Thursday, July 15 th. 2021
Ah, Olga…I could write a long story about how I found her but I think she speaks for herself.
I placed an Oriole’s nest in the vase, lit from within, salt in a glass container, then I stuck a blackened silver plated spoon in the salt and on top I laid down a strand of braided hair, almost snake like.
Cut off your hair in despair, rub salt into your wounds.
The spoon I found many years ago in a burned down house on Rosemond Boulevard, a desolate stretch in the Antelope Valley. The burned down house might have been used as a meth lab. There are such places here in the desert area around Lancaster I have been told.
The ball, that is tree sap, oozing out the trimming wounds of an almond tree, a tear from a tree.
I named her Olga, the name just popped up in my head.
Sure, the most famous Olga perhaps is the oldest sister in Chekhov’s play “The three sisters”.
There is that endless longing in the play, in my experience that is a paralyzing state of emotion, coming from a serious bout of nostalgia. In Tschaikovsky’s Opera Evgeny Onegin, in Act II, Vladimir Lensky laments his fiancée Olga, just moments before the duel takes place in which he gets shot by Onegin. This is an opera I know so well. I worked in the wardrobe department for the touring version of it in my younger years, and always stood in the wings to listen whenever I could, I always caught this particular aria. Such a heartbreaking aria this is.
The line “Ah Olga….”, sung with heartfelt sorrow. Poor Olga…
And there is that antique linen pillow case, Olga Zabel stitched her name on it, with light blue thread in elegant lettering. I bought this in late 80’s in a typical Berlin style second hand store on the Urbanstrasse. That pillow case is now at home at my friends place in Zabelsberg, a beautiful place just North of Berlin. Maybe enough associations to accept the name Olga?
I think so, but I really think she told me her name herself and I picked that up.
I still feel guilty that I hadn’t saved her. I maybe could have?
That sound, high above in the tower, weren’t baby owls. If I just had looked up!