Chapter 5 How much time is left
Iara:
I did not like roses very much / Until my mother left our
world / Her name was Rosa / Since then I have longings / In all these roses
Ze'ev:
Before my mother passed away
I did not like roses
Her name was Rosa
Iara:
Once I used to invent myself / To be like my mother wanted /
More neat / special / Today I'm just myself
I was too orderly, the best schoolgirl, not horny enough ...
too worried ... you have a good mother in memory ... but my mother wanted me to
be different. I was afraid of her. I've never been good enough for her. Only
when she got cancer did she stop driving me crazy ... I found myself, I was
completely liberated, this year ... two years after she died. For a year I
tried to write ... I could not. Now it comes to me ... it's also a release.
Today I'm like I can be, not like anyone wants ... There really are such
mothers. That's why there are psycho analysts ... To this day I'm afraid ...
hope she will not think, up there, that I do not love her!
Ze'ev:
I was born to a mother
That had not matured
A cowardly, frightening
Mother
I've never been enough for her
I was liberated only after she died
Yet
I'm still afraid
She would not know in heaven
That my love for her
Is endless
Iara:
Red was bleeding / no longer a child / She with her red I
with my gray hair / How much time is left?
My little daughter received her first period yesterday. I
think of the panic along with the excitement. Fear to grow.
Ze'ev:
As time goes by
Time gets color
My daughter is red in her first
bleeding
I'm growing gray in my hair
How much time is left?
Iara:
My sister's hair falls / like autumn leaves in the wind
I could not go on ... hoping her hair would grow after the
treatment. That the fall in a year's time would not take her hair nor her.
Cancer is scary.
Ze'ev:
A difficult subject
Iara:
Waiting for words to help. But everything is silent, and I
just see the hair falling out. Soon we'll go to the hairdresser, to take down
what's left. Two sisters at the hairdresser. It used to be a party! It's good
there are wigs. Maybe we should start with prayers?
Ze'ev:
Soon they will go to the hair salon
To take off what had not dropped out
From the chemotherapy
Two sisters at the hair salon
It used to be a party
It's good to have
Wigs
Words
And prayers
Iara:
Lungs looking for air/ there is no air/ no strength/
everything is heavy/ a spoon/ a fork/ waiting for what? / how long to live? /
how long to die?
My sister-in-law, was hospitalized today in Tel Aviv, in a
very difficult situation. She is young, 56, but we do not know if she will get
out of it.
Ze'ev:
Everything is heavy
A teaspoon
A fork
Why wait?
Why live?
Iara:
I'm sitting here waiting for you/ for our shared writing/
while she/ is lying in a bed/ full of tubes/ waiting to rest/ to breathe/ for
air/ for her sister.
It's Strange that while I'm celebrating life, my
sister-in-law is dying. It is strange to feel life and death equally, in the same
intensity, in two opposite directions. Death also strengthens my joy of life
...
Ze'ev:
Waiting for my pair in bed
Full of dreams
While she is
Dying in a hospital
Wishing to breathe
Without tubes
Iara:
From a wound that a surgical knife opened / I see from the
inside / the same one that was once inside me
My son underwent an operation on the shoulder today. I was
with him in the operating room, accompanied him. The blood of the skin and
flesh that came out with each of the surgeon's movements with the scalpel in
his hand painted my eyes in red. I thought that once my son saw me from the
inside.
Ze'ev:
My son underwent an operation on his
shoulder today
Through the blood, skin, and flesh
I saw from within
The same one that was once inside me
Iara:
This time I wrote in Portuguese and translated into Hebrew.
it was difficult for me.
Iara:
How do you measure the time? How do you measure the distance
/ By the clock? / By the changing of the seasons? / By miles? / By memories? /
By emotions? / By the size of children's clothes? / By the time it takes for a
letter to arrive? / By the pain of yearning? By the tears of departures? Not
the hours and miles count / love determines / the time and the distance
Ze'ev:
Are there any other time "measurements" you have not
inserted? Nice idea.
Iara:
In a bedroom that had emptied / in a voice that had
disappeared
I thought about distances on the phone and on Facebook. With
time, you begin to forget ... memories remain in the distance. When someone is
away, we wait for the phone to ring, and it always seems like eternity before
it rings. The phone shortens distances, but not always ... When it's closed
everything moves away again. The same applies to Facebook or the Internet.
Everything comes too fast, seems to be short, but we cannot embrace through the
Internet, and then everything goes away... The pictures are also usually put on
Facebook for those who are far away to know a little what goes on. I thought of
a distance between the page, when you read, and the eyes. The distance grows
when we grow older till we need glasses.
Ze'ev:
Time is measured not only by the
clock
Distance, not only by the ruler
But also
By the size of my children's clothes
By the Emptiness of their rooms
By their vanished voices
With the sound of their footsteps
And reappears after the phone rings
Iara:
I was filled with sensations / which awakened the hearing /
the sight / the whole body feels the atmosphere / (too much information) / the
words got deleted / with all my thoughts
When you're afraid, the whole body seems to wake up to
protect itself, and then there's no room for thoughts... I had a feeling of
fear today: What's good in waiting? What could happen? My sister-in-law died of
a genetic disease. It was difficult for me until I knew that my husband does
not have this gene, and therefore our children too. We waited a few months for
results. All this came back to me today.
Ze'ev:
The subject is not feelings and thoughts but fear of a
genetic disease. Here is a new topic that I have not read about yet.
Iara:
I was afraid to think ... If I had thought I would have been
afraid to lose my children. Afraid of strange diseases, I do not know even
their names. It's too heavy ... It's too much of a threat ... How can you write
a poem about it?
Ze'ev:
We fall asleep
Hugging like so
Smiling
As if there were no nightmares
As if there were no genetic diseases
That lurk to gnaw
And deaths for fools
Iara:
The news are old / only the places or the names change / we
die / born / win / lose / the same stories / as if the time repeats itself / as
if it does not pass / its rolling
Ze'ev:
Again and again we are born
Again and again we die
Only the names change
They return
In reincarnations
You improved on the last poem. Go on like this.
Iara:
What improved?
Ze'ev:
The theme of the poem is clear. No need to ask what the story
is behind it. There were no spelling mistakes.
Iara:
Time makes my children's clothing smaller / increases the
clothes of my parents' parents / distances us from the ground / gets us closer
to the sky / In the end it buries everything / leaving ghosts.
Ze'ev:
Time makes my children's clothes
small
Makes bigger the clothes of my
grandparents
Gets us far from the ground
Close to the sky
In the end, everyone dies
Bending down
To smell the graves
Iara:
I wanted to talk about death, because it the end and the
grave. You can also think that the time is healing. At first, we leave the
earth toward the sky, and eventually we return to the ground.
Iara:
Fire and smoke / body burns / no grave / no stone / no end /
The name will survive
I was really excited when I asked to burn my body. I'm not my
body, and I hate to think of a place, a tombstone, to visit, to leave flowers,
stones, candles and tears in my honor. That they will make sure to pay every
month to a gardener or just for the land, just because of a dead body, which in
any case turns into dust. Let the bodies burn and be thrown anywhere, be free,
take care of life.
Ze'ev:
What do we do to remember that we will die?
Iara:
My mother, who is not, is everywhere, in everything. Not
painful, not missing. The day the body turns into a corpse is already big
enough, like when a baby is born, like a first kiss ... like a first word that
one says, like the alarm when you're in kindergarten and you have to run to the
shelter. So why the tombstone? Why a wedding? So many rituals. That body turns
into dust is a thought about speed, I mean, it's all over quickly. I feel like
dust now. This body is not me. I do not have a certain age. When did I start to
be? Does it have a beginning or an end?
Ze'ev:
For years I forgot I'll die
But yesterday I remembered
And I sat for hours on a gravestone
In the Jewish cemetery of São Paulo
To think about my body
Let it burn
Iara:
Cemetery / in a zoo. / Dolphins jumped from the water /
kissed children who passed / on their cheeks / in a dream I had
Ze'ev:
A cemetery for dolphins?
Iara:
A cemetery for people that is also a zoo. There is also a
lake with dolphins, and they jumped to kiss passing children. Death lived under
my feet, I swear.
Ze'ev:
What do you think this dream means?
Iara:
I was surprised by the dream because animals on a cemetery
for me is how we live our life on the basis of death, of end. The animals die
and become the ground we tread on. It's about the end of the body. I have a
feeling that the dream also brings the irrational, sensual world, which is more
connected to life.
Ze'ev:
Now, in this moment, I'm getting
divorced
From the garden surrounded by four
rivers of eternity
To the zoo that is built inside a
cemetery
Where the dolphins jump out of the
artificial lake
To lick the salt from the tears on my
cheek
Iara:
Four rivers are from the Bible?
Ze'ev:
This is from Genesis 2:10.
"A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from
there it was separated into four headwaters".
Iara:
Divorce and expulsion is the same root in Hebrew? Divorce is
only about marriage?
Ze'ev:
Divorce and expulsion have the same root in Hebrew. The
"divorce from" in this poem is special in that it is intended for
actions that a person brings upon himself. in Hebrew, the word divorce
generally denotes something that happened without anyone being responsible.
When you say, "I'm getting divorced from the garden," it means you're
doing it to yourself, not God.
Iara:
Time passes and I'm leaving soon. What I have learned lately
is that there is a possibility within me of learning Hebrew again, writing,
making connections, and that is what is important to me now. Time does not
always repeat itself. Surprises change it. Maybe that's why art is so important,
poetry, writing, movies, photographs, anything that gets you out of the wheel.
Reminds you that there is life within life. In the meantime, I'm writing to
you, so you can correct, and then answer. So, the writing is shared from the
beginning. I always see you looking over my shoulder to see what will come out.
One-day it will be worth to tell about this whole experience.
Iara:
In Brazil they say "oi" instead of the Hebrew
"hey". It's nice, but you must be laughing, because it sounds as if
it hurts. When there's pain we say "ai", and you say
"aya-aya". How does the dog bark in Hebrew? In Portuguese, it is
"ao ao".
Ze'ev:
In literary Hebrew "hav- hav", which means bring-
bring. In speech, "hao-hao". This "ai" is also in Hebrew,
and there is even a riddle about it: "what city did Joshua conquer?"
And if you do not know the answer, they pinch you until you say "Ai".
It's a nice idea to write a poem about the difference between the cultures in
Israel and in Brazil, but you have to find a difference in which there is an
expression of something personal, and add to it the "oi" and the
"ao-ao".
Iara:
They no longer say in Hebrew "Shalom". They say
"hey" - it's short and festive. Nor do they ask "what's
heard" - they ask "what's going on". As if what you do is more important than what
you think or feel. It happens to me, when I'm in Israel, that it's hard for me
not to say "oi" and even in parting, if I do not say
"Chao," it's as if I did not part. When I was in France, where they
use "Chao" to say goodbye (it comes from the Italians), I always
thought they say it to honor me, because they knew that this was how Brazilians
separate.
Ze'ev:
"What's heard" is an old-fashioned and
incomprehensible expression. What do we hear? What did you hear? "What's
happening" ("Ma Koreh") is a true and dynamic expression because
of the R. There are a lot of antiques in Hebrew that used to be
"working" and are less "working" nowadays, for example,
"Tzafra Tava".
Iara:
What is "Tzafra Tava"?
Ze'ev:
Good Morning.
Iara:
Maybe "what's heard" was how it was when there was
no phone. They had to tell what they heard, and pass it on. And "what
happens" is less personal than "how are you". In Brazil they
say, "oi, e aí ", meaning "hi" and "there" and
"with you" ... it's like "what's going on".
Ze'ev:
What's going on when it's all over?
What will we smell, when we start to
smell, eh?
What will we touch? What will touch
us, Rub us?
What will we taste after the Last
Supper?
Let's wait and see.
Iara:
I had a relative who had a bass voice and an athlete's body.
He would ask quickly and hard, "What's happening," ["ma
koreh"] with a rolling R - maybe that's the impression I have left of this
expression, R rolling is stronger than the SH of "what's heard ["ma
nishma"]." That's all subjective. "Ma-nishma" is a rhyme
so, it's supposed to be stronger than "ma koreh", but it's out of
fashion because grammatically it's not clear what the question is. "Ma
koreh" is so new to me that every time I heard it I laughed ... I had the
feeling that it was a joke. "Ma-nishma" reminds little towns, gossip.
But also, stories that can be interesting. As if asking and waiting for an
answer with curiosity ...
"How are you" always embarrassed me - it takes a
medical association. The young people skip all this mess and ask,
"What?" At most it is accompanied by a twist of the palm in the sense
of a question. Before that there was a fashion of "What's the matter,
brother?" When I returned to Brazil, I told everyone that in Israel people
only think about peace, and peace is in all their blessings. "How are
you?" (how is your peace) always seemed warm to me, as if you were asking
if something was worrying you, or everything was all right. After so many wars,
the word may have lost its meaning. There is no peace, so why ask?
Ze'ev:
But the "peace" at the top of any official letter
is still very useful even though there is no peace.
Iara:
I remembered "what's going on." I think the young
people invent a language that will be theirs, and we, the adults, enjoy it and
steal from it, and then they have to invent something else. That's why
"peace" changes all the time.
I slept today after noon, to be awake now. I never sleep in
the afternoon ... maybe it brings me ideas.
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