Bruegels' Mad Meg vanquising foes, real and imagined
at the Museum Mayer van den Bergh, Antwerp.
Scenes of the old City Center and Elfde
Gobod on Torfbrug
It was hard leaving
Romania.
Plans between the
three of us –flights, life details, schedules can tricky.
We don’t worry about the details.
We do what we can
do.
We take what we
can get.
Which tends to
be a yearly trip.
Into a mystery.
But we never know where its coming.
Rob had been in Romania for days, exploring the Transylvanian
myths, learning about Vlad the Impaler, exploring Dracula’s castle, as I was
going to do with him.
But Easter was late,
pushing break well past the Spring.
A few hours
later, I made my way to the airport.
The plane full of
Romanian handball players horsing around on our
flight to Poland.
All those black
and white sweat suits, like the Olympics all those years ago.
When Nadia was king,
catapulting through
history.
Perfect 10 in ’76.
Silver medal in Moscow
1980.
Obsolete at 23.
Dark days.
Leaving her country
in ’89,
Months before the Revolution.
"“Romanians
have a saying, 'Not every dog has a bagel on its tail,'”
Explained Comaneci.
“ It means that not
all streets are paved with gold. When I began my career, I just wanted to do
cartwheels.”
Romania left us wondering,
Feeling the same way.
Hoping.
Running away from New York, Bruce Benderson found
himself there making new friends, doing
a few cartwheels of his own.
“Of course, a blow job given in friendship isn't the most
arousing, but it stays in the memory longer,” he wrote after a short stay, tracing the outlines of a new novel, The Romanian: Story of an Obsession.
The feeling lingers.
Sad to leave it.
I thought looking at the handball team on the flight,
Talking about Nadia with coaches.
The team
Snapping photos of
each other.
Leaving me to dream on the way to
Brussels
Antwerp
Alive and bawdy.
Sex and art on
the edges,
As a good
city needs,
High dancing
with low.
Cultures
colliding,
People sleeping in
the train station.
Spray paint on the walls:
“Leave us
alone, signed the girls.”
“Vulva La Revolution”
Overlapping flavors.
History here there.
Colonial pasts.
World Wars.
An migration mix.
Openness
International.
Bodies everywhere.
“I feel good. Going
back to Romania to see my mom,” noted a friend at the station,
On the way to Antwerp
from Gare De Nord.
Visiting friends.
Reading Master
and Margarita,
sympathy for the devil.
Moscow Magic
realism.
Northern Masters, Memling,
Bruegel, Jan van Eyck, Roger van der Weyden,
High
art and low.
Building
on each.
Off to Ruben’s House.
Bruegel the Elder’s Dulle
Griet, or Mad Meg, a figure of Flemish folklore, a 1563 oil-on-panel.
A
collective memory,
Battling
demons,
Chasing
enemies
Inside and
out.
Real
and imagined.
a looming reality or a bad dream,
a collective memory or a fantasy.
Her sword
drawn.
In Lives of the Netherlandish
Painters (Het Schilderboeck, Amsterdam 1604) Karel van Mander,
described, “the composition's
main character - an armoured witch-like figure armed with a sword, cutlery and
money-box - as: "a Mad Meg pillaging at the mouth of Hell", although
he gave no clue as to the narrative or meaning of the picture… There is a
madcap, topsy turvy feeling to this apocalyptic work of religious art,
personified by the deranged Griet who returns from (or advances toward) the
mouth of Hell. Some art scholars have interpreted the work as the Breaking
of the Seventh Seal, as foretold in the Book of Revelations - the last book
of the New Testament.”
A mystery.
After encountering her, I am lost.
Wandering Antwerp,
Through streets.
Past a Cathedral,
Into the vine covered Elfde Gobod on Torfbrug.
Just a
coffee please.
Past a bookstore.
Past red lights,
Workers in windows.
Lonely.
Desolate.
Walking Roberto Bolaño’s Antwerp,
Watching
“I wrote this book for the ghosts, who, because they're
outside of time, are the only ones with time… time isn't the only thing that
matters, time isn't the only source of terror. Pleasure can be terrifying too,
and so can courage.”
Contending with something else,
A feeling that
accompanies Roberto:
“a secret sickness called Lisa. Like all sicknesses, it's
miserable and it comes on at night.”
And even during the day.
Back to Brussels
Onto the subway,
Back to the street car.
Meeting James for a final drink off Subway Louise.
Before making my way
back home.
I already miss it.
Morning
Passing through as so many others have done.
Suns up, and off we go,
through Warsaw, West, West, West.
Back to Brooklyn.
See you next year Jamesy!
Time for a Tyskie and pierogis on an unexpected layover in Warsaw. The road offers countless surprises. Sometimes good, as long as I make my flight.
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