WINTER FRAGMENTS, 2022

by

John Ballantine

January 1

I choose a little madness to heal the dreamer warming my bed. The dervish dance puts food on the table. Crazy cool, I am here with aging heart, eyes, and ears that feel the wind in my face. I do not turn away—staring straight into the dance. We are here, we feel the hurts and hold the love. I see the broken promises, letting go the memory that holds me back.

“Who is that?” mocks the fool. “Where are you?”

Today I sit quietly, hear stories, and know that hearts pound fast, mothers die in fire, and tragedy is here. There is another dead body, etched in memory, surrounded by empty vessels, an occasional apparition. Each of us stumbles into such pits. Some never get out. The lucky few walk forward, chastened and more alive. I stand among the lucky.

The choir harmonizes an ancient tune.

I am a child, a crazed, aging man. The world spins, the sun rises, my heart beats. There is pain and love. I am awake.

January 6

Hard to believe, was it a delusion? Crazy people—tattooed, dressed in horns. Wearing army fatigues with guns in their belts—crashing through police barriers. Breaking democratic norms as they stormed the halls of power. This cannot be?

Hard to believe sitting in a quiet home with the TV filled with pictures of hate. Maybe another revolution is happening? Not the peasants rising but an insidious sickness. Are they serious? In 1968 the yippies, hippies, and protestors crashed the Democratic Convention, Mayor Daley’s police beat us back—while Russian tanks rolled into Prague. Back then the upending of that world was real. 

Raised fists, riots, and dead proclaimed that the dream is not dead. They—police, troops, and our elders—struck back. For what? Today:

“Something is happening and you don’t know what it is, do you?” 

Hard to believe as trees bend, hawks soar, and fires burn far away on flat screens. I cannot breathe, can that be true for so many? Some storm the halls of Congress, tear down what you built and learned. I cannot, will not, believe we live in such a place. Guns, pipe bombs, broken windows. This is happening on our screens over and over. We are not the enemy, but this country constructed/woven from the floss of dreams is coming apart.

It is hard to believe cruelty and hate is so close—that pillars of wisdom fall so fast. And that we, you and I, did nothing. No sword or gun as the mobs stormed our cities. It is hard to believe that we did not fight and die for the good life. For the love that surrounds and comforts. 

Hard to believe that my world is falling apart, 161 years after the first shot fired on Fort Sumter. There is no god standing on the ramparts to protect, no poet to spin tales to comfort. The food line is long, the night cold, and there is only one blanket to keep us warm

January 9

It is happening here. It has happened. Civil War—innocent dead on both sides. Reconstruction, the bondage that held so many down. And the Gilded Age, where stealing and taking was sung in parlors where so few marched for liberty, equality, and fraternity. Barricades do not fall easily. Talk at tables stops—even in my well-mannered family. Some hate FDR and the New Deal, others say this is the way. Then there are the wars, blacklists, communists, queers, Black Panthers, George Wallace, the Weathermen, Proud Boys, KKK, and Trump, who incites beyond my imaginings.

Is this the back and forth of history? Despots here, not just in Russia or in other faraway lands. Money feeds. History faints and many look away. It cannot be happening here…only over there. I sip the wine, watch romances at night, and do not fall into dystopian traps.

But it is happening here—not just the 47 percent who do not vote like me, or the 300 or more who stormed the Capitol. Too many turning away from what I learned, what I thought we believed. Hard work, opportunities, laws, courts—even justice—and conversation. I make lists. Sexism, racism, inequality, resentment. My head is full of explanations, of words. I do not understand what is happening here, today.

“Oh, the shark has pretty teeth, dear,” whispers Mack the Knife.

Stones break windows, dead lie unclaimed, and fires burn. Russian tanks advance. No chicken in every pot. The rainmaker looks to the sky for promise of better days, but the deserts are dry and dreams die. It is happening and I don’t want to know why. The candle in the cave shows no shadows flickering on the wall.

Wolves howl at night, we hide in our apartments. The screens flicker. Some cough and die, others wear masks. The trucks pass back and forth in the dark of the night, and there is no metaphor, no light to take me out. No Beatrice or trials of Job that explain. No poet in robe pointing the way.

“Something is happening and you do not know why, do you, Mr. Jones.” 

I sit in my basement, far away from the street cries. The snow muffles what we lost. The bully holds sway. I did not stand with the righteous, did not carry arms and say no. I let others die, disappear, and pretend at dinner it was all Okay.

And what did you do when democracy died? When the USA was united no more? When another country fell? What did you do to save our dreams?

January 16

The world is dark. I wake, touching the first sign of sun wrapped in the smile of romance. But there was no light. No sunrise. It happened just like that, no shots or storming of the barricades. The food on the shelves, the fires that warmed stopped. Just like that.

The resentment, the lies, and the guns have turned back the clock to 1917, 1968. I stand in Prague as tanks roll in. The out-of-wedlock, the bastard children, have no home. Those in the street—Black, White, and Brown—rich and poor—have risen like a mob disgorged from cyclops mouth screaming for more. For their fair share.

There is no god, no Ulysses or Athena to rescue us. All that stuff in my head, it is not real. Not even a dream can shield you and me from the slings and arrows of anger. They do not care; they have a long list of unreasonable demands. The reason I am here, that we sit together at the table, has evaporated as the walls of reason collapse.

It is hard to believe cruelty and hate was so close—that pillars of wisdom fell so fast. And that we, you and I, did nothing. No sword or gun as the mobs stormed our cities. It is hard to believe that we did not fight and die for the good life. For the love that surrounds and comforts. 

The pendulum of time swings back if you fight. Better to have a headstone inscribed, “He believed and died for love.” No more stories, no pictures on the wall. Stand up.

January 26

It was a long time coming. The realization that I cannot change the world. How many days did I look at the sky, imagining soft, puffy clouds when the fist punched my gut? I did look away but hit back with a knee to the chin as I charged through the line. Violence begets violence.

Solzhenitsyn survived cancer in a Siberian gulag—and let his beard grow long in a Vermont hamlet as he pried open the Russian soul. There was so much hurt that ascetism dried the tears falling. A stoic spirit moves forward. Poets stand in food lines. The tundra is frozen deep, I dream again.

Why don’t I see the world as it is? Why can I not stare into the abyss and see the pale bodies floating in the river Styx? I play with the devil, the chameleon deceiving so many. Dulcet voices sweeten the fall. I believe in good, even as witches’ brews simmer with so much sinning. I see the frolicking cherubs, I wander through dark caves with etching scratched on the walls, and I read of Rome’s fall.

No, that is not the world I know. The never-ending troubles, the storm clouds knocking down homes, and the dead bodies piled high on funeral pyres. I see the terrible armies march, the devil’s beguilements, and all the bad that you report. But my wandering knight cannot let go of dreams. The boy who said I believe in Tinkerbell will not let go.

When I die they will say, “John never did get it, did he? Never saw the world as it is, did he?” No, lucky John, he wandered with his mad dreams.

February 15

Easy to forget, to eat the fresh fruit with vanilla ice cream, followed by pink finger bowls. I stared across the table, not knowing why building more bombs and missiles was the path to peace. Some said, “Do not talk with Ruskies” or they, too, will bury us as the cherubic leader in an ill-fitting suit pounds his shoe at the UN. Really, we have to wait until hell freezes over for those two to talk. 

Seven Days in May passed, and we were not blown to smithereens. We learned to love the bomb and not see Peter Sellers when Kissinger explains why we were in Vietnam—dominoes balancing—and why oval tables were the beginning of peace talks with so many dead. Time turns and here we are again with tanks, broken windows, and women crying on the cold street, holding their dead.

I sit with the blue sky and snow—looking at the darkness. Dread rises over a land torn asunder by time while men on horses, tanks, planes strike down the courageous person standing tall. This country, this land with its centuries-long history, cannot escape its mistakes, and so we kill, burn, and maim again until someone says let’s try sitting at the round—or is it oval—table once again. 

February 23

The grandmother stood straight, staring left and right with blue-gray shawl over her shoulders. Prostitute selling her 62-year-old body—not too soft—to put food on the table in Tbilisi. Wide-eyed, I am a year older and not as tough. I look at the potholed streets, the elevators that do not go up, and the crumbling concrete steps in each apartment that they own. No communal property for the free citizens.

The patriarch in black robe and white beard murmurs prayers. A giant statute of Stalin stands guard. Here in Georgia the wine is sweet and the market full of talk as we take the bus to Ossetia, a breakaway province Russia will soon invade, just because.

Why fight the bully? I ask Thea as we climb the goat path through deep, verdant valleys locked in centuries of dialects. Do they not understand war? Some try to break free, others hide. In churches standing above the valley, frescoes of St. George on curved ceilings sit high above seven hundred years of tribulations. A calm voice soothes the afternoon as the incense drifts in with the slanting light. 

A lace curtain is drawn across each apse—a couple with white, virginal veil and black suit are married; another dark apse is quiet as the old are buried. Candles burn, heads bowed, even the unbelieving. The woven curtain, thick with history, stands like a sentinel at the entrance of the Byzantine chapel built by peasants for solace.

The Black Sea and Odessa are distant—my only connection to this world of peasants, stone, wine, and Kubdari. Natalie, one of my first loves, stood me on a pedestal I did not want. She the romantic refugee fleeing the purges of Stalin, and me some white knight full of naïve do-goodness. But Odessa is pushing back Russia’s assault, as Thea escaped Georgia. The bullies with bigger guns win the battles, and I am humbled by the war stories. Maybe the valiant will win.

The prostitute paces back and forth with the sun breaking through the clouds. St. George beats back dragons. Candles are lit in prayer. We pass through the curtain of time. The dream is resurrected.

St. George sits serenely on his mare; a rainbow of light fills the church. The choir is quiet.