The City of Stand Up

Really! I have been busy.  I have been taking comedy classes and did my first 6.5 minute stand up Friday.

I have been on stage before but this time, i went through the hardest process I have experienced in a long time if not ever.  

It is not the five minutes, nor the material which caused the distress in me.  It was the fact that the audience didn't know me.  Apart from a few friends who were to be there, I didn't know my audience. That was enough for me to tailspin into soul-searchdom.  I think I overreacted.  I was so scared.  I almost gave up so many times.  But I hung in there.  I had a story to tell and that's all I needed to know.  I convinced myself that I was having a date with myself, complete with dinner, some friends, and a chance to entertain them.  It is my night out to say the least.  Out of the house, my room, my studio, my kitchen and my little world.

Only to live and tell about it.  After theater, singing, talking to myself, writing and painting, here comes, standing up, Arpie.  You can call me R though. Did I mention cooking? Sorry to toot my horn, although I don't have a horn, therefore I am absolved.

I have a harmonica though and I hope to make it part of my act soon.

It was so nice chatting with you.

   

ANANAS

There was the picture of an apple cake on Facebook this morning with a very easy recipe.  I copied it and shared it.  A friend commented "Arpie, you can make this for me.  Thank you."  I wished him Happy Birthday which, coincidentally, was today.

I have not baked too many cakes in my life having had a penchant for the easier to make muffins, but this apple cake seemed also very easy to make.  It looked delicious, moist and crunchy.  It reminded me of the first cake I ever baked.  Upside down pineapple cake for a sweet 16 birthday celebration.  

I was 18 and had never baked anything like a cake.  Mom did all that.  I took the challenge and hollered from my balcony to Zepure's some 200 feet away where she lived with her family on the top floor "ZEPUUUUUUUUURRRE!"  She showed up and I hollered "DO YOU HAVE A RECIPE FOR AN UPSIDE DOWN PINEAPPLE CAKE?"  She hollered back "NOOOO, BUT DALITA HAS."  "WHERE DOES SHE LIVE?"  "IN THE BUILDING NEXT TO THE DENTIST'S, THIRD FLOOR."

I went, found Dalita, brought the recipe home, baked the cake and took it to the party.  It was a hit.

Now that we can find all kinds of recipes on the internet I meant to look for it all day today but each time I remembered something more urgent had to be done first.  Then I forgot.

This evening, I went to the grocery store to get a few items and the first thing I saw upon entering through the doors was a row of upside down pineapple cakes.

Of course I got one.  When the cashier told me that they had sold quite a few of them today, I told her this whole story without mentioning the hollering from one balcony to the other part.  It was shorter.

Thank you for your attention.

The City of Melancholy (Spoiler: Happy Ending)

There is no question about it.  I have emotions.  I have had them for a long time.  Among the array of emotions there is one that used to get hold of me every Sunday afternoon and into the evening.

Melancholy.  It is an amalgam of feelings and a disease. 

Among the inspirations one finds outside of themselves to ease, albeit temporarily, the state of melancholy, are books, movies, art, writing letters to far away places, being of help to others but on top of my list was music.  Whether to listen to, to dance to or to sing.

Enter Anne Sylvestre. She holds my hand.  She speaks to me.  She makes me discover a world hetherto unknown to little me in Beirut.  A friend had sang a few lines from one of Anne's songs and I was hooked.  

The first record I ever bought with my first paycheck was hers.  It was an odd size between a 33 rpm and a 45 rpm.  I was 17 years old then and I still have the cover.

From New Jersey, ten years ago exactly today, I took the train to Montreal to see and listen to her live the following day, for the first time in my life.  I had the cover of that album with me to show my dedication and perseverance to this great singer-songwriter if I ever got that chance.

There she was, on stage, singing the songs I knew and some I didn't what with living outside of an area where I would have heard them for sure.  The internet helped me find her again.  

At the end of the concert, it was announced that she will be glad to meet all who want to meet her at the exit area of the venue.

We rush to that area and have to wait because there is a lot of people who want to meet her.

Others, like me waiting for the madness of adoration to settle down in order to approach her, are hanging out and seeing the cover in my hand are interested to find out where I got it.  "In Beirut" I was happy to explain.  "I bought it with my first paycheck" I was happy to add.  Did I say happy? I was very proud of myself, yes, but there was this feeling of I am going to cry, oh God, don't make me, please, please! I need to be happy here.  I am meeting Anne in person.

I couldn't help but cry when she gracefully asked for my name to write something on the cover.  I couldn't talk, I couldn't smile.  I was catapulted to that 17 year old me state in Beirut.  She wrote on the cover, I thanked her and returned to New Jersey the following day.  I was devastated by my outburst and total paralysis during our meeting although she was absolutely charming, understanding and accommodating.

A couple of years later, her new CD came out entitled "Bye Melanco"...

  

I have come a long way since 17 but if it happens that I get in that state of melancholy I remember the first song on the album that speaks about morose Sundays and holding back tears when growing up, it then closes the curtain on them so they won't echo...reopens the curtain to a sky full of birds and I am instantly demelancholized.

Anne Sylvestre still sings to packed audiences in France and Quebec and in June she celebrated her 80th birthday, on stage, with her peers. That, my friends, is inspiration.

Merci Anne. Un grand merci.

   

The City of Colors

My paternal Uncle Arshahg who lived in Damascus, was in the business of washing silk threads.  The colorful threads came in bundles on the back of Abdullah's donkey who walked the cobblestone alleyway that led to Uncle Arshahg's residence, where he stopped and Abdullah hauled the bundles to the mill/factory a few dozen feet further down from the house as the alleyway became so narrow that a donkey would not be able to pass through.  So the donkey waited in front of the door of the house.  I would sometimes find myself there too.  I just stayed there to keep the donkey company or out of curiosity while others went around their business.  I looked at him, he looked at me.  He twitched here and there, moved his head this way and that way, and inevitably, he pooped.  That was my cue to close the door.

If it wasn't for his black shalwar and his head scarf, Abdullah looked like your regular Santa Clause with a huge white moustache on his sun-scorched face.  He was handsome and kind.  We were always happy to see him. I don't know how far he came from with his donkey in tow but he was tired.  So my Aunt Arshalouys would offer him some water.

I knew that once the bundles arrived, the girls would come to work.  There were at least half a dozen 20-30 year old women who worked in the factory. The process of washing and drying the silk and returning it to Abdullah's donkey a couple of days later was exhilarating. I loved being there and at times tried my hand at helping unsuccessfully. 

Sometimes, in the 1950s, we would find ourselves at my Uncle Arshahg's house for a week or so, in the summer months. This was the next best thing to do in summer besides going to a village in Lebanon.  Here in Damascus everything was more exotic.  Their ice cream, for example, was out of this world.  So good, and prepared locally in parlors in the old souk.  

Damascus still offered horse drawn carriages which served as taxis and us kids were always thrilled when we had the chance to be riding in one.  The sound of the horses trotting on the cobblestones had an otherworldly feeling which we cherished.  Kids sat opposite the adults on little benches that opened up.  The awning over where the adults sat was black and could be let down depending on the weather or time of day.  Sitting opposite the adults, we were going backwards of course. This added to the fun and the mystery of the ride.    

Aunt Arshalouys and mom in Beirut, both newlyweds.

At the time Damascus was quite cosmopolitan and there was an International Expo happening where my dad had a booth presenting various European made carpets.  My curiosity was spiked by the pretend Nestle milk ooozing from its can down from a height of maybe 100 feet and stopping in mid air.  If I was hungry, I was starving after seeing that.  We used to spread Nestle condensed milk on bread and have it as a sandwich back in Beirut.  A luxury in the likes of tuna or chocolate sandwiches.  

My Uncle Arshahg did not have children of his own so our being in Damascus was a blessing for everyone involved.  We were spoiled by his wife, Arshalouys  and his two maternal aunts, Manoush and Vartouhi who kept calling each other "kouro," sister in the dialect of Dikranagerd. 

Once a week we would clean the pond which was in the middle of the courtyard.  If there was a way to describe the joy we felt, I would.  First, we had to catch the fish with a colander and put them in a bucket full of water.  After that we would empty the pool and the water would fill the entire courtyard.  Reveling barefoot in inch deep water over marble floors is priceless.  What a great way to clean both the pool and the courtyard while having the time of our lives. This joy became ten-fold when on occasion, my cousins who also lived in Damascus joined us too.  They later moved to Lebanon.

To shed the courtyard from the scorching sun of midday, they would cover it with a huge awning from the upper floor, with ropes attached to a beige canvas, thick enough for this task.  They will pull from the ropes and the canvas would unfold over the courtyard.  Only one side of the courtyard had a bare wall, the three other sides were the residential quarters.  The kitchen, living and dining areas were on the ground floor, the bedrooms were on the second floor and there was a roof where we slept under a huge tent at night if we were not up watching the beautiful sky full of stars.  It was hard to stay up with such a deafening peacefulness.

The girls would arrive the next day and I would run to the factory bright and early to watch the process of washing silk threads unfold.  First, my uncle would wash them by hand wearing long sleeved gloves and he would put each bundle in my favorite machine.  This machine did only one thing.  It spun and let the water out  The water that came out was the same color as the silk that went into the machine.  For some reason this just made me feel like I was in heaven watching the colored water come out of a pipe, filled up a bucket which was then replaced with an empty one. This had to be done very fast in the beginning and slowly wind down until there were only droplets coming out of the pipe.

Time for the next color and batch.  Thus, red, turquoise, yellow, orange, green, blue, brown, purple and white silk bundles let their extra color run, this time satisfying the hunger for color that my eyes lacked.

Ever since I was a child, my maternal Uncle Hrant would bring me a set of color pencils every Christmas.  I would use them and tried not to mess the order in which they were sitting in the box.  The joy I felt then was equal to the one I felt in Damascus.  This was on a grand scale though, especially when the bundles were taken outside on the dirt courtyard and sled down long sugar cane shoots nestled on wooden horses for drying under the sun.  This is when the girls came out to pull each bundle by hand so the silk dries straight and not wrinkled.  They did this by inserting both hands into the batch and with a quick movement pulled their hands apart a few times.  The reverse action of clapping.  They went down the aile and restarted three times until the threads were dry enough to be taken out and the canes replaced by new wet bundles of silk thread.

As one entered the courtyard, they could not help but stop in awe at the site of rows and rows of silk, each row a different color, shimmering under the sun. 

             Work in Progress Take 1.