Transformations

by Zinta Aistars







The former Nazareth College

 Sunny Sunday morning, and I’m excited to meet Sister Betsy at the former Nazareth College to discuss my art show—on schedule for February 1 through March 31, 2012, at Transformations Spirituality Center, 3427 Gull Road, Kalamazoo, Michigan. The center contains within its parameters a small art gallery, and I am eager to see it as well as the rest of what remains of the college.

Today, the Sisters of Saint Joseph are still there, as are various offices for human services, Borgess Hospital facilities, a Head Start program, senior housing, an outreach center, and a spiritual retreat.

Driving across town toward Nazareth, my mind flashes back to many, many years ago. I have quite some history at Nazareth. I drive past it frequently when I travel from one side of town to the other, whenever I drop by to visit my parents. The long stone fence surrounding the campus, the drive in the main gate, lined by ancient pine trees, and the white marble statue of Christ, palms upraised in welcome, at its very end. Admittedly, over so many years, I’d developed a certain blindness to it. Familiarity breeds blindness …

Or perhaps there was something more to it. Looking back on those memories, at some point, may have been painful, more easily avoided. Then again, at least now, as I cross town to visit the old campus—the college closed in 1992 for lack of funding, but the buildings all found new purpose—I realize enough time has gone by that the memories flowing over me are more sweet than bitter.

I share them both with Sister Betsy after I find her in the chapel, still running her fingers over the chapel piano, rehearsing Easter hymns, as another Sister leads me in to find her. She greets me with a warm, bright smile, and we walk slowly through the winding corridors of the building, talking.

My grandfather, my mother’s father, I tell her, once worked here. A refugee from Latvia in World War II, with very limited skills in the English language, like so many other Latvian refugees, nothing mattered on this new shore of education or work experience on the other side of the ocean. If one was here with a green card and just learning the language and ways of America, work was all menial. And so my grandfather found work as a security guard in the college boiler room. He worked the graveyard shift, night after night watching over the great machines, making sure they all worked properly. I could remember visiting him there once as a little girl, awed by the immense and loud machinery, thinking this must be the heart of the college, thumping so greatly in its unstoppable rhythm.



Entrance to the art gallery

 “He would often bring home boxes of old books the nuns had discarded, or the library no longer needed,” I told Sister Betsy. “Old textbooks, yellowed history books, whatever books there were, he picked up and brought home. He had a great old desk, and he would sit there for hours on end, paging through the books, reading the dense text, learning the language but also the content, penciling notes in the margins.”

“Perhaps we crossed paths here then,” she mused. “I was here in 1964 already. But the young nuns weren’t allowed to talk much with others. Silence was encouraged.”

“And he was probably equally silent,” I smiled. “In his own contemplation of this new world, so far from home.”

We were both silent for a while, walking the corridors, the stone walls, the high arched ceilings, the great windows to the green courtyard of yet bare-limbed trees outside, in their own silence, holding secrets and unspoken memories.

“I miss him,” I said.

“Yes.”

And then we had arrived at the section of the building called Transformations Spirituality Center. It was more a long corridor than a separate room, but I immediately found it appealing. The outside wall was all windows, sun streaming in, bathing the opposite wall, hung with paintings, in a golden glow.

In just a few days, my father’s paintings would be hanging here. His work will be on exhibit April 1 to May 31. Twenty of his watercolors and oil paintings will be here. Indeed, that was how Sister Betsy and I had connected. I often made arrangements for my father’s art exhibits, and since she had contacted my father now nearly a year ago to show his work here, I had taken over electronic communications, sending her jpgs and links associated with my father’s artwork.

Sister Betsy had done some online wandering and click, and click, had found her way to some of my sites, my blog and website. She’d found a few photos of my painted stones, and she had read some of my blog. When she contacted me to ask if I’d like to show my work at the gallery, I blinked, I blinked again, and then double checked to be sure she had not confused my father’s work with mine. She hadn’t.

I stood in the gallery hallway, studying the work on show by the current artist. No matter how many times I visited how many galleries in this city, I would always find a new local artist. It was what I loved most about living here.

Sister Betsy led me on to show me the rooms used for retreats and gatherings. There was a peacefulness here, a calm quiet, that drew me in—I hoped the tour would go on and on.

“And then,” I went on with my recollections, “my romance with the father of my children began here at Nazareth College, too.”

We were both in the wedding party, bridesmaid and groomsman. The bride was from Kalamazoo, the groom was from New York City. As were we. Standing at the altar to either side, our eyes wandered to each other. By the time we’d made it to the reception ballroom at Nazareth College, he was at my side and didn’t leave it for the rest of the evening.

Once Sister Betsy and I had parted, I wandered the campus on my own. There, I stopped between two buildings, a wide grassy area between them, dipping ever, ever so slightly in the middle, even now. There, we had walked outside in the starry evening, he in his tux, me in my pink chiffon, and suddenly, in a moment of exuberation, he had literally swept me off my feet, and went running across the grass with me in his arms.

I couldn’t stop laughing. Especially when he tripped where the ground dipped, and the two of us went rolling in the grass. My pink chiffon had green streaks, grass stains, all down my right side. His tux was badly mussed. We lay in the cool grass in fits of laughter. A couple years later, it was our turn to stand at the altar.

Our paths had diverted some 15 years beyond that moment in the grass, but two glorious children were born of that union, and I would never regret it.

How very young I’d been then …

How long ago …

How interesting, to come back here now. After all this time, as if in full circle, to plan an art show of my work, broadsides and painted stones, a combination of my two artistic loves. Would my grandfather from some great beyond see? Would the engines in the boiler room thump a little louder then? And that ancient pine, so tall, so broad, its great branches hanging heavy like green curtains along that long walk, remember that youthful joy of first love blossoming, when the young man from New York City pressed that young girl from Kalamazoo against its trunk to steal a kiss?

I would paint that pine tree. One of the broadsides to go on exhibit … yes, I saw it rise in my imagination, the colors, the lines, the droop of those heavy branches … and find the right words to measure the lifelong and indelible mark those two men had left upon my life. My grandfather and my children's father ... I had returned here now transformed because of both of them.

Mouse in the House

Artwork by Zinta Aistars

But mouse -

it's my house!

And I don't wish to share.

Skittering your scattering,

quickening your quivering,

the endless nibbling,

the constant nabbing,

the skipping and the scratching.

Of mice, of men,

no breadcrumbs left.

No cheese.

Ach, the cuteness.

Fine. Stay.

~Zinta Aistars

Wine, Veggies and Poetry

by Zinta Aistars

A poet who gardens for both poetry and organic vegetables—what could be finer? Sharing dinner and a glass of wine with a poet who gardens for both poetry and vegetables, finer still. Even better? Toss in an adrenalized discussion about the fast approaching authors' event, Putting on the Dog: The Smoking Poet Celebrates 5, on Thursday, April 28, at 7 p.m. at The Wine Loft.

Amy Newday from Friends of Poetry, Inc. (the event sponsor), is already waiting for me at the bar when I stroll into The Wine Loft, downtown Kalamazoo, Michigan. I almost miss her; the place is hopping. I expected calm and quiet on a Thursday evening, but the chatter all around is lively, waitresses are weaving through the crowd with platters of aromatic nibblings and glasses of wine, and the bartenders are working the long bar.

I do like this place ... I think that each and every time I walk in. If the online literary magazine I manage, The Smoking Poet, were an actual cigar lounge, this is very nearly what it would look like. I founded TSP five years ago, and it was the print version of the imaginary lounge in my mind: dimly lit, elegant interior, long wooden bar, soft chocolate-colored couches and chairs gathered around low tables, sheer curtains threaded with gold hanging from the ceiling to separate spaces for intimate conversation. An extensive wine menu doesn't leave out aged scotch or craft brews, and jazzy music is playing softly in the background. All that's missing are the cigars ... this is a smoke-free place ... but Winston's cigar lounge is just across the street for those who can't resist a bit of fire.

Amy and I move to the velvety brown couches and lean in to toss around our marketing ideas and plans for the upcoming event. Things are coming along nicely. The Wine Loft has designed a very kewl poster that will be distributed to businesses around town, to Western Michigan University and Kalamazoo College.

There he is, our charming mascot, the cigar-chomping pup wearing a red bow tie and cap. A great date any night. A reporter from the Kalamazoo Gazette will be writing our story, a radio show is on schedule at WKZO's Lori Moore Show for April, which is National Poetry Month. Dean Hauck, owner of Michigan News Agency, has us on her schedule to put out a book table and sell participating authors' books.

In fact, Amy and I admit to each other with a flush of anticipation—we're a tad worried about space. Not enough of it. With a lineup of 14 great writers, some traveling cross-state to be among us, and concluding with an open mic, gee, we could be moving the walls out a few feet wider and longer. Good problem to have.

Which one of us will do introductions? In what order shall we read? Where should we stand the musicians? How about someone to record a video of the whole evening?

We bubble and simmer with ideas. Not so much so that we don't have time to eat. The Wine Loft has broadened their menu to include a selection of dinners, and Amy tries the Filet Mignon salad, and I, the Margarita Pizza, with tomatoes, mozzarella cheese, basil, olive oil and garlic on flat bread. For dessert, we share a plate of chocolate-dipped strawberries.

Conversation irresistibly turns to food. Spring is here, at least on the calendar if not quite yet reflected in warmer temperatures. Amy talks about her new business: an organic garden in Shelbyville, named Harvest of Joy Farm, which is just this summer beginning to sell just a few first CSAs, or community supported agriculture shares. She and friend Diane Glenn drew up their business plan last summer and are now ready to dig and seed and grow and share. Amy has for some time now been my source of organic wisdom, and it suddenly hits me ... I had considered getting a CSA this season, put it off due to a house sitting stint out of town, now canceled, so here I was, once again on the market for a CSA.

"Hey! I just realized I could still do a CSA this summer ... any shares left?"

Amy smiled like sunshine, and I didn't let her smile fade before I had my checkbook out and was writing a check for my share. While I despise general shopping, avoid malls like the plague, I can't resist book stores and farmers' markets. I have an addiction for both, and it can cost. Good thing Amy's poetry book was still in manuscript, or I would have bought a wheelbarrow full of copies.


Amy in her garden

I'm giddy with anticipation as I listen to Amy talk about the seeds that are going into the earth, to become a large part of my meals this spring, summer and fall. I'm planning on my own small garden, too, a raised bed in the backyard, so my visits to the grocery store could be few and far between, for dairy and breads and grains, but drives to Patch 'n Pasture, another small organic farm, supplying my poultry needs.

Combined passions. Amy and I talk long about hers, poetry and gardening, and mine, creative writing and painting, with my recent change in creative direction, writing and painting broadsides. It's good to be two-timers. Seemingly different pursuits, but somehow it all comes together, comes full circle. We are nourishing body and spirit, tapping both sides of the brain. How to make a business out of our bliss, how to market what we do best, how to share it with others of similar interests, how to steer our lives ever along the lines of Joseph Campbell's advice: "Follow your bliss."

As we plan Putting on the Dog: TSP Celebrates 5, it feels more and more like a bigger celebration than just five years of a literary journal. It is a celebration of a more poetic slant to life. It is a celebration of authenticity in our work. It is the exploration of finding creative freedom, expression that is uniquely our own. It is a bringing together of the healthy whole: feeding body, mind, spirit.

Definitely something delicious to chew on.