the widow's offering

I watched the embers light up brighter as Dato pulled a drag from his cigarette, the wrinkles around his mouth tightening as he formed a perfect circle around the black, crusty cigarette holder. As he lowered the cigarette, his hands shook. They always shook. When he tapped the cigarette against the ashtray, his hands shook even more. I saw a small Soviet military tattoo between his thumb and index finger, a green faded tiger roaring at nothing.

"My son, you know, he's in prison," Dato said to me in Russian. His eyes were narrow, weathered, looking as if they were about to cave in from some unseen pressure. "He's been there for three years now. Seven more to go."

He poured the white wine from a large glass jar. One glass for me, one glass for him. He looked at me, his eyes steadier than his hands. Unnaturally steady.

"I am sorry, this is all the wine I have. I am so sorry," he said. He brought his free hand to his cheeks that were shadowed with stubble. A look of worry on his face. Worry that I'd be disappointed and that I'd leave.

"No worries, it's nothing, really. I just came to wish you a happy birthday, not to drink your wine."

"But really, no, I should have wine for you. It's been a hard year. Still I don't have a job. I was police chief and now this. My son is in prison. I couldn't even buy enough wood for the winter." Another drag from his cigarette, his hands still violently shaking.

"Don't worry about all that." There was no sink in the kitchen, only a faucet that came from the wall with a plastic bucket underneath. Between the short spurts of our conversation, I could hear it drip. "Let's make a toast. To you, for your birthday." I didn't have the ability to make vast elaborations in my toasts, not like Georgians did. My best toasts were spin offs of jokes. I haven't had one Georgian understand why I make toasts with jokes. They just give me a funny look, like perhaps a dog would give his owner when they do something inexplicable, with the head a little cocked to the side, an eyebrow raised.

"Thank you, thank you." We drunk. The walls were caked in dirt. The floor was solid concrete. In the living room, it was covered in a vinyl copy of a parquet floor. The wood stove burning, giving off the only heat in the house.

We set the empty glasses down. The jar was empty. The perpetual look of worry was only growing on my host's face. He looked nearly on the verge of tears. It was the first time I truly understood the importance of a Georgian to be a good host. It was life. Even though the man had next to nothing in possessions, he ached to give me something. He ached to fill me up with his wine, his food. Yet, there was nothing. No wine and only half a moldy loaf of bread sitting on the table between us. "Let's sit down next to the pechka," I told him. I stood and pulled up a stool next to the solid iron oven.

Dato gave a heavy sigh, glad that I was staying for a bit longer. He went next to me and bent down to the wood stash under the pechka. Those stashes are usually full, but not with his shortage. There were only three logs sitting there. He put an extra piece of wood into the fire, worried that I'd be too cold.

"That's not necessary," I told him.

"But it is," he said. "But it is."

შობა სიონში

The night was cold. My feet near frozen, waiting on a bus for over and hour. I was beginning to not believe my friends when they said it was coming any moment now. We were gathered together, ten of us, all waiting and talking. Running from one parking lot to the next was a man moving with stiff legs, his eyes glazed and his hands held out like he was Frankenstein's monster. One kid whispered to me, "Narkomani," or "drug addict." Sometimes cars would pull up and give a couple of us a ride to Sioni, where there was the church we were headed so that we could attend Christmas mass. The Orthodox Christmas is celebrated on the 7th of January, due to the Orthodox liturgical calendar being set on the Julian calendar. When the bus finally came, we crammed in. It was holding at least one hundred people more than it should have been.



Sioni is the oldest church still in operation in Georgia, dating to the 5th century AD. The ceiling, as is typical of Orthodox churches, raised high above us. It gave way from painted stone to bricks and mortar, various layers of masonry could be seen as the church had been repaired throughout the various ages. Religious icons hung from every column, most glazed and glowing with brass or gold, under each a tray full of burning candles and women and men whispering silent prayers. The women all in silk or cloth hoods or hats, the men with their heads bare and their hats in their hands. Everyone's heads were bowed, praying, or leaning towards each other carrying on quiet conversations as they waited for the mass to begin. Occasionally people would look up at the mystical height of the inside, or at some high up icon staring below down at them. The audience was slowly collecting, slowly growing larger and larger.



At exactly midnight, the mass had begun with the gentle ringing of the bell, which rang almost to the beat of galloping horses. The priest came out in green vestments, followed by other priests and attendants in mostly red vestments. They were in a royal procession, walking to the tingling bells, the priest swinging a hollow gold mace with gold incense, the burning frankincense drifting up in huffs as the mace swung.

The procession stopped and gathered. One priest went up to the division wall, behind which is encased the body of Christ. The choir began to sing old Georgian songs, lifting their voices up to the zenith of the dome above. Mixed with the candles and the floating smoke of the frankincense, there was encased one of those austere and mystical experiences that never fails to fill the heart with a longing and a desire. It's the same feeling that always draws me to the Latin mass in my own Catholic Church. Of course, here was the Georgian singing, which is a stark contrast to the Gregorian chant that I'm used to. I can't even begin to explain how beautiful the singing was. But here's a video of what it sounded like (and very possibly, the same song that it was):



They began to do the readings and intonations, and since they were all in Georgian I didn't understand a thing. That normally just sends me into a dismal self-reflection. At least it would have if I didn't realize that one of those hooded girls held her eyes locked on me. She had been looking at me throughout the entire beginning of mass. I shifted uncomfortably, coughed, pretended not to admire the curving of her cheeks or the soft pout of her lips, or her deep green eyes. Come on man, this is not the time to sit and ponder over a woman's lips! I kept trying to sink myself back into the singing, back into the incense, back into the chanting.

One of the kids I came with whispered to me, "Come on man, it's either we leave now or you'll stay until seven in the morning." My vexed concentration was relieved. I weighed the options. It was a beautiful service, but I was cold. And hungry. And since I wasn't understanding a thing and had no one around to tell me what was going on, I realized that after seven hours of this I would be somewhat near to bored, if not dead from boredom. I wanted to stay longer, but bowed my head in agreement, following him out the church. But just one more glance at the ritual. One more glance, seeing those eyes.

the profound luck

They told me there'd be a party. "Yes, New Years is the biggest party of the year." And of course, I believed them. That's what we do on New Years, we party. We start early that evening and end early the next morning. Then after a day or two, get back to work and get it all started again. When New Years evening came around, nobody was about. Just the host family. Just a few empty glasses sitting on the table, with a bottle of champagne alone and forlorn, a lighthouse warning the ships of New Years wishes and resolutions to watch where they head in the fog of the future. Something was wrong. Was I going to ring in the New Year like this? Quietly? I don't think I'd ever done that before.

Well, there was that one time with Misha in Dallas. We were running late. We had a bottle of 100 dollar champagne, Cliquot or Dom Perignon, I don't remember. And as the minutes ticked closer to the event, we were racing down the highway. I had to pull over into a parking lot, and there we sat on the frost covered concrete, passing the champagne bottle between the two of us, a Russian folk band blaring from the radio of my car, the steam of the exhaust wafting by us, visible in the headlights. But that was different. That was something. And that was with one of my closest friends. This here, this was different than that. Here I was completely alone. With these people, but none of whom I could really call my friends. Not yet. It takes something to get into my heart. It takes a night of listening to music and heavy drinking and talking of God and eternity and war and peace to get to my inner sanctum. Something I really haven't shared with my host family yet.

I resigned myself. I would not obscenity. I would let things pass. That was the lesson here, that slowly I'm learning, though within me burns a kind of mad fire that's always consuming and sometimes lets out. No, I needed water. I needed calmness. I needed my center of gravity in a universe without mass. I walked outside, flask in hand, taking lonely shots of vodka while waiting and waiting. And then it happened.

It started with one rocket here, one tracer there. From my vantage point in the mountains, I watched this sleepy Caucasian town wake up. Fireworks were booming from every house throughout the valley, launching into air, explosions everywhere. People were coming out in the streets with pistols and rifles, firing up into the air. It was like some futuristic battle scene from some anonymous science fiction film. It went on for a good thirty minutes. Explosions, gun fire, general racket and glares throughout the sky. And when it stopped, it didn't all stop at once. It petered out slowly. A general silence fell, but it was only general. Here and there, a bomb blew up. Another firework launched. More gunfire. All the way until morning.

"Shawn, what are you doing boy!" someone called. "Get up here." So I went back up to the family and we sat and had our quiet little supra, they got on skype and chatted with family and friends all across the world. And I sat back watching. Good for them, good for them to be together like that. I'll have another shot of vodka please, thanks. And all was fine. They were happy, and that's a good thing.

The rest of the night passed in a neighbor's house, drinking more and more glasses of wine. The Georgians have an art of making toasts, and with each glass, the longer they last. They praise everything. They praise their friends especially, showering each other with love and compliments… so many that a suspicious mind like mine only thinks that this is some sort of Amway sales pitch. But they're not selling anything. By 7 in the morning, by the first traces of the dawn streaking across the sky, leaking into the glassless windows, toasts were going on into thirty minute breaths. How they love me, how they adore me, how they are thankful for what I'm doing for them here. And here, in my dark, wine riddled mind, I can only think, "What do you want from me?! I'm not that great. You have no idea." When I hear compliments, I only punish myself, I only think of all that bad things I've ever done, I only think that I've never done enough, never could do enough, to live up to what's being said. A compliment is a little miracle to me, and it breaks my hardness with a shock. Maybe they are being honest, maybe there is something to me.

And for this New Years… I'm going to try to do what I've never been wholly capable of. I'm going to quit taking people for granted. But it's hard. This world is peopled with so many great and interesting individuals and I get distracted way too easily. Hell, even the people who I know are reading this blog, and who I've gotten the profound luck to get to know in one way or another. I try not to take you guys for granted. I try not to take all my old friends and family for granted. But the madness seizes me all too often and sometimes it's like I've forgotten them. I wonder how they feel about that, when I just disappear for months and years at a time, off on my own crazy crusades. And I don't always come back. But still, without each and every one of the people who have touched my life… I would be less. I don't ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for me.