Remembrance of old

My Bulgarian grandmother never read. Some even thought she was not that smart. Yet she was completely bilingual. She taught me to live between languages. Now I write this not even in my mother tongue. Mother tongue…the self emerges from language like a body from the mother’s womb. Language gives shape to the self like mother’s body gives shape to the sensuality of flesh.

Each moment is a blank page. You know that moment well, if you write. A threshold I hover over, fear gripping my core, clinging to the illusion of permanence. So much paper. All these chapters, random articles about random philosophical thoughts of plotted individuals…Letters. Poems. Drafts. Why keep it all? Why not just recycle and be rid of it? Because one day, when all of this is a distant past gone through time's sifted oculum, flown beyond reach, this will be the only real proof that anything ever happened… if we live long enough to be that far from this.

I remember something from my childhood.

My father left when I was very young. In his place, there was a gaping space, an absence, which was somewhat dubiously filled by a succession of stepfathers. This story is about Peter, who was married to my mother during my formative childhood years. He was strangely philosophical about his pedagogies, for which I became a project of sort. One of his favorite pastimes was to practice target shooting with his air rifle. He’d shoot at anything – flowers, cherries on a tree, bottles, birds. With birds, it was always difficult for me. I hoped he would miss, because when he didn’t, I would have to fetch it, like a faithful dog on a hunt. I learned not to give in to my feelings for the small, weightless, dead body, as I was conflicted about the pride I knew I was supposed to feel at a success of his aim.

He had a good aim. Nine times out of ten, he’d hit his target.

Sometimes he would ask me to hold an apple in my hand, away from my body, and he, standing about twenty, thirty feet away, would shoot it off. I remember standing there, the weight of the fruit in my hand, watching him aim, and then with a sharp whiff of air, the apple would fly, with spits of juicy flesh landing on my arm, dripping, sweet, sticky, like the blood it could have been. It was a routine exercise. I don’t remember fear or hesitation, or mistrust. Trust was never in question, I was there to hold the apple, that was all.

One day, he had just shot an apple from my hand, and asked me to put another on my head.

He stood there and aimed. And aimed. He aimed for a long time. I waited and I had no fear. Still, he didn’t shoot. He lowered the gun, stood there for a moment. Perhaps he struggled with an ego that needed to shoot and the sense of responsibility for a life of a child. I don’t know.

He aimed again, for a long time. Something has changed. This was not the familiar routine. This took longer, time stretched. I remember a moment of boredom, and then a strange tension. Still, I don’t think it was fear. I felt a certainty he would shoot, and get the apple off my head.

After the longest time, he lowered the gun again, and turned away. He would not shoot, not at my head. But I didn’t fear. I faced him, unflinching. In a way, that was how, as a child, I have learned to face anything.

And today, still, I can. In honor of my grandmother, in between languages, in silent conversation, I surrender to each next moment.