A Letter

Dear America,

I hope this letter finds you well. We haven’t seen each other for three months now, but I think about you all the time. I find myself wondering, “What is America doing right now, at this very moment?” It’s funny, people are curious and they ask me about you a lot. Usually “What is America like?" I generally say "America is different than what you might imagine." and they nod their heads, but I’m not sure if they believe me.

As you know, I’m seeing another country right now. Her name is Bulgaria. I wouldn’t call it love just yet, but, I have to say, I like her a lot. She smokes a pack a day and she has a curious way of rolling the entire cigarette between her thumb and index finger before each light. She careens down roads in a mustard yellow Soviet-era Moskvitch in a way that shows little regard for the sanctity of life and I always have to shout, “Put on your seatbelt, Bulgaria!” She makes her own booze in a still behind her house. I can’t lie. I find it all very charming. Don’t be jealous, but she’s pretty in the way that linden treed streets and fields of plum and cherry are. The way the light catches sometimes in the morning, she looks like you. I actually think you two would get along really well.

It was your birthday yesterday. Two hundred and thirty two years ago you were born. And so much hope sat heavily on your shoulders as it does upon all new things. Untold millions, bleary-eyed and beat, fresh off boats, have hitched their dreams to that for which you stand. Hell, you’ve practically copyrighted and capitalized the word “Dream”. It’s now a vague, quasi-meaningless buzz-word like “Change!” or “Freedom!” that people eat up and politicians shout randomly for applause. Inevitably, you’ve disappointed some people and made some enemies along the way. You cried “Freedom!” from birth but it took almost a 100 years for everyone to actually be free and another 100 for everyone to have equal rights and that is still debatable. But, I didn’t write this letter to chastise and I don’t want to dredge up the past. It was your birthday yesterday after all.

You always used to say I never gave you complements, that I could be unnecessarily critical, and maybe you were right. So, I want to tell you what I love about you America: I love that you believe in Great Big Ideas. And, sure, your ideas don’t always sync with your actions. But, I can see you trying, and I look at where you were and where you are today and I can see the unmistakable mark of progress. I love that you can find Indian food in any decent sized city. I love the dewy mornings in Florida, the acryllic blue skies of Wisconsin in the afternoon, the Northern Cascades at dusk, and the innumerable stars that flicker and glow over the vast barren flatness of North Dakota at 2 AM. I love public libraries, public radio, and public demonstrations. I love that you invented flight and, honestly, Coca-Cola and jeans. I love how you don’t care too much about what other people think about you. I love that you ask, “How was your math class?” instead of “How was your maths?” A part of me loves that you’re kind of a big deal. There. That wasn’t so hard.

I know you’re going through kind of a rough patch right now. You feel misunderstood by the world. While you see yourself as industrious, prosperous, and moral, others see decadence, inflexibility, and egotism. I know you’re searching for a new direction right now and I hope you’re able to find what you’re looking for. It’ll be a happy day when I see you again.

Yours faithfully,

Matt

Daniova Mama

On hearing certain unexpected chord changes, I sometimes have to respond physically out of a kind of... I don't know what. During training we visited a Roma neighborhood where a boy sang a song accompanied by accordion. And there came a certain point in the song, a chord change, when the accordion dipped and the boy's voice floated up and it was too much. I slumped over in my chair. Scientists and musicologists explain why music has the effect it does on us. What is traditionally thought of as music is sound produced at mathematically precise intervals, laid out rhythmically, with intermittently broken patterns to hold interest. All of this is to say: explaining music is like trying to explain why a joke is funny.

After the song finished, I hustled over to someone from the community and in my broken Bulgarian asked him to write down the name of the song. He scribbled on scrap paper, "Daniova Mama".

Daniova Mama, sung by Binka Dobreva

This version of the song isn't as pure as what I heard that day. I don't care for the clean synthesized tone of the instruments. But, the singer's voice is a force unto itself. It hangs in the air interminably, feints up and down, rises, rises, rises. It's unsubtle in the best way.

My afternoon sanctuary on stage.

I have a soft spot for maligned instruments. For example, the accordion. While it's popular in Eastern Europe, America has relegated it to polka music and a few adventurous artists' albums. I asked around for an accordion to practice on a couple of weeks ago. Without phone books or internet listings, this is how you get answers to questions like these in Bulgaria. Lo and behold, last Sunday, one of the teachers gave me a nice accordion to borrow for the two years that I'm here. There aren't any accordion teachers in town, so I'll be teaching myself. I'm currently learning the "oompah".

I usually go to the cultural/community center in the afternoons to play piano (and now accordion). It's a refuge of sorts: from the heat, from being a curiosity, from the life outside. Having spent so many hours in college in a darkened theater, it's a comfort here.

The theatre.

I continuously hear how much better certain parts of Bulgarian life were under Communism. In my town, there was a decent football field and clay tennis courts. Nationally known musicians, writers, and other artists passed through town and used the theater. Films were shown often in the theater on weekends when there weren't theatre or dance performances. Undoubtedly, memory embroiders in gold what has passed. Nonetheless, it's hard to hear about what this place once was and where it is now. The cultural center as a whole is deserted. The library is barely used, the theater is rarely used, no movies are shown. My town isn't in a unique situation. All across Bulgaria, other small towns are in similar circumstances. When Communism fell, so did a lot of the framework that held together recreational and cultural programming on a national level. This framework is slowly, slowly being rebuilt, but it takes a while for the changes to reach the small towns and villages.

Milko, who looks for all the world like Borat's Bulgarian brother, held a concert in my town's cultural center a couple of weeks ago. It depresses me somewhat to mention "Milko" and "cultural" in the same sentence, but there it is. He sings Chalga music, which, as I mentioned before, is a bland fusion of traditional Bulgarian folk music and generic pop music. Unlike authentic Bulgarian folk music, which can be stunningly beautiful and has a soul, Chalga disregards all notions of originality or substance. I didn't go to Milko's concert, so I can't say how well it was attended. I think a fair amount of teenagers went though. At the risk of lowering your estimation of Bulgarian popular culture (it's not very different from American popular culture, really), here's Milko in action. The women around him are dancing the kyuchek, a hip-centered style of dancing in the Balkans associated with Roma.

I shaved my mustache shortly after seeing this poster of Milko. I think it reminded me of how ridiculous mustaches look on some people, myself included.

Italian Bikes, French Mustaches

I bought a second-hand Italian road bike (Giubilato) for a 160 leva (around $130) last week. I took it out on Sunday and breezed down a road running alongside the vineyard outside of town. This is my first road bike and it was more responsive than the tanks I'm used to riding. Nonetheless, it felt liberating to have some means of self-transport again. If I can garner significant interest from the students at school, I'd like to start a cycling club.

The First Week

I am now living alone in a bloc apartment in a small Bulgarian town that lies at foot of the Balkan Mountains. I made the honest mistake (one among many) of referring to this small town as a "village" during a short interview for the national Bulgarian television network. Since arriving, I have been remonstrated (with easy smiles and a winking eye) by nearly everyone I've met that this is not a village. Their playfulness betrays the truth: it's a village masquerading as a town.

view from the mountain

I have spent the past week slowly accumulating the necessary accoutrement of modern domestic existence: a trashcan, clothes hangers, salt and pepper shakers, a mixing bowl. I have removed items not in agreement with my half-chosen, half-pragmatic minimalist sensibility: three posters of disconcertingly placid horses that stared at me (quietly judging me (as horses are wont)) from beneath the glass top of my desk, a vase of wilting wild flowers, a decorative table-top crochet upon which the flowers previously decayed.

These were the offending horses.

I share the place with a cabal of ants that have laid fierce claim to my sink and its environs. Had they the know-how, they would fashion spears out of flecks of counter-top and hurl them precipitately at the index finger that I use to snub out their existence. Roaches and fleas are a less common and even less welcome sight. I spotted a solitary flea preparing to feast on my leg on my first night here. It evaded capture (as fleas usually do) and I spent an hour attempting to sleep while hallucinatory fleas (I never actually saw them) cavorted gleefully in the dark. Somewhat more disturbingly, I was awakened one morning by insistent scratchings in the hollows of the cement walls. It was either a rat or an extremely adept impersonator. I expected him (rats are always male, aren't they?) to break through at any moment and leap headlong, his gleaming incisors bared for action, at my neck. I kicked at the wall with my shoe a few times as if to communicate to him: "I know you're there. I'd rather you not scratch like that. Honestly, it's making me uncomfortable." He paid no mind.

On Tuesday, I made two important discoveries in a city nearby. First and foremost, I found books written in English. There's a British Council (an organization that fosters cultural relations between the UK and countries abroad) library in the city that allows you to check out books for a month at a time. I browsed their collection with a goofy grin, reveling in the familiar authors and titles. There were dozens upon dozens of classic writers and books I haven't yet read. My second discovery was Kaufland, a German-based grocery store. It had all the trappings of an American grocery store: the selection was plentiful, the air pleasantly conditioned, and it had similar aesthetic touches as those in the States. I bought a huge bottle of Heinz ketchup.

Missing Posters For The Dead

At first glance, to look at the posters tacked on power lines, on the metal gates fronting houses, and on the corkboards in anonymous municipal buildings, you might think there was a legion of missing, lost, or otherwise wanted Bulgarians. Bulgarian names (Gyorgi, Ivanka, Dimitar) in bold black Cyrillic script head each poster. But, the first thing that catches your attention are the solemn mugshots: a middle-aged man with gapped teeth, a sober-faced baba framed by a head scarf, a dark-haired Bond villainess look-alike, an eleven year old boy forcing a smile. On closer inspection, you realize the people haven't gone missing in the way you thought. The posters are 8X11 inch paper memorials to the dead, varying slightly in content and style, but usually including the deceased's name, a headshot, how long they've been dead, a cross, and a message to the departed. There are companies that produce them for a small fee, their address and phone number listed at the bottom of each one. My guess is that the top-notch Bulgarian design talent is not working on these. And so, despite the memorial intent, it nonetheless feels like a search for someone lost.


Four times a year, Bulgarians, and from what I understand, Eastern Orthodox faithful everywhere, bring food to their loved one’s gravesite. The day is called zadooshnitsa (задушница). I participated in the задушница a couple of weeks ago with dozens of other families at the graveyard as a steady stream of villagers came and went. Each family gathered around a grave with their food (meatballs, sweetbreads, bon-bons, feta cheese, cherries) and made a plate for the deceased. My host family and I gathered around the grave of my host mother’s mother. My host father, Mitko, lit six candles, placing them on the grave to burn down. Then, he sprinkled rakiya (an omnipresent Bulgarian brandy, usually homemade), coffee, and a little bit of Diet Coke on the gravesite. After my host mom, Ivanka, placed the plate of food near the headstone, we made plates for other families who were there and handed them out. We also received plates of food, as well as chocolate bon-bons. After receiving food from someone, you’re obliged to respond with “Бог да прoсти” which means essentially “May God forgive”. The whole event felt kind of like a picnic with the dead. We sat on a bench, shaded by leafy trees, and picked at our chocolate bon-bons and fresh cherries. The wind carried lilting strains of old Bulgarian Orthodox songs that emanated from a frocked priest not far away. The Rila Mountains, looming verdant green in the sun, presided over it all. If it wasn’t a kind of communion, it was something close. We left the plate of food at the gravesite. What small solace might be found when the families return months later to find the food gone, I don’t know. If nothing else, I'm sure the dozens of local street dogs appreciate the gesture.

"The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness." So begins Vladimir Nabokov's autobiography, "Speak, Memory". You can call it bleak sentiment or tempered wonderment depending on how you feel about the "brief crack of light" at the moment. Regardless, we will never accept death. I think it's one of the beautiful things about us: faced with an incontrovertible certainty, we deny it. We do this by plastering names and faces on walls, by sharing our food with the graveyard dogs, and, more prosaically and simply, through the remembrance of shared time, of small kindnesses, of one day in June.

I'm growing a mustache at the moment.

On Alphabets

The Bulgarian attitude towards celebrations can be summed up by a phrase more closely associated with the States: More is better. Every week it seems there is a festival, party, commemoration, or town holiday of some sort to attend. Like their climatic brethren in Chicago, Bulgarians squeeze every last ounce of marrow out of their summer as they recuperate and anticipate the bone-chill of winter.

On May 24th, as they do every year, all of Bulgaria celebrated Kiril and Methodius Day, or Bulgarian Education and Culture, and Slavonic Literature Day. Kiril and Methodius were two brothers from Greece (perhaps ethnically Greek or perhaps Bulgarian) who performed missionary work in Bulgaria. They forged the first Slavonic alphabet, the Glagolitic alphabet, in order to translate The Bible into the Slavic languages. Like war and the space program, missionary work sometimes produces useful innovations for the rest of us. The Glagolitic alphabet and, more importantly, its heavily Greek-influenced cousin, the Cyrillic alphabet (created by Kiril and Methodius' student Kliment Ohridski), was instrumental in maintaining Bulgarian cultural identity during 500 years of Ottoman (Turkish) rule.

The Glagolitic alphabet. Much more complicated than Cyrillic

I was somewhat ambivalent about Cyrillic at first. It shares more than a few characters with the Latin alphabet, however only a few represent the same sounds. For example: the letter "H" in Cyrillic represents "N" sound in "neat", the letter "P" represents the "R" sound in "rat". If I wrote "rat" in Cyrillic it would look like "pat". As with the head shake for "yes", it was a somewhat pleasurable challenge to re-train my mind. I literally felt what is was like to be five years old again, learning to read for the first time, sounding everything out, expending every last drop of mental energy. My understanding of how daunting learning a foreign concept can be has increased, as has my empathy for students engaged in the struggle. I trust (or, hope) that this perspective manifests itself in the form of untold patience once I begin teaching.

Two months into study, I have grown rather fond of Cyrillic. It is a purely phonetic alphabet, each letter corresponding to one specific sound. The letter "K" represents only one sound unlike many letters in the Latin alphabet, such as our letter "C" which could sound like either the "K" sound in "CAT" or the "S" sound in "RACE". Try explaining to a non-English speaker why we don't pronounce the "K" in "KNIFE" and you'll understand how tricky our language and alphabet can be. English, as an international language influenced by a number of languages aside from its West Germanic roots is an unwieldy beast incapable of being fully expressed by only 26 letters. The upshot of Cyrillic's pure phoneticism is that it makes spelling in Cyrillic very easy. If you hear the word correctly, you can probably spell it correctly. And, it means that you can read somewhat fluently and with relative accuracy pretty quickly. One letter can also represent several sounds in one fell swoop, making it pleasingly elegant. For example, the "SHT" sound you hear at the end of the word "CRASHED" only takes one letter to represent in Cyrillic: "щ". You would spell the whole word "CRASHED" as "КРАЩ" in Cyrillic.

Bulgarian Cyrillic pronunciation guide

Here are a few examples of names and international words in Cyrillic. You can figure out what they mean using the pronunciation guide above. The Latin alphabet transliterations are at the bottom of the post.

1. РЕСТОРАНТ
2. ХОТЕЛ
3. ХИЛАРИ КЛИНТОН
4. БАРАК ОБАМА
5. ШИКАГО

Yesterday, along with another volunteer, I participated in my first on-camera interview for the local news. I was asked by the reporter if I liked Bulgaria. My response (in Bulgarian) would translate as: "Of course. The mountain is nice. The people is very nice." Thankfully, Bulgarians generally respond with positive enthusiasm with anything we manage to say in Bulgarian. A couple of weeks ago, the four other volunteers in my village and I sang a couple of Bulgarian songs in front of several hundred people packed into a small theatre for a celebration of the 130th anniversary of the school in our village. The cheers and overwhelmingly positive response we got was a little disproportionate to the amount we actually deserved. I would feel guilty if I didn't milk it for all it was worth.

Yesterday was not only eventful for the TV interview. Later in the afternoon, I milked my first goat. I felt a little uncomfortable for the goat. There I am, all up in her business while she placidly chews cud and fixes her distressingly translucent irises on me. As a willing (if not altogether eager) participant in the American Industrial Food Complex, I'm not used to having the food I eat quite so up close and personal.

Here are the English/Latin alphabet transliterations from the Cyrillic:

1. RESTAURANT
2. HOTEL
3. HILLARY CLINTON
4. BARACK OBAMA
5. CHICAGO

A poster in our classroom.