American story - Magic (electric) power

MAGIC (ELECTRIC) POWER

An American Story

Life is full of magical events. In fact, life itself is magic. But the most magical events are to be encountered on the road. Whenever you leave home, you open the door to experience inexplicable extraordinary events.

  Visiting the United States for the first time, for the International Writing Program in Iowa, I was pretty excited. Consequences followed soon, weird things began to happen. On the very first day, we got trapped in an elevator.

  “An extraordinary accident,” said our house-host Mary. “Can’t happen again.”

   On the next day Mary got stuck in the elevator.

  Well, I wasn’t surprised at all when, the same day, we got into the campus bus and it wouldn’t budge. When we got home, there was a fire alarm, a false one. The next evening I was playing tennis with Alan, an Australian colleague. Suddenly the lights went out and we were plunged into darkness. Soon after, the air conditioning in my room stopped working. When I went out for help, locking the door behind me, I could not get back in because the lock had somehow got jammed. In short, every technical device around me, that could possibly collapsed, broke down under the force of my enthusiastic, psychic energy.

  However, within a week or two I settled in and things around me came back to order. Later I went for a two-week trip to the East Coast, and when I returned, the whole chain of strange events repeated themselves. Finally, the daily routine prevailed, and only one, but constant, mysterious event disturbed it till the end of my stay.

  In front of our dormitory stretched a line of street lamps. Whenever I walked home at night, one particular lamp always switched off the moment I approached it and switched on when I passed. The lamp was easy to recognize because a speed limit sign was fixed to the post. Many times I forgot that the lamp was going to say good night to me and was surprised when it did.

  Once an American colleague gave me a ride home from a literary event, and before we came to my street I told her about this “my” lamp. Even before I had finished, I was wondering if the lamp would blink at this time.

  “You know,” I said, “we are in the car, maybe it will not recognize me at that speed and distance…”

  But as we approached the lamp, it switched off and we almost crashed into it. My colleague stopped the car and looked at me with new eyes.

  “You are the devil, Gustav, do you know that?”

  I understand that it was time to stop playing with mysteries, at least publicly. So I decided to ignore my friendly lamp, and when I came back to my home country after three months in Iowa, I almost forgot it.

Seven years later I got the chance to come back to Iowa, this time as a lecturer for the same program. Again, I was very excited and full of energy. But the whole program had moved to the new university hotel closer to the center of the city. As soon as I checked in, someone from the program’s staff came to drive me to the welcoming party being hosted by the new director. On the way we were chatting about my previous stay, and I mentioned the mysterious events that had occurred way back. We had a lot of fun with it, and in a good mood pulled up in front of the director’s house. The image we saw was unforgettable. The director was standing on a chair trying to change the bulb in the porch light. That light had just failed.

  My guide gazed at me with a curious look in her eyes, but I jumped out of the car before she had time to say anything. I think I know what she was going to say.


Available in E-books:

http://itunes.apple.com/sk/ book/svetje-maly-the-world-is- small/id554103459?mt=11

http://itunes.apple.com/sk/ book/le-monde-est-petit-world- is/id554104733?mt=11

http://itunes.apple.com/sk/ book/the-world-is-small-svet- je-maly/id554101744?mt=11

SEARCHING FOR PARADISE

SEARCHING FOR PARADISE

My friends from Slovakia -- Peter, his wife Sylvia, with their lovely daughter Suzie (who is already mixing English and Slovak words when she speaks) -- live in Nashville, Tennessee. They escaped from communist paradise built for everyone but used just by few aparatchiks. I came to visit my friends to learn how they are doing in the country considered as another kind of paradise.

When I arrived, my friend Peter didn't give me a chance to relax. He decided to go play tennis, which was our favorite entertainment back home. Even in late November it was still warm weather in Nashville, and, of course, tennis is my great passion! We played tennis in a Nashville suburb, in a nice apartments complex with a small but well-equipped sport-and-fitness center. We were guests of Czech friend of Peter's--an example how the breakup of our countries federation has had little impact on how people behave. Alesh was a typical Czech, a smart guy but always complaining even though he's doing very well for himself. We played before Alesh arrived, with Alesh and after Alesh left. We played from about 4 P.M. until 7 P.M., we starting on fine, warm November afternoon and finished on a dark, chilly November evening. Just like over Wimbledon stadium, every five minutes a plane flies over, and Peter, in one moment, looked up like a prophet and said: "It is statistical necessity that at some time one of them has to fall exactly on this court." But the statistics favored us at that time, so we played, played and played. We simply couldn't stop because... you know these sports fanatics! The next day I wondered if I would be able to get out of bed, even. But after tennis, we'd gone to the sauna, so my body didn't actually protest.

The sauna was in the nice fitness-center that belonged to the apartments complex. It was a one-story building with an outdoor swimming pool and fountain in front. It reminded me that of the communist era in my country, when they also liked to include such things for effect. In our residential quarter, they'd built several fountains, with goldfishes even! It must have looked lovely for a first few weeks. I really don't know how long the fountains worked, because as a small boy I never saw them spraying water, which is for what fountains usually are built for. Nevertheless, I thought they were a nice bit of architectural luxury, and of course I loved goldfishes. Then, slowly but surely, the goldfishes disappeared from fountains. Then the water disappeared, and finally all that was left were the ruins, which were eventually cleared away to be replaced by flowerbeds. So this fitness center reminded me of idealism and dreams of communism, with one exception: this American communism works!

We sat in the sauna, sweating, and recalling our days together in Slovakia. In fact, we talked mostly about lovely girl that we'd both been involved with. Well, to be honest, I should say that I was the first guy to sleep with her, before we'd even had a date. She'd turned up at a college party, and because I was half-drunk, I didn't catch the hostile signals she usually broadcast around. When we first started to dance, she seemed to resist, but later she become more and more accommodating, her body become softer and even softer, and finally we made love in dark corner of one of the endless corridors of old University building. This was how I discovered "Chinese Paradise", as I called it later. She was really hidden paradise, with a teacher's cool look, officially, though privately she was like Sharon Stone. She had nice face, a sexy body and countless fantasies about sex. But I was a self-made man at the time, too preoccupied with my own career to appreciate paradise, so I set her a condition: we could only meet once a week, on Friday.

As I think about it now, I realize that I was terrible guy back then. But she was lovely. When I appeared on Friday evening, like a cowboy covered by the dust of all the roads he'd traveled during week, she was waiting in dressing-gown, naked underneath. What a lovely, firm body (and breasts!) she had under gown! But I was not interested--I was tired after a busy week. So she prepared a bath for me and washed me like a baby. Than she dried me and covered my body with lotion--it was like massage--and I was gradually restored. She would have already prepared a great dinner (usually Chinese style, therefore I called her Chinese Paradise) with wonderful wine called Tokaj ("vinum regnum, rex vinorum" wine of kings, king of wines). And then, then, then,... I finally started to be worth of something, and she offered me her body for a dessert. She used to say "you can do everything with my body", and I really tried. In the middle of the wild games she used to scream "no, no, no", but very softly, because this was also a part of the game. Well, to tell the truth, this really was paradise, but I was unable to realize it. And you could not imagine at which time during these evenings I felt really happy--well, it was mostly in that few minutes sitting in the restroom in her student apartment and reading comics. Frankly, I hate comics, but for a while it was something like a symbol of real rest... If it seem to by completely foolish, for more I had a strange idea that I shouldn't spend the entire night with her. So, each time, after we'd finally exhausted ourselves with all these fine things and were ready to fall asleep, I would get up, no matter how uncomfortable it was, and go into the dark night, headed for home. I did have an explanation for this strange habit. I thought that if I were to sleep beside her, it would be even harder to go home in the morning. I felt that her love would grow even more powerful then, and I would never escape from the trap. Look at me at that time--I was struggling to be the best scientist and the best writer and the best everything you can imagine. I had no time for paradise; I stuck to my working hell. She was curious, of course, about this habit. She had thought about it a lot, and one day she felt that she found solution. Staring to my eyes, she said: "Stay with me. Stay with me the whole night. You don't really have to do anything, not even talk. We can be silent, we don't need to do anything at all, but... stay with me." Right then, the alarm bells began ringing in my head, and I escaped--for last time and forever. It was too much for me... But, as a good friend I had introduced her beforehand to my friend Peter. I did not want her beauty and warm passion to be wasted on some stranger. I thought that maybe Peter would be the happy man who could appreciate this sort of paradise. After I'd withdrawn, they started dating, and it lasted about a year. Peter went even further--he saw her every day he possibly could and introduced her to family. I was living in another town by then, and from a distance it seemed that they would get married one day. Then Peter escaped. I wasn't actually all that surprised.

Somehow, I happened to meet her again at a campus party. Well, I didn't talk with her much; in fact, I had something important to do in my lab. I went to the lab and was alone there when she came in. We started to talk, but I was attracted by the slow raise and fall of her breasts and found myself remembering the times we'd been close. So, still talking, I moved closer to her, stripped away her blouse and found her breasts unchanged--as firm, large, and warm as ever.

"Do you still like my breasts?" she asked.

"Yes, of course", I answered, "and I remember what we used to do with them back then."
She smiled gently and said, "I'll let you play with my breasts if you like, but that's all."
So I did, and she helped me, a different way this time, find Chinese Paradise again. When we were down, she covered her breasts back up and said: "You and Peter, and all you guys, you're like zebras in a zoo. It's impossible to understand you. The game's over." And she left. Forever.
So, Peter and I were sitting in the sauna, talking about Chinese Paradise. As we were reminiscing, drinking a beer, and laughing, our bodies were sweating. It looked as if they were silently crying great salt tears for a love that was never completely fulfilled. On the way home, driving through evening traffic, Peter asked me what I though about the United States, where he wanted to keep living with his family. I had my answer already prepared. "This is a paradise, Peter," I said. "But this is a paradise where they're used to shooting."

He didn't say anything, and we never resumed our talk about different sorts of paradises. Well, talking about that American one, I'd learned my first English words spontaneously when I was a little boy playing cowboys and American Indians. "Hands up!" were the words, and I'm very happy that I never heard them in an actual situation during my stay in the United States. To be honest, I didn't even hear them on television or at the movies again. Those words just slow down the action. Nowadays, American action heroes shoot first.

MY LEDIG HOUSE DIARY

MY LEDIG HOUSE DIARY

Ledig House is a writers colony situated up-state New York in the valley of Hudson river. Here is my testimony of the marvelous time spend there with my colleagues.

Early morning - disturbed by concert of someone's snoring (is it Otto or is it me?).

7.30 -- Kathrin's alarm clock is ringing in the neighboring room. Kathrin is a German translator (if not mentioned particularly, all characters in this fairy-tale are Germans, Teutons or both) and she likes to work early -- did she read instructions for German translators posted on the wall in the kitchen? (Well, at least for the following 30 minutes I can lie in bed not feeling guilty that I don't like to work early).

8.00 -- Mathias (a poet) is up, I hear him (through the paper-walls) in the bathroom we are both sharing and assume he is doing the exact same things in the bathroom that ordinary people do, despite being a poet.

8.30 -- Exercise with music recorded from tapes I brought from home (not loudly -- Monica and Otto are still sleeping - you know, these translators at honeymoon...).

9.00 -- Find my way to the kitchen; somebody (home-keepers Peter or Kathleen?) already checked e-mail ("Nobody is writing to the colonel, nor to me").

9.30 -- Try to grab something from fridge before Monica comes to rob entire supply and will prepare a honeymoon breakfast for Otto (Oh Otto, how envious I am for those bagels you didn't finish yesterday morning!).

10.00 -- On e-mail, colleague and friend Andrej Blatnik is coming from Slovenia and needs some last minute secret information about the colony ("Take a racquet, man, tennis is what counts here").

10.30 -- E-mail connection is lost (Peter at the other part of this computer line needs to tell something to humankind as well).

10.30 - 1.00pm -- At the ill-installed PC ("this machine is unhappy" Peter said; what about me?) I am writing letters to editors through all of the States (meanwhile, I have killed 29 flies - this building is a former barn, with reconstruction cows left, flies didn´t).

1.00pm -- Lunch. Somebody stole the piece of famous lasagna made by our cook Donna for yesterday's dinner and spared for this day (you know, "hungry as a writer", we use to say back home). There is one creature more hungry than me -- a dog called Paris (fortunately, she is not a writer and we have a mutual, silent arrangement for most of the lunches; I eat and she looks at me as a bunch of Somali kids -- good training to remind me that writers always have to think about humankind, or at least about some kind of human).

2.00pm -- Reading newspapers and magazines, secretly cutting out the articles I expect to be helpful for my future essays (Peter is helplessly looking for yesterday's New York Times -- which I have completely cut already).

2.30pm -- Chatting with Josie in the kitchen. Today she responds to my Iowa pronounced question "Hawaria" (read "How are you?") with a word "fine" (means -- she slept not bad and there aren't many crackers left from our yesterday's dinner). On the way from Main House to my room one exotic look -- Uda, always hidden in her room, decided to appear at the public, walking down to the open-air sculptors park called "The Fields" like being hypnotized by the idea she recently translated.

2.45 -- 4.00pm -- Trying to convince "unhappy" PC that work is what make us all happy (meanwhile killed another 29 flies and heard some strange sounds from Dauji's room -- is this Indian poet here or again somewhere in the States on another of his mysterious missions?).

4.00 -- 5.30pm -- Tennis with Daniel (this son of a bitch doesn't know the art of losing, so he is almost always winning).

5.30 -- 6.00pm -- Shower (the doors to bathroom are unlockable, the window screen is missing -- Loren could fix it, but has no time -- he is shooting eggs. Well, I must to say that he is a passionate visual artist and actually obsessed by the idea to shoot eggs by the gun and in the same time to shoot the visual effect of it by highly speed camera. See results in dining room).

6.00 -- 7.00pm -- Back in Reynold's cottage to print out something important for humankind, but apparently not appealing enough for America's editors (what kind of humans are they?!). Another German writer Gert appears in hall to send his messages through a fax socket (Gert is a good companion for the start of evening - he and his Danish Vodka + Snickers!).

7.00 -- 8.00pm -- Ready for dinner writing e-mails in Library (got three, sent five with hope for geometrical growing effect).

8.00 -- 9.30pm -- Dinner (key words here are "pass it, please"; the Ledig House dinners are the most "passable" dinners in my life; sitting always in the middle of the table I barely succeed to eat). Good wine, good chat, newcomer = executive director David Knowless.

9.30 -- 10.30pm -- David's executive idea to storm Turnpike bar had been approved. Turnpike was stormed, but actually on this day they are closed (how much does one executive director have to know or does he "know-less" than we do?), apparently weak in his knees David is promising another Turnpike storm, bowling and more (looking forward to more).

10.30 -- 12.30pm -- Watching video ("The good, the bad and the ugly" or the "The Apostle" or...) with others in sitting room (Paris is gnawing and playing with big bone under table -- horrible sounds).

12.30pm -- Ready to sleep. In night disturbed by concert of someone's snoring (is it Otto or is it me?).

Culture-shock

Culture-shock

The air-conditioner in my room at dormitory called Mayflower started to groans. A fountain of leaking water very quickly filled the box and began drenching the carpet. That was the last drop in the brimful cup called culture-shock. Of course, I heard about the phenomenon called culture-shock. When I arrived in America, I waited for it to affect me. And it has happened.

On the first day, we were trapped in the elevator. "Extraordinary accident," says Mary. "Can't happen again".

Next day: Mary got stuck in the elevator. Well, I wasn't even surprised, when that same day we got into the Campbus and it wouldn't budge. The same night, in a bar called The Sanctuary, I was eating a pizza and lost half of my tooth. When we got home, there was a fire alarm - a false one. The next evening, I was playing tennis with Alan. Suddenly, the lights went out and we were lost in the dark. Today, I called Shelley, but the phone was on the fritz. And now the air-conditioner. Now I am sitting half-naked in my room with the broken air-conditioner. The carpet is wet from the continually running water. I am wet too. The repairmen won't come until tomorrow, because it is Labor Day. I'm very hot, so I'm improvising, using the stovetop fan in the kitchen. Just the way the Apollo 13 crew did things in the movie I saw two days ago. I am sweating and have come to the conclusion that I already know what culture-shock means. Culture-shock means that America is amazing, but also that it was built "only" by human hands.

WHAT AMERICA IS?

Here in Slovakia we have saying, "It's America". This is a very short and straight way of calling something admirable and extraordinary. . . Only few of those who use to this saying can check out what America is in reality. In the University town of Iowa City is also the Center for International Studies, where a young girl called Shu-I Chan, from Taiwan, registered all official foreign visitors and by some means offered to the local people meetings with them. Shu-I Chan called me one day and asked me if I could meet Mr. Bruce Lafferty. He had spent six months in Slovakia and would like to meet someone from there.

I agreed, Bruce called, and two days later we were enjoying a beer together. It was a good meeting. Bruce had nice memories of Slovakia. The only black mark was the Slovak Traffic Police and how they hit foreigners with fines. That was another evidence that he really visited Slovakia. When we finally got to the topic of what we both did for a living I found that my new drinking partner was a professional pilot. He piloted Hercules transport planes for the National Guard, thus my lifelong dream was sitting in front of me. As a boy, I wanted to be a pilot. I asked Bruce in detail everything about it. Telling him my boy's dream, he looked at me with understanding and said "Nothing is lost. This is America, after all."

Then he arranged to meet me the following week. The following week we met at the local airport. It was mostly for recreational and private flying. Bruce ordered a little twin-engine propeller plane, with dual controls. He showed me, in detail, everything for the flight ahead. Then we taxied for takeoff. It was fantastic. It was America. An absolute stranger was spending his time and money to take me on this flight. I had the feeling that I knew what this was all about and what I could expect from it, but I was wrong.

"Take the rudders," said Bruce in an authoritative voice at the treshold of the runway. "I´ m going to turn up the engines and you take the plane up and fly it."

"But I've never flown a plane in my whole life!" I protested.

"It's okay. I'm an instructor and this is the first lesson. Let's go!"

Bruce turned up the engines and, as instructed, I took the controls trying to recall the knowledge I had gained in childhood by reading. And we flew. It wasn't tremendously elegant, but we were in the air. We flew around half of Iowa. Country under our plane was full of colors and offered every minute a new view and scenery that you would not realize from driving of car. Bruce gave me a chance to felt like pilot with plane in my own hands but when he made my attention to the fields down there, which could be suitable in the case of an emergency landing, I decided to let the control over the rest of our flight to him. When I tried to thank him, above the roar of the engines, but he shrugged it off with a wave.

"It's nothing," Bruce yelled back at me. "Flying is essentially very boring."

I don't agree completely with Bruce, but I appreciated the fact that he tried to convince me of this. To spare himself the "boredom" of the routine flight, and to be safe, he made the landing maneuver by himself -- with bravura.

And this is America too.


Available in E-books:

http://itunes.apple.com/sk/ book/svetje-maly-the-world-is- small/id554103459?mt=11

http://itunes.apple.com/sk/ book/le-monde-est-petit-world- is/id554104733?mt=11

http://itunes.apple.com/sk/ book/the-world-is-small-svet- je-maly/id554101744?mt=11

FOREIGNER WHO DOESN´T DISTURB

In traveling the world (if you don't insist upon accommodation in hotels only like oil sheiks supposedly do) it sometimes happens that you are invited to stay in the homes of local people. This means that oil sheiks lose a lot of "humanity". This hospitality has its own conditions -- you cannot disturb the domestic rituals of the hosts and you cannot be surprised by their unusual habits. That, for example, was the case in Norfolk on the U.S. eastern seaboard when I arrived late to the house of my hosts and tried to find my way in the dark to my room. Everyone was asleep. Suddenly an unknown voice started to speak to me from the living room and then from another room charged a naked man. The situation, fortunately, was quickly clarified. The unknown voice was an answering machine with message from my friend and the naked man was my host, who was running to turn off the answering machine so as not to disturb me. I understood his explanation but, at the same time, I cannot say that this experience was not a little shocking.
A few weeks after this experience, I met my friend Larry in San Francisco. Although it's a fairly typical American name (and it's worth noting that it was the name of a spy in a famous American novel), he is my old Slovak friend. He emigrated from deep communism for a variety of reasons. One of them was that his Communist chief had read this book about the U.S. spy, so Larry couldn't publish any of his works because he became an 'ideological suspect'... When we met this time, after the fall of the iron curtain, we hadn't seen each other for years. It was a hearty and altogether pleasant meeting. After a good dinner and long dispute about our destinies, it was time to go to sleep -- at last! Larry arranged accommodation on the 23rd floor of the Hilton hotel in a double bed room (my friend didn't get so rich after immigrating that he didn't have to think economically). We went to our beds and before wishing each other goodnight, he asked me:
"Gustav, do you have earplugs?"
My American friend Larry had given me some to cope with the noise on the plane. "Yes, I have. Why?"
"Then put them in. I am a terrible snorer."
Emigration and years mark people in strange ways. Therefore, I wasn't very surprised. I put the earplugs in and, without problems, drifted off to sleep.
In the morning I woke up refreshed and satisfied. Larry looked damaged, tired and disgruntled. Well what else can you expect from someone who has been snoring all night? However, I asked him sympathetically:
"How did you sleep, dear friend?"
Larry looked at me with resignation and, in a temper, answered:
"I didn't sleep. I couldn't. You snored something terrible. And what's worse, I couldn't interrupt this concert because you had your earplugs in."


Available in E-books:

http://itunes.apple.com/sk/ book/svetje-maly-the-world-is- small/id554103459?mt=11

http://itunes.apple.com/sk/ book/le-monde-est-petit-world- is/id554104733?mt=11

http://itunes.apple.com/sk/ book/the-world-is-small-svet- je-maly/id554101744?mt=11