Black Cat in Georgetown

Because I could not stop for Death
He kindly stopped for me
(Emily Dickinson: Time and Immortality)

Pisica mea se spala

Cu laba stinga,

Iar o sa avem un razboi.

Fiindca, am observat,de cite ori se spala

Cu laba stinga,

Creste considerabil incordarea

Internationala

(Marin Sorescu: Superstitie)

Ai spus:
Pune-ti la brau pumnalul din zahar ars
Si mergi de cauta lumina
...
Sau mai bine o narghilea
Cu sange si seva
Arzand pana tarziu
(Ionela Chiru: Narghilea & Vacile Domnului)




I have smoked my nargileh
With holly men & sing-song writers
(S. Sandrigon: Song of Shisha, Hookah Poetry)

Firstly I saw the hookahs on the window. A tobacconist on the Bridge Street in Georgetown, selling all kind of stuff: hookahs and cigars, tobacco and tobacco pipes, and tobacco bags and boxes, metallic boxes and wooden boxes, lighters and matches, and so on, and so on. Then I saw the other shop window: a lady with a scythe was riding gently a motorbike. It seemed actually that she had just stopped and was now looking at me, very interested: an open invitation.

I didn't know what to say, then I saw the black cat. Suddenly all this started to have a meaning to me.

There were several recollections: that morning long time ago when I had visited a large photographic show in Bucharest, at Dalles, a retrospective of Aurel Mihailopol, probably the greatest Romanian artist photographer of the sixties. The last photo in the show was a black cat and a chair; and some verses by Marin Sorescu. The verses were kind of a weird hymnal to the cat. I liked them immediately, for their superb craziness (I would have learned after many years that the correct term wasn't craziness, rather post-modernism). I found them again, these verses of Sorescu, just one week ago, on a Romanian web page (Mariana Ciutacu: Despre superstitii. Si despre coincidente).

Other thing: it happened that I watched this last week a small movie on dvd, made by Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid: The Private Life of a Cat.

And now, the black cat.

Everything had now sense. The lady on the bike was to remind me in a funny way a small piece of poetry that I enjoyed enormously some time ago: the verses of Emily Dickinson.

So I tried some photos and some videos: a very humble homage to Emily Dickinson, Maja Deren, Hammid, Mihailopol, Sorescu; a homage to all hookah smokers and hookah poets and guitarists (Ionela Chiru and Sandrigon included), and, of course, also to Creanga:

Pashol, Vidma, na turbinca!

(Washington, District of Columbia)