Making Progress


It's time to begin journaling [spell-check does not like that word-I do] the progression of my study of Hungarian.

Student of immediate gratification, it is nothing short of exasperating that I am not fluent in Hungarian after two months. A curious thing happens as I listen to the radio, or watch You Tube posts, I feel as if I should be understanding what is being said. As if somewhere, deep down, is the knowing of this language that simply needs to be unearthed. When I do succeed in picking out a word here and there, I am filled with joy and "emerveillement".

I begin to be able to notice if the word is a noun, an adjective, or a verb without knowing(yet) the meaning. This is so amazing to me.
Sometimes I listen and I feel as if I understand. And my mind goes a little wonky when it realizes it doesn't. And I wonder if this is what happens to little kids as they begin learning a language. And so the kid metaphor appears again as I build upon my studies.

Now Eva, my teacher, helps with this kid metaphor as she brings me flashcards, and creates games to help with my learning.

I'm learning numbers at the moment(yes, me, numbers-my nemesis-math). Flash-back to Mrs. Eden in ninth grade handing me back an algebra test on which I got a blinding 24 out of 100. (That would be huszonnegy out of száz). Pages and pages, actually only three, of addition. Sitting down at the table to do this particular homework really was fun, really made me laugh, and lead to the almost unimagineable, that I realized I had learned how to count from 1 to ten (egy to tíz) and committed said numbers to memory. Yes, memory.

Just this week, Eva brought dice to our lesson.  We threw the dice, taking turns,  first naming the numbers on a single die and then adding them up  as we threw two and then four  at a time. Sometimes I would goof around and shake those dice in my hands, blowing on them just like I saw Bud Abbot do in "In the Navy". Eva doesn't seem to mind my goofing around. Talk about a miracle worker-not only am I learning Hungarian, but I am actually having fun with numbers.

Then Eva explained to me why we were using the dice. How the kinesthetics of throwing the dice help ground the learning. Leave it to a choreographer to come up with that one. I do take this kinesthetic thing one step further- now as I walk down Franklin in the morning on the way to work I begin practicing my Hungarian. With numbers it's quite easy, we'll see how it translates into words and phrases. I'll begin talking to myself, maybe singing to myself.  The  joy of Franklin Avenue is that for some reason I can not seem to quantify, it is a truly supportive environment. Maybe it's the act of walking itself that somehow creates it, which would mean that Eva is right. Nice. Kinesthetics indeed.

Rather amazingly, I am giving myself permission to simply have fun with learning. No prodding self to make progress, simply allowing self to progress. There is a subtle energetic difference between the two.

Zseníalis.

I have a teacher!


On July 9th, 9 július, I had my first Hungarian lesson.

It was a warm, sunny evening and I was waiting outside for the teacher to arrive. Filled with that type of anticipation that great things are about to happen, and a little nervous as well.

I see Eva walk up the street. As she approaches and extends her hand I feel my inner smile broadly reaching my lips. We hug because, well, I like to hug anyhow, but truly I could not contain my  excitement  in a simple handshake. She did not seem to mind.

Story: I post on Facebook about my initial foray into Hungarian and include a you-tube video of a vintage film of Hungarian couples dancing in what seems to be the kitchen of an apartment that I feel very much at home in. Home movie par excellence and sweet in many dimensions. It's a little difficult to explain, but it feels so familiar to me. Am I making this up? No, I don't think so.

 Facebook: I don't spend much time on those pages, but there is the feeling that I am putting all this out into the universe in a way beyond my own story-telling. I am grateful for that.

[Who knows where all this stuff goes to? All our thoughts, desires, actions?... "I do, I do", says the enthusiastic student as she raises her hand and excitedly awaits for the teacher to call on her.

 "Igen, Fern?"

 "All our thoughts, desires, actions go out into the universe. There, they are received by Source, who is excited right along with us. They are received by molecules within us and around us. And then they begin to transmit. To pulse a certain energy. It's like  the RKO tower that used to be shown at the beginning of movies in the 50's. Do you remember?  A tower with lightening-like bolts and waves  reaching out from its iron mass. And, then, those who resonate with this energy, aware or not, pick up on this energy, and it is shared, and grows, and morphs, and continues to make even more connections, create more possibilities."

"Nagyon jó,"  teacher is quite satisfied with this explanation. Now back to the story.]

This post leads to a conversation between me and a co-worker about Hungarian dance(she's a dancer).
Which leads me to saying, I need someone to talk to in Hungarian, which leads Megan to think of the woman who taught her Hungarian Folk dance, whose name she no longer remembers. She offers to ask some friends to find out. The tower is transmitting...

In itself, that conversation was so wonderful, it really didn't matter what Megan remembered or not.
It was the continuing of the weaving of the fabric of this story.  Excitement builds.  Possibilities are being created. A web woven, a grid filling in. An affirmation of my intent. We're digging it, Source and me.

I've been happily going about my daily routine. A little on-line Hungarian class, some Hungarian postings on You Tube(mostly folk-song and dance), a little Hungarian radio(Info-Radio Budapest 88.1), writing down some phrases and words that particularly catch my ear. A lot of parroting.

I'd like someone to talk to. I begin saying this more and more to many friends. You know, I want that flesh and blood connection that takes place in this dimension. Well the universe provides, seamlessly. And when that happens, I always know that I am on the right path. In sync, so to speak.

 On a whim I google "Hungarian Teacher".  I find a site that has lists of teachers of a myriad of languages. It took but two minutes to find Eva Kish , a week to connect, and another few days to schedule the first lesson.

Great Anticipation. Like a little kid on the first day of school, because that is basically what I was.
Even down to preparing my supplies(notebook, paper, pencils, eraser), Hungarian dictionary by my side.

We sit by the living room table. Eva on the piano bench, me on the chair.

Eva hands me some copies of pages of the grammar book we will be using. We put them aside for several minutes, as we embark on the alphabet. She pulls out a plastic box  with flash-cards. Flashcards. Tiny little flashcards with the Hungarian alphabet on them. All 44 letters. (I can see in my mind flashcards past-French and Hebrew most specifically.)

I am a 61 year old woman who is learning the alphabet. And with each letter I mimic, with each sound that finally makes it into my brain/tongue reservoir, a few more drops of sweetness enter my soul.

I am a little girl in absolute entrancement.

I remember reading someplace that somewhere at some point in time, perhaps in the Eastern European cheders of  the eighteenth century, the rebbe would teach the alphabet to the children and in order to  entice them to learn, would put honey on the wooden block on which the letters were carved. Each time a letter was learned, the child could lick the honey as reward. Eva doesn't need to offer me a reward, the letters entering into my bloodstream  and psyche are reward enough.

Köszönöm a segítséget, Eva.

Bye the way, it turns out that Eva is the dance teacher Megan told me about. 

 

Why do the birds go on singing?

These lyrics, from the song "The end of the world" sung by Skeeter Davis when we were still  on South Third Avenue (1963 for those who may be curious), came to me just last Saturday as I was walking around the neighborhood after the big flash storm of the previous night that left us without power and with a lot of downed trees.

It was hard for me to see these magnificent trees laying down, pulling up swaths of earth with their roots. Broken, twisted, and yet still alive with a relatively recent greening.
There were tears in my eyes at the sight of one stately pine in particular.
It almost hurt.

And yet.

It was sunny.
Folks were out cleaning up, some even working in their gardens. Neighbors helping neighbors.
The sun was shining and I saw my first dragonfly of the summer in Powderhorn Park.

And the birds didn't miss a beat.
They were out "singing up a storm"(drôle d'expression).
I rejoiced inwardly and smiled outwardly as I focused on their song.

What does this have to do with learning Hungarian?
Well, the word for tree in Hungarian is "fa" and the Hungarian word for bird is "madár".
(I don't yet know the word for rejoice. )

But there's more than that.

There's that joy and beauty right up there with, surrounding, encompassing, the evidence of the "destruction" of the night before.
And what's with this use of quotation marks?

Well, I certainly don't want to compare my childhood with a destructive storm(mostly), but I do want to compare my study of Hungarian to the singing of the birds. Celebration and joy for no particular reason, which is my favorite reason of all.

I've been laying down the burden for quite some time.
With the study of the language of my father, I am picking up the joy.
Allowing my self to remember the love, even if, and maybe just because, it disappeared.
Allowing myself to create, and then celebrate, the love in its perceived absence.

So, for me, it's not the end of the world, it's simply a contrast that invites us to move beyond.

I imagine that's why the birds go on singing.

Szia, világegyetem.
Szeretlek,
Páfrány

Generational Energy

I have been practicing qi-gong for over four years now. My master is Chunyi-Lin who created the Spring Forest form of qi-gong. He is located here in Minnesota. I feel such gratitude for his teachings.

There is a  meditation we do which is called "Small Universe". This meditation is preceded by a silently recited affirmation-"I am in the universe, the universe is in my body, the universe and I combine together." We then concentrate on a point called the lower dan-tien, a major energy center in the body. This point is found behind the navel. [As the umbilical cord sustains us as we develop in the womb, we continue receiving energy through this point from the universe. I like that image, Mom as universe, universe as Mom.] Master Lin then suggests we visualize our "generational" energy and our own energy joining together in the lower dan-tien-shining brightly. During the meditation we add to that energy on the in-breath both the master's energy and universal energy. We move from point to point in a circle that moves along the front and the back of the body, breathing into the various energy centers.
Breathing in universal energy, and releasing any funky energy we'd just as soon see released.

I like to think of this small universe as just that. Here we are, a microcosm of the macro.  Our breath   sustaining the" planets" which are our energy centers. Strengthening our own "small universe" strengthens nothing less than the  "big" universe. No small task, and yet an infinitesimal task. And if we practice long enough, this can happen on every breath we take. Beauty in the simplicity of the breaths we take (and give).

At a certain point in time, and only recently,  this concept of "generational energy" began taking on a new, deeper meaning.  I almost just skipped over hearing that reference for the longest time.It didn't really mean much to me. I thought  that I had moved beyond my anger and sadness surrounding both my parents, and thought (hoped?) that was enough.

 It obviously was not.

To even begin to think that I could receive something from my ancestors was such a foreign thought to me. After all,  my parents were angry, sick, depressed folks.What would I possibly want to receive from them? And generations before that? I can only go back in my own life to the grand-parents. Paternal grandparents were dead before I was born.
I know I am named after my father's father-in Hungarian- Ferenc.
But there was no emotional connection to that. It was simply an interesting fact that explained the choice of my name, Fern.
My maternal grandmother died when I was five. I loved her, but she died before I  understood the concept of loss.My maternal grandfather was a hard-working man whose death from stomach cancer propelled me into natural foods. But that's another story.

I have no knowledge of any generations further back.

As any well-raised Jew, I was taught-well I just learned how to say this in Hungarian this morning- "Az élet nehéz"-Life is hard.

But after years of calling on generational energy in the practice of small universe, without seemingly even working at it, I realized, felt, began receiving this generational energy. The ancestors  joining me, not only during this practice, but  as I continue on this life journey. And they have put down the burden they carried of "Az élet nehéz". That's one of the gifts of leaving the physical body and returning to Source.

From these folks, on the astral plane, I receive not just support but encouragement to heal.
For me, for them. From me, these folks receive my own healing. I truly imagine, feel the effect I am having on them as much as they are having on me.

Then there is the gift of being able to lay down the burden while still on the physical plane.

One night recently as I was falling asleep, I felt  the love I have for my parents as well as the love they both have for me. Words can not describe the depth of that feeling.

I also figured out this morning how to say in Hungarian "Az élet szép" Life is beautiful.

Onion sandwiches.

Forget Marcel Proust and his poetic thé and madeleines that would transport him to his childhood and beloved mother and grandmother.
Perhaps not forget, but simply translate him into Hungarian, where the same sensations come from a raw onion sandwich on an oven-warmed roll with a cup of coffee.
This transporter room of taste-buds brings me back to the kitchen on North Fourth Avenue, where my father and I lived for several years after my mother's death.
This was not a happy time.

My father retreated to his room, or to sleep in front of the TV, and I retreated to my room, where I indulged in drinking, pot-smoking and stealing my father's prescription medicines when I needed something a little more. Let me say I was most generous with myself in those days.
It did not occur to us to speak our pain, because, after all. Actually, that's the only reason I can think of.

Mornings I would get myself ready to go to college(Douglass College in New Brunswick). Sometimes my father would drive me. Sometimes I'd take my bike.
This was our together-time.
Because the morning began with his shacharis prayers. I see him in his tallis and tefillin, with his black siddur,where every bottom page corner was blackened and worn thin by his fingers turning the page. Our together-time. Another instance of silence. I felt just a bit marginal, but kept my place as I was raised to do. Tiptoeing through the tulips of silence.

Prayers over, it was breakfast-time.
This I could join in, taking my mother's place in readying the coffee(instant-black for Dad, with Coffee-mate for me) and the heated hard-rolls in the oven, butter (Breakstone whipped unsalted butter in the red and white tub) melting in the holes, a big-fat slice of raw onion in the middle.

I don't even remember Dad asking me if I wanted the onion.
It was just ingrained in me. Kind of like the Hungarian language it would seem.
I've been eating onion sandwiches ever since, I just began to learn Hungarian last week.

The generation that wasn't.

My father came to this country at the age of eight.
By boat, with his parents and seven  siblings.
The year was 1928.

So they made it out before the Holocaust; those of the family who remained behind did not.

It will come as no surprise that we did not speak Hungarian at home.
First of all there was mom, who was Austrian on both her father  and mother's side.
And then there was that particular gestalt of that generation. The hiding of one's identity, or at the very least, not making a big deal out of it.

Except, of course, for the food. But that's another story, and a recipe for cholent will make its way to these pages, and then you will be in for a treat. If you do not know what cholent is, don't worry.

The siblings would speak Hungarian from time to time. Sometimes just a word or expression or two. I don't remember lengthy conversations. Actually, I don't remember lengthy conversations in English, either.

One year, in college, I went to the New Brunswick public library to get a French book.
F,G,H. Hungarian was close by. I got a book for myself in French, and one in Hungarian for my father. I was excited, he less so. I don't think he was able to read it, but it was the thought that counted.
I'm just not so sure I knew what that thought was.
I returned the book soon after.


I don't drive, and use either my feet or the bus system here in Minneapolis to make my way around.
The immigrants I am surrounded by are usually Somali or Hispanic. There are also Hmong and a smattering of other ethnicities. One of my greatest pleasures is to listen to the languages being spoken. And then watching the young kids translating for their elders, or switching to English as they say 'Thank you" to the driver as they leave the bus.

I did nothing like that growing up.
No need to.
No native language to speak.
No need to translate.
And my parents never rode the bus.

What did that generation think?

I don't know.
They never talked about it.

Why now?

First things first.

My father died in 1997.
We were not close.
Years of sickness and depression  and thousands of miles separated us.
(I was glad for those thousands of miles-I felt psychically  safer)


Not too long ago I had a dream.
More like a visit on the astral plane.
I see my father before me,  sitting at the kitchen table.
He is vibrant, rather young, a smile on his face.
He says to me "I was so miserable back then."
This admission of his was so freeing.
For him, for me.
I wake up the next morning feeling absolutely energized, happy, touched by an
admission from my father that could have only come from the beyond.
(He did not like to share his feelings).

A while later, while having lunch with a friend, I relate this dream. We go on to talk
 of other things, and one of them is the fact that I could become an Hungarian citizen, since my father was born in Hungary.

Have I ever wanted to go to Hungary?
No.
But since Hungary is a member of the European Union, I'd have my retirement dream of living in France made with my newly acquired Hungarian EU passport.

I love languages.
So why not learn Hungarian to support the dream.
On I go.
But I do more that find a site to learn from.
I listen to Folk music on You Tube, I begin to read history, I find a perfect picture for my computer desktop that feels like home. A row of houses tucked in a village, with mountains in the background.

I allow, maybe even invite, Hungary to become a part of me. I allow, maybe even invite, me to become a part of Hungary.

I found an Hungarian news radio program that I listen to every day.
The first day I do so, the language is not pleasing to my ears.
It seems harsh, there is no intonation, and unlike the romance languages so dear to my heart, I can't
even pick out a word here or there (aside from "Info Radio Budapest") uttered from time to time to remind us what we are listening to.
Day 2 or 3 has me a bit more in resonance. I begin to be pleased.

I figure my brain cells are beginning to acclimate.
My heart cells are overflowing with a joy that led me to want to create this blog.

You and I together will  see just where this takes me.