In the Loop

Lots of Lithuanian Literary Luck

Labas from Chicagas —

Okay that quip worked better in my brain - Labas is hello in Lithuanian and in the Lithuanian equivalent of “spanglish” - where you run endings onto American words to make them native to your own language, you can add “as” to any English word to turn it into a masculine Lithuanian noun… so it should be funny and rhyme. But in this case, Chicago in Lithuanian is a feminine word (Čikaga) which makes absolutely no sense. So much for intercultural giggles.

If you have to explain it, it ain’t funny.

The Parliament - courtesy of a very generous and lovely patron

This week I flew to the windy — and now earthquakey — city to shake things up a bit.

First thing I did when I got here was to go see David Byrne’s THEATER OF THE MIND. The show ran 75 minutes, felt like 15, and was utterly baffling/wonderful. I wish I could have seen him perform it himself. The actress playing David lacked his deeply intellectual quirky personality, though she was talented and enjoyable. But some people just radiate charisma, and David Byrne is one of those humans.

At 9:30am on June 22th, I read a poem at the ribbon cutting for the new events location of the Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture on Michigan Avenue, close to The Bean. Earlier in the week, I had a great conversation at The Poetry Foundation with Chris Guzaitis and Pushcart winning poet Teresa Dzieglewicz about poets vs writers. Are they different or is poet a subset of writer?

How does the English language deal with sets and subsets? Does the language do it well? If you can say “poets and writers,” can you say, for example, “Beagles and Dogs” or “Daisies and Flowers” without implying anything further?

And what IS the short-fiction equivalent of “poet”? Why is there no one-word to describe a short fiction writer? (Me, I like fictionista.)

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WRITING NEWS

I have news!! A wonderful translator in Vilnius, Irena Alperyte, who studied a long time at NYU, liked my short story collection well enough that she took on translating them one at a time — and each time she finishes one it has been getting accepted for publication in a Lithuanian literary journal! So far I have three in the pipeline…

This week my story “Still Life with Summer Cherries” (translated by her into Lithuanian) is in print in the Vilnius-based bi-weekly arts and culture journal, Šiaurės Atėnai. Their website is lovely—it reminds me of The Atlantic—and its editor informed me, approximately two weeks from now the story will be released digitally on this platform as well. Good news for my Lithuanian-reading audience.

The opening of Balzekas by the Bean - the new events location of the Balzekas Lithuanian-American Museum - was so star-studded with ambassadors and consuls I can’t even believe it. The former President of Lithuania was there. I took so many photos these past 48 hours I had to split them into two Facebook posts. Here’s the first round - the second will be on my page within the next five hours of so.

Tomorrow is the Folk Dance Festival. Watch my socials to see photos of the dancing!

The poem I read in Chicago at the museum opening is by Lithuanian poet Algis Mačiukas, written in 2023 for the anniversary of an historical museum.

I translated an excerpt:

Guarded, safe - so many
exhibits,
relics,
a diversity of secrets
illuminating our past
with its twists and turns.

The way the displayed
photographs showing
the River Pasvalys
extending, branching out, growing

—A treasury of deep history—
—Foundations buried within—

teach us how grain was sown
in olden days;
Depict ways
we can learn; teach us
that the churn and collision of river ice
bring us happiness,
as though this was an ordinary day…
wholeheartedly and with great spirit—

Let us thrive together another hundred years!

Today, we writers wish you
a future of wonderful days,
and we hope that the twists of history
shower us with delightful surprises.

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I also attended Lost Boys on Broadway in NYC which was spectacular - everything worked in flawless ensemble: the voices, the lighting, the costumes, the sets! All of it.

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Random Final Thought

A thing I keep forgetting about Chicago is that the highest floors of the skyscrapers - and indeed the exteriors of nearly every building in the Loop - are infested with spiders. Bridge spiders they are called and they are not small and they are not afraid and there are generations of them feasting on the summoned insects attracted by the bright lights. I see them whenever I’m up in a high-floor hotel, yet I do not think about them when I walk at street level and above me there are thousands and thousands and thousands of spiders, and the only thing between us is the false hope tangled up in webs… and the law of gravity.

skyscraper spider

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