Broken Chains

The verdict in Cleveland, Ohio to sentence the monster in their midst that held three young women captive for over a decade hit home hard the reminder of the reality of fathomless depravity. The power of one evil person who enslaved three young people in his "House of Horrors" as it became known, leaves one numb, trying to comprehend. It was disturbing and creepy to see the huge rusty chains Ariel Castro kept the women prisoners with. It would be disturbing to see an animal abuser use such chains on dogs, for example, that would be revolting enough, but to see these chains that were used on people the way they were used on slaves 150 years ago, was revolting in modern day 2013 USA. The conviction of life without the chance of parole plus a 1000 years seems lame, unless he lives to be very old, which in this case I really hope will happen, so this depraved man can have a lot of time deprived of his freedom. Michelle Knight's testimony and statement showed an incredibly strong person, determined to mend from the tremendous trauma she endured for 11 years and somehow survived. Her tormentor abused her the worst , probably because she was very feisty and determined just as she was in court . Her strength impressed those journalists who came to witness her courage in court, and my heart goes out to her. That does not make Amanda and Gina any less brave, considering they too survived this unimaginable nightmare. Their survival is testimony to their spirit, their will and determination. They kept diaries, willing themselves to have hope, faith, that someday their hell would end. More than 10 years later, it did. The healing can start, already did start with their testimonies in court, and the PTSD they will deal with will be softened by therapists, family and friends. It is incredibly sad to be reminded of how low as humans we can sink, in spite of thousands of years of civilization. It is hard to fathom in times of war, when man's brutality and inhumanity sinks to truly shocking levels. But it is even harder to comprehend that sort of depravity in peace, in our own country, in a neighbour, in a person who kept his monster mind carefully hidden from family and friends. The evil that lurks within, that you don't expect or suspect in an ordinary looking person like Ariel Castro. I am glad he was afraid of the death penalty, because life in prison might just give him a taste of his own medicine, as the chains are now on him, for what I hope will be a very long time.

Open Air Market

My dreams are always very detailed and complex. I travel all over the world it seems, and sometimes out of this world, too, from the looks of it. Last night, I was wandering around alone, as is often the case in my dreams. Gregarious by nature, like some frustrated journalist, I travel and explore alone in my dreams. Where this came from I have no idea, but when I asked someone where I was, a man in my dream answered : " Croatia. " All right, I thought, Croatia it is. I found myself in a huge open air market, loud, with a ton of people milling about, selling everything from pastries to jewelry, clothes, rugs, tools, plants. I apparently was hungry, so I bought this very sweet chocolate covered piece of cake. My eye caught sight of a very enthusiastic woman selling hand made jewelry. One particular pair of sparkling bright yellow crystal earrings seemed very appealing, so I bought them. Every one seemed comfortable with the idea that I was wandering around their market, trying to make myself understood as best I could. I remember it was a very warm night. I asked one woman where she was from. She started answering me, then realized a long answer was going to be lost on me, so she said, pointing to herself and the people around her : "Romani". I smiled, feeling right at home. I have always had a soft spot for Romani and their struggle to be accepted and belong. Interesting that my restless soul at night would go looking for a family of gypsies to ease the sting of feeling I don't belong in my waking life. There was music everywhere, and I remember an uncle of mine inviting a band of Gypsy musicians to his restaurant, and how I loved the passion and melancholy of the violins. It felt like a family gathering, like we were all one big family. Impressive experience for a ten year old. Not much family left these days, so, I guess it is fun for me to go look around for one in my dreams. I grew up around open air markets in Belgium, every town had them. The first one I became familiar with, was right outside the front gate of my elementary school on the PolenPlein in Roeselare. Polen Plein referring to Polish Square, a reference to a group of Polish soldiers helping in the area during World War Two. I remember my mother picking us up from the school, and stepping right into the market, where she would buy fresh shrimp and sole. I remember being in open air  markets in Mexico City, in Guadalajara, Panama City, and in Kinshasa. I am glad we have a farmer's market here in Olympia, and that it is varied and friendly, it always fills me with nostalgia when we go there. But last night, I was far away from a market familiar to me, but yet, it felt like home. Maybe I'll go visit again in a next dream. I think I'll buy the bracelet to match the earrings when I meet up with the Gypsy artist.

Faerouz

In 1984, a friend of mine gave me a music cassette titled "Faerouz : Songs and Music from Mais El - Rim, Volume 1". I was in for a real treat. At the time I was friends with a woman from Nebraska, Lisa, who was married to Mohsen, an engineering student from Egypt. They had friends from Tunisia, Morocco, as well as Egypt and I got to meet them and spend time with them. The culture intrigued me, as did the language and the music. The first time I listened to the cassette with Faerouz' songs I was blown away by the range and the beauty of the Diva's voice. There's a love song on that cassette that just haunted me, leaving me almost transfixed. I kept the cassette, and it moved with me from Texas to Washington State in 1988. I recently re-connected with a Moroccan friend who was part of our group of friends in Austin, Texas, and last weekend I decided to try and find the cassette. I did, while sorting through a shelf that needed cleaning up. I wasn't even sure if the old cassette would still work, but my husband assured me it was just fine. We were eating outside, as the weather has been hot and perfect to enjoy BBQ. on our deck and patio, and we put the cassette on. It was in good condition, and within minutes I was transported back to all the memories and emotions of 1984 in Austin, Texas. Faerouz's powerful voice, strong and melodious, rang like a crystal bell through the early evening trees and sky of our backyard. I smiled. The heart has no time, it seems, my friends'faces came back to me as were it just yesterday that I was eating dinner with them,enjoying their laughter, their voices. Thirty years vanished. When I would listen to Faerouz's music, it instilled in me a sense of dignity and purpose connected to the memory of these friendships that has stayed with me. Faerouz's music touched me deeply, warmly then, and it still does. I wish I could have seen her in concert while she was in the US. The beautiful Diva is 77 now. What a satisfying feeling it must be to an artist like her to know she touched the lives and hearts of millions of listeners worldwide. She left an impact on me. Part of me wants to be her, because part of me feels empowered and beautiful, strong and proud when I hear her voice ring through my soul now, as clearly as it did 30 years ago. Shukran, Faerouz.

Och, Was ik maar bij moeder thuis gebleven

For some reason an old Dutch song that I hadn't thought of in ages came to my memory. It is a song that became hugely popular in Belgium and the Netherlands in 1961, and is still popular today, by a Dutch singer by the name of Johnny Hoes, who passed away two years ago. The song is a sentimental story of a young enlisted soldier who falls in love only to discover his beloved blue-eyed  blond girlfriend decides to leave him for his platoon commander, making him wish : "Och, Was ik maar bij moeder thuis gebleven": "If only I had stayed home with mother". It is a lighthearted song, but with a  hint  of bitter-sweetness, because of the disappointment it describes of the betrayed young soldier's heart. I remember hearing the song play many times on popular Flemish and Dutch radio stations, like the popular Dutch station Radio Veronika, hugely liked to this day. Why this song would come back to my mind made me wonder. Then I understood today that to me it refers to a broken heart as well, but the heartache of someone who leaves their motherland to meet and have to overcome many challenges, only to ask at times, why did I make my life so complicated by leaving my native country in the first place? To me the " moeder" in the song is my native country, Belgium, that I left when I was 19. Having lived in the US for 37 years now has been an amazing journey with experiences I never could have had ,had I stayed in Belgium. The friends I met that allowed me to travel to exotic places, to experience so many different cultures, languages. The chance to study overseas, to learn yet another language when I started studying Spanish, the wonderful years in graduate school at the University of Texas in Austin, where I met my American husband and friends I am close to still, my marriage of 27 years now, my son Nicholas, becoming a Tae Kwon Do black belt trained by a 9th degree Korean Grand Master, becoming and being a member of my African American church for 19 years now, my experience dealing with Animal Rights in this country and taking in abandoned and unwanted dogs and cats for going on 28 years now, and the experience on a daily basis of making the US my home are irreplaceable. But there are times I wish I could speak my native Flemish tongue, that I could visit the house where I grew up, that I still had family left, that my family had not been torn apart, that I could be seen in context, and be appreciated for what I have accomplished and survived. As it is , there are very, very few who know or care and I soldier on virtually invisible. Who knows what my life would have been like had our family decided to make a go of it in Belgium. Maybe it would have been OK, or wonderful, or maybe completely ordinary and irrelevant. Still, the song in my head makes me wonder what it would be like to have a close, loving family all close at hand, sharing life together. I do not know my husband's brothers' children, neither does my son. I have not seen my sister's daughter since she was 3, and she is 16 now, and I have never met her 13 year old brother. I have never met my brother's 21 year old daughter, or seen his son since he was 11. He is 26 now. Thank God for Face Book, because I can talk to my sister's daughter and see what a beautiful girl she is and how happy she is with her school, life and friends. I have also met this way my brother's daughter who looks so much like him, and who has a sensitive, artistic heart. Perhaps our family would have fallen apart anyway, as there was already much wear and tear on my parents' unhappy marriage. It was fun to listen to and see the song on a YouTube video of 1987, seeing the original singer perform the lighthearted song at an event sponsored by Radio Veronika Nederland. The grass is always greener on the other side. Maybe. Or perhaps it just feels a little softer underfoot.

Danse Macabre

Our bedroom window faces to the backyard on a very quiet street. By 4:30 in the morning in spring and summer the birds start singing cheerfully. Ours is a very peaceful garden, full of flowers, birds and bees. You can hear the slightest breeze, as it stirs the Buddhist style chimes. Late at night too, it is so quiet , you can hear the stars sigh. That silence is precious to me, in the wake of recovering from the destruction of my family. The death of both my younger sisters, of both my parents, the loss of my only brother, and no support or empathy from my in-laws. When sorrow takes over my heart, the silence becomes a weight on my chest, suffocating my spirit. I finally got some relief from those deafening moments of grief-stricken silence this weekend, when I looked outside my bedroom window, and music started to play in my head, opening up space and relief in my aching heart. The hypnotic violins of Camille Saint-Saens 1875 "Danse Macabre" started its music in my head. The famous piece of music celebrating a night of dance and merriment by the dead on Halloween, leaving their graves for one night, started playing its fantasy, and my heart's eye saw my two sisters dancing together in white, sweeping gowns, escaping their eternal sleep as they swirled around on the grass of my lawn in the pale moonlight. My father never enjoyed dancing much, but here he was, swaying slowly, dressed in a warm light brown sweater, his eyes far away in a place only he could see. My mother was fully made up, glittering in jewelry and a taffeta black gown, cooing to herself as she swirled in big circles, laughing. I watched mesmerized, as the music gained crescendo, and noticed a faint smile and contented sigh come to my face. They twirled in synchronicity now, and I started humming quietly. The music swelled to full orchestra. Then, a warning form the violin and a last frenetic swirl from the dead dancers, and they fled, and all fell silent, leaving me with the moon and swallowed tears. But now the music is here, amid the silence of the dead, and the scent of cemetery in those grieving moments is fading, finally. Eight years after the height of the trauma, mercy and prayer have found a way and the silence now is filled with music. I let out a deep, relaxed breath. Peace has finally come to my garden. Sleep, Ludwina. Sleep, Goedele. Sleep, mother. Sleep, Papa. I'll be here when you want to dance again.

Airport Run

Each time I take my son to work, we pass by the Municipal Airport here, and it is so much fun for me to see the small leer jets, small helicopters and Cessna planes land or take off as they zip overhead the car traffic. As I was leaving the shop where my son does the books, a rather large military helicopter was coming in, thundering its noise through my car, with the blades leaving a quick shadow over me. I enjoyed the slight tremor, and smiled, thinking how there was a time when I was friends with five pilot students from what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I met these rascals un peu louches, in the library, of all places, with my Algerian friend Yasmina, when I was a senior at TCU in Fort Worth, Texas. These guys were a riot, semi ex-patriots from Belgium, Israel and Italy, whose families were trying to make sense of their at times precarious lives in Zaire. They were mischievous and quite hilarious. Dany, Jean-Pierre,Solomon who went by the name Kiko, Harold and Michel. I was like the mascot of the group. It was like being the only girl in a riotous band of pirates. It seems these days they mostly lead quiet lives in Belgium, but there are a couple of the group whose whereabouts remain shrouded in a tropical like thick mist. So driving by the Olympia Airport, as mundane as it might be to the drivers around me, fills me with both smiles and nostalgia. It also reminds me of how fortunate I was as a student to have the opportunity to travel often, and to exotic places, like Costa Rica, Panama and Zaire. Kiko and I dated for a time, and I went to visit him and his family in Kinshasa for the Christmas Holiday in 1980. The experience of two weeks in the heart of Africa remains one of the magical experiences of a lifetime, for a number of reasons. The magnificence of the forests and its animals and vegetation, the local population , hearing them speak Lingala, trying to communicate with them, the open air markets, the anxiety the political system brought on a daily basis, the delicious local food, the heat, the complete darkness each day by 6:00 p.m. because of being at the heart of the equator, the warm, intense rains, the marvel at seeing the mighty Congo River and seeing Papyrus plants at its edges. Standing next to a real Baobab tree, where previously I had only seen a cartoon drawing of it in Antoine de Saint- Exupery's brilliant book " Le Petit Prince ". So, quite often as I drive by the airport and see the small planes zipping by, a sigh not without delight, escapes me and I dream of the time, when, perhaps, I can travel again, and maybe meet up with the next band of pirates in a far away land.

Oh Traveler

There is a song by bad boy musician and rebel activist Algerian born singer Rachid Taha, called "Ya Rayah" that I have been fascinated by ever since I first heard it. My French girlfriend in Paris sent me a cassette of "Carte Blanche" in the late 1990's and "Ya Rayah" became the most popular song on that album. I felt strongly drawn to the song, and only very recently learned that the song is about the emigrant, the traveler, the man or woman without or between countries. As a Flemish immigrant who came to the USA in 1976, I am all too familiar with the melancholy of losing slowly one 's identity of one's country of origin only to struggle with taking on the identity of the adopted country. Unlike Rachid Taha who was born in Algeria in 1958, and moved with his family to a suburb of Lyon in 1968 where his father toiled long hours at a miserable pay in a textile factory, I came here as a student of comfort. However, my status took a good beating, and I lost both my sisters , both my parents and my brother under tragic circumstances from any point of view. The song resonated deeply with me emotionally, before I knew what it was about, which speaks of the considerable talent of Rachid Taha who is famous now for his musical ingenuity and diversity. Now that I know what the song is about, it means so much more and astounds me with the deep resonance it provokes in my heart and soul. As someone who is quite isolated from my country of birth, and who has not been back to Belgium since 1987, I know first hand the longing and illusion of going home again. I became a citizen of the USA in 1994, and enjoy a good relationship with my American husband of 27 years and our 21 year old son, but there are definitely times I wish they understood, both emotionally, culturally and intellectually, what it is like to lose sight of a shore, to try to embrace the land on another far away shore. Rachid Taha captures the at times maddening pain and melancholy beautifully, with power, compassion and great lyricism. Arabic as a language has always had this ability to reach me emotionally, even though I do not speak Arabic. I remember seeing signs in restaurant windows in Brussels in the late 1960's, reading "Interdit aux Nord Africains", and as a 12 year old Flemish girl whose language and identity were not welcome at the time in the Walloon dominated politics of the capital, these signs were shocking and revolting. To me the people and the music of North Africa were beautiful, even though that was not a popular opinion for a girl to have in my economic and social circle, and I never cared if my passions and convictions offended the adults in my world. I love Rachid Taha's music, its range, complexity, anger, dare and lyrical talent, because it speaks to the part of my soul and heart that was lost forever, and that also knows suspicion, rejection, anonymity and the fierce longing for dignity and belonging.