Spring 2024 - Recrudescence

Catherine Hoffman a craven fool complimenting his new waist. ‘But not only!’ Szilagy, the swaggard, cockrelled on, ‘It’s not just the lost weight! Feel,’ he grabbed my hand and squashed it to his bulging bodily part, ‘Feel this!’ In front of the dining hall’s Europeanly chomping breakfast audience, he flexed a bicep, (which was, I admit it! A Wow!) causing me to play coy and withdraw with a hiss. Which he’d have heard as another drooling compliment. Therefore, on netting his prey, as does the hunter inveterate, Szilagy lost all interest in me and shot through, leaving me and my soul’s face adrip with panderer’s goo. Not that on account of this Szilagy incident, I’m going to blame myself. Self-hatred is also a judgment, and that’s ego too. It’s just you trying to inflate yourself, significate in reverse. 2nd day at Pannonia. 2015. To understand a new thing takes humility. You have to bow out of yourself and reach out over yourself with a welcome for the Unknown. So why did I leave that dying bird? The Cinke frequently opened his beak, reaching for the apple of life, trustful and desperate. Our exchange had been pure despair and love. That bird had nothing. Does suffering ever help you fall back into your real self? I know it happens for humans. So, I never fear for them. Heaven is there for all; everyone is going to heaven. But the one single question that hurts is, what is there for my broken hero, the bird? *

*

May 31st.

At Sopron’s Petöfi Theatre. Queen Csardas. Rotating my ankles with pleasure through the operetta, I was again my parents’ child, sprung from their culture of Lehár and Kálmán operas and operettas, about Lords and Dames, Vienna and Paris, soldiers, songsters, soubrettes, the fools and the fops of the Empire’s gentry

126