My sad new barber

My local barbers have been pushed out of their shop.  The success of the restaurant/bar that took over three-quarters of the space in their building undoubtedly has the landlord dreaming of bigger rent checks.   So, when I needed a haircut today, I couldn't walk over to see my two buddies.  Instead I got in the car and floated downstream with the traffic towards an old familiar spot.

The apartment building in Arlington where we used to live rests above several street-level shops, among them a barbershop run by a bevy of Vietnamese women, ranging from a lady of about 45 who seems to be in charge, to girls who look no more than twenty.  Anywhere from six to ten young women at a time work the two rows of barber chairs against each wall.  The chairs face a central register nestled against a four-foot square structural pillar that sits in the middle of the space.  The shop almost always is packed with military and business men who live in the neighborhood.  When I step through the open doors today I recognize the faces of some of the same women who worked here seven years ago, a bit more stolid and timeworn but still smiling whenever customers enter. 

Today I arrive around 2 p.m. and only three of the ten or so barber chairs are occupied.  One older man in suspenders is just leaving.  "You look handsome now,"  the boss says to him in passing.  His sparse hair is combed straight back from his forehead, and as he leaves he looks at himself in mirror and rubs his hand over his head.  No matter how busy or how many chairs are open, one of the barbers always says, "Have a seat."  And that's what the boss tells me now, even though all but one of the barber stations in unoccupied..  So I head towards the closest waiting chair, next to a stack of men's magazines.  But, before I can sit down, a young lady is standing in front of me asking, "You ready?"  She looks barely adolescent.  The pale flawless skin of her face, arms and shoulders says maybe sixteen, but probably not much more.  She has a round face and like everyone in the shop is smiling, the red bow of her lips drawn back over brilliantly white teeth. 

After I make my request for a trim, she sets to work with electric shears and comb, reducing a mop of my snow white hair to a pile of clippings that settle like milkweed into the indentation in the lap of the maroon barber's cape draped over me and the arms of the barber chair.  She is wearing a scoop neck sleeveless red and white striped pullover knit and tight jeans.  Just a hint of the mounds of her small breasts rise above the scooped neckline when she leans in with the clippers, in an unselfconscious, non-provocative display that I self-consciously avoid ogling.

The haircut, as has been the case with every haircut I have received at this shop, is efficient and a marked improvement over whatever overgrown rat's nest I bring in the door.  Truth be told, for most of the men who patronize these girls, the haircut is simply an excuse for what follows--a dollop of hot shaving cream and straight razor trim, then a hot towel draped over the head and neck, followed by a neck and head and shoulder massage that can last several minutes, depending on the press of waiting customers. 

I have been watching the only other customer in the shop during my haircut succumb to the charms of a massage.  He sits across from me and the young barber who is rubbing his neck and temples, his scalp and shoulders, wears 4-inch heels that should threaten her balance.  Despite her footwear, she works her client over like a lumberjack, kneading and gripping, at times putting her hands together in a prayer-like position and pounding his shoulders and back, from one side to the other and back again, with a loud pop every time the meat of the sides of her hands meets his body.  The client is a sturdy younger man in business attire--white shirt and tie, tan slacks and polished dark brown dress shoes.  His eyes are closed.  He is leaned forward in the chair and moves a bit in whatever direction the pressure of the barber's massage is directed.  The massage lasts all through my haircut.  When he finally rises to pay at the register he says, without being asked, "I'll be back every day."  The young lady barber smiles, in on the joke, although it may not be a joke.  "See you tomorrow,"  she replies.  

The girl in stiletto heels comes over and sits in the empty chair next to my barber.  The two begin to talk in the mesmerizing sing song of Vietnamese.  A hot towel is draped over my head and I close my eyes and allow firm small hands to rub away all tension in my temples and scalp, my neck and shoulders.  The hands are strong, applying just enough pressure to produce a lessening of whatever tension or strain I have stored in my muscles.  The conversation continues, although it takes on a different feel, which I sense in the hands of my barber, as she talks less and pauses in her movements several times before starting again.  Her responses to the monologue from her co-worker become single words.  She seems to get distracted a couple of times, rubbing the spot between my brows over and over and over, a kind of perseveration.  Then she switches to pulling her fingers across the ridges of my eyebrows from inside to out, almost as if she is lost in thought.  

The massage goes on far longer than I expect, what seems at least 10 minutes.  The conversation, which is mostly the sound of her colleague's voice, continues with few pauses.  I finally open my eyes and sit up straighter, and she grabs my shoulders like she is holding on to something that she didn't quite realize was there a second before.  She removes the cape and brushes me off a final time and we both walk the few steps to the register.

"I like hearing you talk together," I say to the young woman who has been holding up most of the conversation.  

"Do you understand us?" she asks.

"No," I say.  "You speak Vietnamese right?"

"Yes," she says.  I hand my credit card to the girl who has cut my hair.  She is still smiling in that distinctly oriental way that others have described as inscrutable.  "We were talking about my younger sister who died two years ago," says her friend.  

"I'm so sorry," I say.  And I am both sorry and feeling a bit like I've intruded into something personal.  "And her father just died two weeks ago," continues the friend.  I look back at the girl, who is focused on the pen and credit slip she hands me to sign.  All I can think to say is, "I'm sorry."  And I sign the slip, but add "Life can be hard."  

The girl looks directly at me, a flicker of something in her gaze.  Assent?  Annoyance?  Offense?  I can't tell.

"How long have you been here in the States?" I ask.

"Six years."

"Was your father here or in Vietnam?"

"In Vietnam," she says, still smiling bravely, but her eyes tear up and she has to reach up to wipe away a tiny stream of her grief that has trailed down one cheek.  

I hand her a tip, bigger than usual, and feel at a loss.  I want to step around the register and give her a granfatherly hug and the same for the other woman who has lost her younger sister.  I want to draw out of them with a human touch what they draw out of all of us who spend a few minutes under the healing strength of their hands.  But I know that no matter how much I am moved this is not possible and would be as much to relieve my own small sorrow as to comfort their great ones.  

Without thinking I bring my hands together in the prayer posture and bow slightly to each of them, like I learned in Nepal, the all-purpose gesture that can signify greeting or well-wishes or thanks and maybe even sympathy --the Namaste.  I leave with a weight of sadness on my shoulders.    

The Chieftans

A tin whistle takes you places.  At least it does me.  When I hear one, it transports me to a rocky island in the Irish Sea.  In the hands of a master, like Paddy Maloney of the Chieftans, the sound turns me into an Irishman.  Not in the cheap way St, Patrick's Day makes Irishmen of anyone looking to spend a few hours pounding Guiness beers and Old Bushmills shots.  It's a tad more spiritual and it comes and leaves without the pounding headache.

We were lucky enough to hear Paddy and the Chieftans at the Kennedy Center on Friday.  They have been around 50 years.  Quite an accomplishment for any band.  Outside it was a muggy east coast spring night.  But the humidity somehow evaporated and an imaginary chill set in--the icy tingle that goes up your spine on hearing the ballad of a lost love--when the first penny whistle notes flowed from Paddy's instrument.  And there we were, safe and warm in the confines of an Irish pub,  After Paddy's tin whistle came Kevin Coneff's brassy Irish tenor, then the husky cooing of Scottish lass Alyth McCormack.  The shouts and cheers after every song were like the encouragement of friends for their favorite village balladeers.  I could almost smell wet tweed and spilled beer by the time brothers Nathan and Jon Pilatzke broke into their Irish dance routine, a few numbers into the evening's festivities.

By the end of the night, people were up and dancing in the aisles.  To add to the homey, pub vibe, the Chieftans had invited local musicians to perform, including astronaut, Cacy Coleman (who took one of Paddy's tin whistles and one of Matt Molloy's flutes for a 95 million mile ride in the space shuttle); the Rockville High School bagpipe band; and a bevy of talented tousel-headed Irish dance school beauties (with two lucky lads in the mix).

Like everyone around me, I clapped and shouted along with the music and dance.  We were in the first balcony, so I resisted the urge to swan dive down to the orchestra level to join the conga line of Irish dancers during the night's final number.  But I didn't resist the urge to be an Irishman for an evening.  Made me want to book a pub tour of the Emerald Isle.

Mozart's Requiem at the National Cathedral

We do not expect to plumb the depths and scale the heights when we buy seats to a performance of Mozart's Requiem at the National Cathedral.  But, a mild version of that sort of adventure is what metaphorically takes place on a night that thankfully ends closer to heaven than hell.

Things start solidly in the benign column.  I decide to drive despite having sworn I would never be behind the wheel of any vehicle in the District, especially when forced to travel an unfamiliar route.  In this case, unfamiliar does not look difficult.  The route that pops up on Mapquest appears to be straightforward.  Seven miles from our front door to the concert venue.  Two major turns.  Long stretches on the same roads.  But the minute I make the first turn onto M Street in Georgetown off the Key Bridge, I remember why I do not drive in DC.

Traffic is moving at a funereal pace.  Appropriate, I concede, for the evening's entertainment.  I can feel my blood pressure rising.  Cars inch forward, crammed bumper to bumper in both directions.  The good citizens of early America did not plan the streets of Georgetown for 21st century Saturday night traffic and hordes of pedestrians on an early March evening.   Dodging oncoming cars and disoriented tourists, we surge through the intersection at Wisconsin Avenue, our second turn, and triumphantly come to a complete stop for what seems like five minutes while the driver of an SUV the size of a battleship learns to parallel park a block ahead.

Of course we arrive late.  Barb gets out to pick up our tickets from Will Call.  I seek a parking place in the Cathedral's underground garage.   The traffic, once I pay and enter, circles slowly down, level after level.  I do not see anyone parking.  Everyone creeps forward, hoping for an open space on the next lower level.   The spiral descent feels like a trip through Dante's hell, an unwelcome thought on the way to a reqiuem.  I expect to find Adolph Hitler playing gin rummy with Torquemada when we reach the bottom.  Instead, just before the dead end on the lowest level the line of cars in front of me comes to a complete stop.  A driver gets out of a car a couple of vehicles in front of mine and shouts out that there are no more spaces.  I somehow manage to turn around and am the first car to return to the entrance, where a security guard on hearing my sad tale directs me to a reserved area to the left and I park 30 feet away from a stairway to the Cathedral entrance.

Barb is waiting on the steps, alone, tickets in hand.  The concert has started.  Every seat in the nave and both outside aisles is occupied.  Our seats are in the south balcony, high above the transept looking down on the choir and orchestra.  Ushers direct us to a passage in the empty baptistry in one arm of the transept and we circle upwards, one dizzying step at a time, ascending a stone stairwell.  A vision of skeletons in a turret prison crosses my mind as we make what seems a fifth or sixth spiral.  When we finally emerge it is into a maze of doors and passageways.  We pick the most likely and thankfully emerge onto the balcony.  Peeking into my program I find the choir is performing Song of Wisdom by Charles Villiers Stanford, a short work for chorus and organ.  When it ends and the audience applauds, we are ushered to our seats.

The concert, we discover from the program, is in two parts.  The first features ten short choral pieces by familiar, unfamiliar (like Stanford), and unexpected composers.  Most appear to be sacred music.  Haydn, Vivaldi, Purcells, Handel and Mozart pieces all bear distinctive elements that a classical music buff could recognize and use to identify the composer.  I enjoy the trumpets in Handel's Let the bright seraphim.  One of the soloists, soprano Rosa Lamoreaux, has an especially clear and sweet voice.  A choral and organ number by Pablo Casals (the unexpected composer), titled Nigra sum, fills the vast cathedral with beautiful minor harmonies.

After intermission, the Requiem begins.  It features choir, orchestra and soloists--soprano Lamoreaux; mezzo soprano Julia Mintzer, a fiery-looking sylph with curly, auburn, waist-length hair; tenor, Eric Barry; and robust bass, Nathan Stark.  Program notes thankfully include librettos for all of the evening's music.  Since my Latin is as insubstantial as great Caesar's ghost, being able to read the English translation of each movement of the Requiem mass--which is in the church Latin of Mozart's day--adds a welcome dimension to my enjoyment of the piece.  Isn't it grand to live in the age of information?

I know, like every pop culture hound who has seen the movie Amadeus, that Mozart was working on the Requiem while on his own deathbed, and that the piece was only about half completed.  The movie version of events, with Salieri lurking in the vestibule, waiting to steal the composition and claim it as its own, I also know to be patently false.  But, I do not know the real, more interesting story until reading the program notes.

Mozart's wife, Constanze, was keenly aware that her husband's death presented complications.  Now he would be unable to finish the Requiem, which had been commissioned by Count Franz von Walsegg (who, like Salieri in the movie, was himself was a notorious thief of other composer's works).  Stanze needed payment from Walsegg to reduce the mountain of debt left her by her beloved.  But he would only pay for a completed piece.  She called on one of her husband's trusted colleagues, Joseph Eybler, to finish it using Mozart's remaining notes and fragments.  But, Eybler backed out quickly, so she instead recruited, Franz Xaver Sussmayr, one of Mozart's students, to finish the task.  Not only did Sussmayr complete the Requiem, he did it in handwriting so like Mozart's that he was able to forge his mentor's name on the final copy.  Constanze was no fool.  Saving a copy for herself, she accepted payment for the completed piece, then arranged for a public performance of the Requiem before Walsegg had a chance to claim it as his own.

I have been to dozens of classical concerts and admit to having slept through a few, especially when the conductor finds it necessary to stop between each movement to adjust his suspenders and polish his baton, while the orchestra retunes and the soloists gargle.  But in tonight's performance guest conductor Norman Scribner not only starts each section of the Requiem mass almost immediately after the previous one finishes, but also paces the music so that it feels, although somber, uplifting and almost joyous in places.

Knowing that Mozart's student had a hand in composing the second half of the Requiem, I listen for differences from the first. Most noticeable to my tin ear is the disparity in the complexity of musical lines intertwining with each other (referred to as contrapuntal by musicians).   Sussmayr's sections fit with the tone of the whole, but they are noticeably less complex.  A melody dominates.  The other musical lines provide a workman-like harmony.  Mozart's music, by contrast, playfully weaves together multiple voices and melodies in interesting harmonies.  That is the overall impression I am left with at the end of the concert--the pleasure of hearing music that, no matter how familiar, sounds fresh and interesting.  That is Mozart's gift.

When the concert ends, we descend a circular stairway and end up at a locked iron gate, peering helplessly out at the disassembling orchestra and choir.  We retrace our steps to the balcony and descend again in the right stairwell.  We find our car quickly in the garage and, since we are so close to the exit, manage to be one of the first to leave the Cathedral grounds.   The traffic moves smoothly.  The evening sky is clear.  It has been a glorious evening.  Despite the night's literal and metaphorical ups and downs and the fact that the Requiem is a musical reminder of our mortality, I feel almost refreshed, completely in harmony with things as they are, not as I wish them to be.

Nicaragua diary: Granada Poetry Festival

The Granada International Festival of Poetry ends with a parade.  It is scheduled to begin at 2:00 in the afternoon, but locals have told me not to plan on anything happening until around 4:00.

That's about the time I step out of the Hotel Granada onto the Calle de Calzada, the pedestrian mall which runs through downtown and ends in front of the hotel.  The large crowd on the hotel steps and across the street around the Iglesia Guadalupe is a mix of young and old, families and tourists, street vendors and shopkeepers.  They are watching a group of mostly younger men in motley dress dragging heavy chains along the cobblestone street.  I have no idea what they represent.  All are masked and wear multi-colored paper hats.  They are dressed in an assortment of shorts and jeans and cloths tied around their waists like skirts, some also in torn nylon stockings.  The clatter of their chains on pavement makes a menacing sound.

Several of the masked revelers wielding chains are lifting and slamming them on the street while leering into the crowd, daring anyone to reign in what suddenly feels to me like a real threat.  One of the masked men fakes a move toward a group of boys, as if he is going to bullwhip them.  They scream and scatter.

Then I notice that many of the chains are connected to a young man in the middle of the pack, who is being dragged and jerked along like a prisoner.  His face is shrouded in a hood, his eyes covered in a yellow blindfold.  He is suddenly yanked so hard his head bounces off the pavement.  He pulls himself limply to a sitting position before his legs are pulled from under him.  I think of the Penitentes, the self-flagellating believers who voluntarily whip themselves in empathy for Christ's suffering on the way to the cross.   Maybe this prisoner is also a volunteer who suffers gladly for some unknown cause.  When I look around I see families and even little children smiling and shouting, but my adrenaline has kicked in and I still am on edge as the chain gang passes.

 

The group comes to a tree at the final intersection of the street across from the Iglesia.  By now it feels like things have slipped out of control, beyond entertainment, as the shouts and chain clanging grow louder and more threatening.  One of the masked men throws his chain over a large branch of the tree and he is joined by a dozen others who begin to heave and pull.  The hooded victim is hoisted into the air, flailing and shouting in what sounds like pain and desperation.   But, no sooner is he lifted high off the ground, than he is set back down, and the group of about two dozen men gather around him to pull him to his feet, remove his hood, and disconnect their chains.

I find a friend and ask what is going on.  She says the chains and hanging are part of a ceremony that ritually brings the poetry festival to a close each year.  The hanging of the metaphorical poet enacts the cycle of the festival--the death of festivities for this year to make way for next year's event.  The Nicaraguans are like many cultures with large numbers of poor.  They do not welcome, but neither do they shy away from death and violence.  Like the Mexican Day of the Dead, the poetry festival deals with the end of things head on.

But not everything here is so ghoulish.  The parade to follow and what I know of Nicaraguans and poetry tell a far broader story of the people and their country.   There is a saying in Nicaragua that everyone is a poet until proven otherwise.  The annual Festival of Poetry in Granada proves, if not that, at least the fact that a wide range of people respect what poetry represents.  The sheer size and variety of people in the crowds who come every night to listen to poets read their works in the plaza shows how universally admired poets are, even by those we would call common folks.  They applaud and talk with each other about the poems and poets, most of whom they are hearing for the first and most likely only time.  This year, I find from a festival flyer, over 110 poets from 62 countries have come to read their work to these large, appreciative crowds.  Poets are in attendance from India, Malaysia, China, Iceland, the United States and every Spanish-speaking country in the hemisphere and beyond.  Nobel prize winning poet, Derek Wolcott, and Pulitzer prize winner, Robert Pinsky, are two of the featured participants.

Every year the festival celebrates a poet connected with Spanish-language poetry, and this year it is Carlos Martinez Riva, a Guatemalan-born writer who spent most of his life in Nicaragua and who is buried in the city of Granada.  One of his poems is titled, "Poesia es insurrección solitaria" (Poetry is solitary insurrection).  That sentiment is echoed by the crowds who line the parade route, when a float that heads the procession stops at every corner of the Calzada to allow a woman to shout it through the public address system.  And the crowd shouts back:  "Poesia es insurrección solitaria," with a vigor that says they totally approve of the sentiment.  I picture a similar event taking place in the U.S. and can see the switchboard at the local police station light up with alarmed calls for someone to "stop this civil disorder" (although in language hardly that calm or polite).

Following the poet's float are groups representing smaller communities in and around Granada, each dressed in elaborate hand-sewn costumes, and all dancing to the accompaniment of small local bands.  Minus the floats, it is like the Rose Bowl Parade of poetry.  A small group, less than a dozen boys, passes by in black face and Grim Reaper capes, a couple carrying homemade scythes.  Another group dressed in everyday clothes carries placards protesting the government's failure to provide school supplies.  But most groups are there to dance and sing and twirl about in beautiful, colorful dresses and costumes.

Many of the dancers are children, primarily girls but also groups of young men; all smile and wave to families as they pass.  Almost no one refuses my request for a photo, something I have experienced every time I visit the country.  There is an innocence and joy in the Nicaraguan people that neither years of civil war and foreign intervention, nor ruthless governments can extinguish.  Despite poverty and the political maneuverings of current President Daniel Ortega, these are people who love poetry, which is far better than loving wealth or power or order, although some may love those as well.

When I see the crowds, the color, the celebration; when I hear the music and words of the poets; when see what grows and thrives from humble roots--then I realize what this festival means.  Where there is poetry there is hope.  Where there is poetry there is humanity.  Where there is poetry there is steely determination to search for and champion what is just and compassionate and right.

¡Viva la poesia!  ¡Viva la insurrección!