness

Always the sea

Extracts salty tears from my eyes

Now that we discovered that you are a poet you must start writing. What a wonderful thing!

Iara:

Tender / Touch / Like First Kiss / / Fireworks / Flowers / Birds in the Heart /
First Touch / Second Touch / New Touch / Old Touch / Flowers / Birds / Kisses / Fireworks

Ze'ev:

The beginning is good, all these short sentences. The rest is too repetitive. A poem should surprise. Every word should be surprising. You need to develop the theme of the kiss.

Iara:

What are the hands and feet doing / When the tongue does not know yet / And the lips are inside the teeth? / Hands / Looking for breasts / Finding mouth and ears / The feet are melting / And the tongue is still learning / It is possible to breathe for a moment

You really take me seriously, it's hard to believe it's worth it. I'm still in great excitement, and everything seems to me like a game.

In this poem, I tried to describe a first kiss. I saw a funny picture: a boy and a girl looking in the eyes, not knowing where to put their hands. Approaching with an open mouth, afraid of the teeth. Do not know whether to close or open the mouth. And what about the glasses? The hands do not know whether to hug or pry, afraid of the breasts, go up to the shoulders, reach the ears. And the tongue still does not know whether to get in or out. And now the lips come in between the teeth. The feet melt.

Ze'ev:

Here's your new poem:

A boy and a girl looking in the eyes -

Heads approaching

Open mouth

Afraid of the teeth

Do not know what to do with

The hands

The legs

The glasses

The hands, that are afraid of the breasts

Go up to the shoulders

Reach the ears

The tongue is undecided: to get out or to go in?

The lips come in between the teeth

The feet melt

Now it is possible to breath

Iara:

It makes me happy to have so few corrections!! I begin to understand that you have to say everything, as in analysis, if we want people to understand what we mean. We have to show, without fear, if not, they will not understand ... I was ashamed of the game, of the nonsense. It is not easy to write.

Ze'ev:

<It is not easy to write> There are a few simple things that help: check words in the dictionary. Do not waste energy over too many images.  The main thing is not to say what you've heard; - write new things. In prose, - every sentence has to be new. In poetry, - every word. We know when a poem is good, and we remember it. It's like a kick in the face, something you do not forget.

Iara:

Inside my eyes I saw the lights of your eyes lighting up my soul / Adam and Eve when they saw their naked bodies realized their death.
What were they ashamed of? Shame is a kind of fear, and fear is always connected to fear of death. In my opinion creation-itself tells about the stages of development: at first, it's all one, because in the womb the baby and the mother are really one. Then there's light, we're born, but we do not know yet that it's not one, that it's two. We distinguish between air and water (breathing), Sea and land (Maybe breasts full of milk versus hunger), and only then there's a place for thinking (that plants and animals will grow), and the mother begins naming everything, teaching what is cold, what hurts, what hunger is, and what is I and what is you.

You appeared in my dream in the form of the poet Vinícius de Moraes / my mother appeared in the form of a rose / and I smiled joyfully. I do not know what you look like ... and my mother was called Rosa. Vinícius de Moraes has songs that are known all over the world. One of them is - Garota de Ipanema - the girl from Ipanema, which had been translated into Hebrew.

Ze'ev:

You appeared in my dream

 in the form of Vinícius de Moraes

My mother appeared in the form of a rose

I smiled happily

Iara:

Three sunflowers / In a flowerpot / Were falling off / Thousands of sunflowers /In a near- the- border-field / Caused my soul /To blossom

Ze'ev:

I did not understand what had happened.

Sunflowers do not fall off.

"My soul" is a worn-out word that should not be used.

Iara:

I want to say that the sunflower field, about which I read in the book written by Shachar, woke me up. His sunflowers were more vivid than the flowers I had in my flowerpot.

Here's a new option:
Sunflowers lust for the light since dawn / sinking into them / direct rays of sun / sucking their heat / arousing old / forgotten passions in me / like a shadow in the water

Ze'ev:

Sunflowers lust for the light since dawn

For the straight rays of the sun

And their warmth

They arouse

Forgotten old passions

Like a shadow in the water

Iara:

The pain / When it is written on a piece of paper / Becomes a written word – That's all

Ze'ev:

Pain passes through words like an epidemic. Sartre wrote a novel called "The Nausea," and many young Europeans imitated the protagonist of the novel, displaying poses of nausea in dress, in speech. Pain inspires identification. You do not read about suffering in the paper and say: "This is something I already know". It touches you.

Iara:

I'm talking about inner pain, when you write about it, and suddenly it looks different. I have this feeling when I write. I just saw a film by Almodóvar, and I'm sure that if he had not made films he would have gone mad. The words organize the senses, and then people don't lose their minds. Maybe I'm talking about a certain pain, pain of confusion, fear, pain about what is not known ...

Ze'ev:

There is writing that heals. As an expert on psychiatry, you probably know that. When people write they process their traumatic experience, break it apart, dissolve it. It starts with doing something, and by not standing aside with that lump in your throat, helplessly.

Iara:

There is a Brazilian writer I love very much, Clarice Lispector, who said she wrote in order not to die. Maybe I was trying to talk from the point of view of the writer, not the reader. If it is written with all your heart, the reader will also feel it ... But I also think that you can never describe in words exactly what you feel. When you write about a smell, you do not actually smell. Everyone imagines something else. I'm confused ...

Ze'ev:

Why are you writing?

Iara:

You've heard my thoughts. This conversation brought me a thousand questions. Why am I writing? Why in Hebrew? Why to you? I do not have an answer. But now that I started it is as if I'd been waiting for it all my life. Every little thing I write and need to think about illuminates something else. When a poem comes out, when it seems ready, when I feel something is understood, it feels great. I feel like continuing. And I am very afraid that it will disappear and I will lose everything, that it's all an illusion, if not a hallucination. That everything would suddenly explode in the air like a balloon ... that it is all virtual, unreal.

I write because I don't succeed not to write / Since I started / Everything around me looks different / The eyes are more accurate / As if I have the correct glasses / The colors are clearer / And I see myself / In what I write / Reveal someone I did not know / Another me / And maybe in writing I invent/ A virtual world / A Iara that does not exist / And the endless question / Who am I / Returns

Ze'ev:

When I write

The eyes sharpen

As if I have the right glasses