Under Mongolian Blue Sky

Happy International Women's Day

Mongolia whole-heartedly celebrates this day to honor and inspire women. In fact, it's a public holiday. Banks are closed. Everyone has the day off work. I've been told by Nomi at the Arts Council of Mongolia that this is common in post-Soviet countries, and it makes sense since the official date of the holiday originates from the time when Russian women began a strike for bread and peace in 1917. (The general idea for a Women's Day began about ten years before this, but the strike set the date that people all over the world now observe.)

In Mongolia, it's celebrated a little bite more like Valentine's Day or Mother's Day than what I'd expect from International Women's Day or what I've come to know it as. The shops were full of men buying flowers and chocolates for their wives, sisters, daughters, mothers etc. Men took the women in their lives out to dinner or prepared dinner for them at home. On the eve of International Women's Day I went to an opening at the Union of Mongolian Artists gallery of contemporary work by women artists. There were some really great textile pieces and monotypes, in addition to the usual painting.

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In other news, the President of the United States was greeted with the beating of drums and the flying of banners bearing the words "Bush Go Home" when he arrived in Brasil this week. About 10,000 people spilled out onto the streets of Sao Paolo to express their collective disapproval of the Iraq war and a pending ethanol energy alliance. Sadly, most Mongolians are naive to the farce that is the Bush administration. They are often surprised when they hear me talk of the corruption, racism, lack of education, ignorance etc. that runs rampant like millions of hard-backed cockroaches in what they call my homeland.

Dedicated to Elodie, Allison and Chris

This week three of the people who have made the past six months of my life a little more bearable are leaving Mongolia to return to their homelands: Elodie to Paris, Chris to Maine and Allison to Pittsburg. The poems below are posted to honor them and the beauty, surprise and compassion they have brought to my life.

The Stones

    by Sylvia Plath 

This is the city where men are mended.
I lie on a great anvil.
The flat blue sky-circle

Flew off like the hat of a doll.
When I fell out of the light, I entered
The stomach of indifference, the wordless cupboard.

The mother of pestles diminished me.
I became a still pebble.
The stones of the belly were peaceable,

The head-stone quiet, jostled by nothing.
Only the mouth-hole piped out,
Importunate cricket

In a quarry of silences.
The people of the city heard it.
They hunted the stones, taciturn and separate,

The mouth-hole crying their locations.
Drunk as a fetus
I suck at the paps of darkness.

The food tubes embrace me. Sponges kiss my lichens
        away.
The jewelmaster drives his chisel to pry
Open one stone eye.

This is the after-hell: I see the light.
A wind unstoppers the chamber
Of the ear, old worrier.

Water mollifies the flint lip,
And daylight lays its sameness on the wall.
The grafters are cheerful,

Heating the pincers, hoisting the delicate hammers.
A current agitates the wires
Volt upon volt. Catgut stitches my fissures.

A workman walks by carrying a pink torso.
The storerooms are full of hearts.
This is the city of spare parts.

My swaddled legs and arms smell sweet as rubber.
Here they can doctor heads, or any limb.
On Fridays the little children come

To trade their hooks for hands.
Dead men leave eyes for others.
Love is the uniform of my bald nurse.

Love is the bone and sinew of my curse.
The vase, reconstructed, houses
The elusive rose.

Ten fingers shape a bowl for shadows.
My mendings itch. There is nothing to do.
I shall be good as new.

    from The Colossus and Other Poems, 1962

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Memory of France 

    by Paul Celan

Together with me recall: the sky of Paris, that giant
        autumn crocus…
We went shopping for hearts at the flower girl’s booth:
they were blue and they opened up in the water.
It began to rain in our room,
and our neighbor came in, Monsieur Le Songe, a lean little
        man.
We played cards, I lost the irises of my eyes;
you lent me your hair, I lost it, he struck us down.
He left by the door, the rain followed him out.
We were dead and were able to breathe.

    from Poems of Paul Celan, translated by Michael Hamburger, 2001

What is Winter?

Last week I had an illuminating conversation with an American teacher here named George Economides. He has lived in Mongolia for five years. The first three he spent as a Peace Corps volunteer. Now he teaches at the American School of Ulaanbaatar and volunteers for Friends of Mongolia. We were talking about Mongolia's seasons and how to accurately translate хавар, өвөл, etc. (spring, winter, etc.) into English.

You see, the seasons as we know them do not exist in Mongolia. Using his words, we might describe winter with the following words and phrase: dry, sunny, beautiful skies. This is not generally how I think of winter. Likewise, spring in Mongolia is cold, brown, windy and dusty. That's not what I see when I envision spring. So how to translate a poem about winter into English?

In some places they refer to rainy and dry seasons. Perhaps this is a better way to translate Mongolian seasons because хавар (khawar) doesn't equate to what we know of spring. Perhaps we could call it the dusty, windy season.

Then again, maybe this only means that we ought to expand our definition of spring. We could be rigid and define the seasons on a scale of time by the stars: spring is March 21-June 21; summer is June 22-September 21, etc. Or we accept that spring can be different things at different times and still employ use of the word spring.

In this poem the point is to know that winter is dreary and spring is something we look forward to, though it sometimes may seem as if spring will never come:

Өмнөх зам бодолд дарагдан атирна.
Үнэн сэтгэлээсээ инээх минь цөөрнө.
Хүйтэн агаарт цойлох
«Хавар айсүй» гэсэн гэнэн итгэлийнхээ араас
Хүүхэд шиг инээтсэглэвч,

Тэр инээд биш, шоочхон мушийлт
Тэнгэрийн эгдүүг хүргэнэ.
Улам өвөл…

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[English interlinear]

Ömnökh zam bodold daragdang atirn.
Üneng setgeleesee ineekh min tsöörn.
Khüiteng agaart tsoilokh
“Khawar aisüi” reseng reneng itgeliinkhee araas
Khüükhed shig ineetseglewch

Ter ineed bish, shoochkhong mushiilt
Tengeriing egdüüg khürgen.
Ulam öwöl…

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The path ahead is weighted down and wrinkled
        in thought.
Laughter from my true soul diminishes.
Even though I follow my naïve hope,
“Spring’s coming,” that flies up into the cold air
And smile like a child

That is not laughter, but a mocking smirk
That stimulates heaven’s irritation.
More winter…

Excerpt from “Намраас намар, өвлөөс өвөл ургана” (Fall grows from fall, winter from winter) by G. Ayurzana; translation from Mongolian by Lisa Fink, 2006

George would assert that spring is more difficult than winter, especially for folks in the countryside. However, this poem implies the opposite. Of course the poet lives in UB and has for at least fifteen years. Perhaps he has forgotten that for herders winter is a season they sadly leave behind as they face the wind, dust and cold of spring.