Writings

A Journey to Lithuania

Labas Rytas! (good morning)

I've been in Lithuania these past few weeks. Now I want to share a couple of my experiences. For those of you who don't know, Lithuania is a small, marvelous northeastern European country.

I came to Lithuania partly because of my ancestry, to search for my roots. All my life, when people have asked or guessed, I've explained that Brasunas is Lithuanian. I've received mostly blank stares in return. And until now, I've had to respond with but scanty knowledge. I've always longed to come -- not just to connect a culture and place to my thin explanations, but also to put smells and sounds, wind, water, and earth with my own personal thoughts.

One afternoon, shortly after arriving in Vilnius, the capital, I wandered out through the winding cobbled streets of the old city. Successfully, I lost myself amid homes and churches and shops and cafes. I struck uphill and climbed for several minutes until I found myself atop an open grassy knob overlooking the city. The hilltop featured an odd giant concrete staircase. I sat on the third huge stair of the staircase and in the glorious sunny day I surveyed the old, beautiful, French-vanilla-colored buildings with their sloping orange roofs. Countless green leafy trees waved in the windy blush of spring. The snows sometimes don't melt here until late April. Steeples poked up all over the city, and not far away on another, slightly higher hill stood the castle turret that is the country's symbol; the nation's red, yellow, and green striped flag flew from it, flapping in the wind. Without looking for them, I've counted similarities between Lithuania and both America and China, the two countries I've spent the most time in. This place shares much with both -- of course a bit more with America since European culture has shaped modern American culture. But it's more similar to current Chinese culture in its recent history: a very traditional and conservative culture went through war, invasion, and occupation in the 1930s and 40s, and then handled a generation and a half of woefully imperfect communism. In both places, instead of a sense of anguish or defeat, I've noticed a cautious optimism beginning to spring forth.

A group of 20 or 25 teenagers appeared and climbed over the concrete steps past me. Perhaps my spot was a popular one, I thought. One girl sat down next to me and greeted me in Lithuanian. "Labas," she grinned at me. I returned her greeting but she switched to English. "I was right!" she cried. "I bet my friends you were a foreigner!"

"How did you know?" I laughed.

"It was something about the way you smiled and how you made way for us as we climbed by. A Lithuanian man would just sit there gruffly." Her name was Vanda (English name: Wendy) and she spoke excellent English, since she had spent four months in Florida. She had a soft, pretty face and long golden hair. She told me she liked America, but it wasn't what she expected. "It's not my dream country anymore." We spoke a bit longer, and it was great to be able to ask all the questions I'd been thinking about. I asked how people regarded Russia these days. I asked what specific future the people were hoping for. I mentioned the new optimism I sensed in the country, and she laughed, as if to disagree. "Lithuania is such a small country," she said. (It's about twice the size of Belgium, with less than half the people). "Lithuanians sometimes joke it's 'God's forsaken country.'"

Soon the whole group was sitting around me, happily laughing that they were all classmates who had just finished their last day of high school. Exams were next week, they explained, and it was a night for celebrating. Everyone was drinking concoctions of cheap vodka and cola or punch. I took a swig from one guy's bottle, a guy named Mantas who had pale skin, an angular face, and light brown hair parted down the middle. He was dancing around and shouting and hugging all the girls. It was actually amazing how pretty the girls were. Before arriving in Vilnius, I flew into Copenhagen and spent a few days in Denmark where the women are supposed to be the most beautiful, but the Danes had nothing on this group -- there were a few real knockouts. But then I started feeling guilty about taking their party space, impinging on their momentous occasion. Vanda laughed off my concern. "Lithuanians are used to being comfortable in crowds," she said. They did seem comfortable, all dancing and yelling and smoking and drinking, so I loosened up a little and had another drink. Time passed and they took turns talking to me and I was getting to know all of them, and there were all kinds of little romances and enmities between them. "But it's the last day, so none of that stuff matters now," grinned Mantas. They were graduating from Vilnius's top high school. All had studied English from kindergarten (and then chosen either Russian or German or occasionally French, Polish, or Swedish, as their third language). Vanda was nervous because she had tricked one of her best friends by telling her to meet her somewhere else -- at a location where actually a guy was going to be waiting for her with a rose. But then the two turned up, and the girl was carrying the rose and they were both smiling and Vanda giggled in delight and whispered to me. "These two are perfect for each other," she said. "They have to get together." Vanda herself was actually dating Mantas and the two were constantly flirting with each other, but Mantas was flirting with -- and even stealing quick kisses -- from other girls, too.

Before long people were getting drunk and rowdy. Then it was time to go, and they invited me to go with them to a bar. What the hell, I thought. I tagged along, and we walked through the narrow streets of the charming old city. They all took turns walking beside me, telling me their problems, their hopes, and their dreams. One hoped to be a singer; another a dancer; a third just wanted a happy family. We passed over a river and eventually reached a bar called Amerika. It was decorated with odd cowboy paraphernalia -- boots and spurs and guns. 24 of us sat at a long table. As we sat down, Mantas was telling me quietly that he could get any of these girls but none of them really knew him, and that it all seemed meaningless and stupid. I said maybe it was time for him to be his true self, that it was up to him to be himself and then any girls who still liked him would like the real him. The drinking age in Lithuania is 18, and most of them were 19. They began ordering various drinks. Next to me sat a very pretty girl named Virga, and she taught me how to order a beer, so I got the waiter's attention. "As nuoru vienas didelis alus Svyturis," I pronounced. The whole table applauded. Beer in Lithuania comes in massive 1/2 liter mugs and the Svyturis brew arrived in all its tall golden glory. It cost 4 litu (around a dollar). I laughed and learned more Lithuanian from Virga, who had blonde curly hair that fell to her shoulders. She started telling me Mantas had recently broken her heart by choosing Vanda. I told her my heart had been broken recently too. What can you do about it? We laughed, and she told me her new dream was singing. She sang a little blues song with a surprisingly low, husky voice. There was this deep, strange melancholy about her. Soon everyone was getting up to dance, and I asked Virga to dance, so we went onto the dance floor and danced a while. We began dancing really close, then kissing, teasing each other with our lips, and finally kissing passionately. When we sat back down, everything felt different (of course). Suddenly I was there in a different way. I wasn't just a tourist anymore. Some students were laughing at me, saying that we weren't even dancing. "Is that the new American love dance?" they cracked up. I just laughed with them, feeling delighted. Earlier, some of the guys had handed me a glossy invitation to some hip, rave-style party. I hadn't wanted to go, buy now I asked Virga about it. She smiled and said she was up for it.

So the two of us left together and walked through the streets, singing into each other's ears. We stopped in at Ruta's, Virga's friend, an ultra cool girl who had joked to me that she was bisexual. In the small apartment, along with Ruta's two friends, we drank more. For some reason we ate a lot of jello that didn't taste spiked (at least to my taste buds). Ruta and her two friends didn't want to go to the party, so Virga and I took a cab through the city together. We wound through the old streets and arrived near the hill where I'd met them all, at a weed-overgrown lot with a small shed. People were standing around and drinking. At the door to the shed I handed a guy the slick invite, then paid him 15 litu for admission. Inside the shed were stairs that led down into some kind of bomb shelter -- a catacomb of dimly-lit concrete chambers clothed in thick cigarette smoke. We waded towards the defeaning music, and found in one dungeon-like chamber a DJ and people dancing. The DJ was playing techno so loudly my chest shook just standing there, and Virga seemed uncomfortable. But we danced for a while, and that made everything better. The mind-shaking, nonstop pulse was like an alternate heartbeat. Many of the other people there didn't seem to know what to do, and just stood back against the dim dirty walls. But more and more people were getting into dancing, and soon the dance floor was crowded and hot and claustrophobic. The ceiling was barely high enough to stand up under. And many of the guys were tall, Nordic types. We saw the guys that gave us the invite, and they started embracing me and laughing ecstatically, repeatedly shouting, "hey you motherfucker!" in English. They seemed positively joyful. To me, it seemed straight out of a movie. The guys who think they're cool because they can speak English loudly. Still, I was having a great time until Virga ran into some Vilnius University guy she knew. He seemed very into her, and they spoke Lithuanian and it was my turn to feel uncomfortable. Then he left and we danced some more. We danced close, looking into each other's eyes.

Eventually we returned to Ruta's, where we drank and talked into the night. I didn't want to, but I knew it was time to go. Virga wrote her phone number and signed her name 'Virgin' on the wrapper from a chocolate bar we'd shared. Her sweet lips were all I thought about as I hiked home.

Yet, I was not to kiss them again. I saw the lovely Virga twice more during my time in Lithuania, but they were brief encounters after multiple phone calls. She was less talkative in English when sober, and my Lithuanian is so basic that the language barrier kept springing up like a cold reminder of our different realities.

My brother and father also came on this trip to Lithuania with me. I traveled some with them and some on my own. (My sister and mother and grandparents all decided not to come for various reasons.) We had several addresses and phone numbers of family and with the help of a hotel clerk, a few phone calls turned up Veronika Alvikas, my grandfather's cousin (in-law). She showed up in our tiny hotel lobby, her careworn face and white hair wrapped in a pretty purple and green babushka scarf. We sat and had tea and as the hotel clerk translated and, we listened with fascination and amazement as Veronika told us of her deportment to Siberia by Stalin in the 40s. She did years of hard labor on road crews. Tears came to her eyes even as she laughed telling us the story of meeting her husband, also a Lithuanian, in a cafeteria in Siberia. But before her story got too cheerful, we learned that her father had gone to Argentina when she was four to work. He had died while away. Today she lives on a pension that is being phased out as capitalism is phased in. Her only son has a slight mental illness and is unable to work.

She spoke lovingly of my grandfather, Tone, or Antanas, whose name I share. "His Lithuanian is so pure and beautiful," she said. I managed to slip in a few sentences in Lithuanian, and she suddenly decided I had his style! Everyone laughed at the flattery. She wanted to know about us, too. My brother Michael told her he was a student, and then I told her about my job and my travels to China and my book. She seemed very concerned about my parents' recent divorce, and she didn't quite grasp the translation about the Alzheimer's that kept my grandfather from coming with us on this trip. We repeatedly invited her to dinner, but she refused, perhaps because she feels uncomfortable in Vilnius's modern restaurants. Her monthly pension is 250 litu ($70). With that, she stood up. She replaced her babushka on her head, and we said long goodbyes with lots of kissing. My father stuck some money in her purse when she was only half looking, and he said he'd set up a bank account and wire money to her every month. Then off she went.

We later met her son, also named Antanas, the one with the mental illness. But the only Brasiunas (the 'i' was removed by New Jersey immigration authorities) name we had -- Jonas Brasiunas -- was unavailable.

Later, I traveled to Lithuania's beautiful Baltic Sea coast. A long finger of forested sand dunes braces against the sea and creates a large bay. I walked on the beach, waded into my knees in the chilly Baltic, and managed to find a lump of amber, Lithuania's most famous treasure, washed up in the sand.

I also took a train deep into the country, to Ignalina, the site of the world's most powerful nuclear reactor. Lithuania is in fact the world's most nuclear energy-dependent country (at least they're not too concerned about Middle East oil wars and pipeline politics). What little I saw of Ignalina was all Soviet style architecture -- actually, the blocks of concrete resemble many 'projects' in America. The crumbling apartment towers looked untouched since independence finally came in 1991. I left Ignalina on a bus that wound through forests and hills to Paluses, a village. Paluses sits on the edge of Aukstatija National Park, Lithuania's largest park, at 330 sq kilometers. It was truly a tiny village, perched right on a lake, with a lovely dark wooden church (Lithuanians are Catholic) watching for boats. As I embarked and passed the church, the afternoon sun was searing and I was unsure how to enter the park itself. I headed for the waterside. I found a boathouse on the lake that rented out rowboats. An outdoorsy-looking teenager spoke English, and I managed to convince him to rent me a boat, a tent, and a sleeping bag for two nights. We agreed on 55 litu for all of it and I went off to the village's one shop for a loaf of duona, Lithuania's hearty heavy black bread, a block of suris, a heavy soft white cheese, and a few other provisions. I returned and loaded my provisions into the boat. Fianlly, I rowed out under the bright sun.

It was a marvelous late morning. The wind was whipping the water into chops and the trees were waving in a hundred different greens along the shoreline. It took me a while to get the right combination of leg and back work to row the dinghy efficiently. Then, as the shoreline fell away, I let out a long, delicious sigh. My whole body relaxed, and it felt great to be out on the vast water -- alone, free, with just my muscles to propel me. I rowed and sang and watched ducks and loons and occasional majestic snow-white swans swim near me. Gulls and huge egret-like birds, looking for insects in the air and water, also swooped out of the reeds that lined the shore like green hair. The man had given me a map, pointing out that a great many of the vast blue lakes were connected. I could row for days upon them without doubling back, he had said. Indeed, it seemed to be an endless labyrinth of lakes and unspoiled forests.

Late Spring nights are brief in Lithuania. The days are long. I didn't wait for nightfall to land in a tiny inlet on Lake Asalnai. I hid my oars, and hiked up a slope to the crest of a promontory. I was in a forest of tall birch, spruce, and pine and everything was buzzing with life. The air and the green moss that carpeted the earth were alive. As I made camp, it occurred to me that in their heart of hearts, Lithuanians are forest people. I recalled that most of their literature focuses on the forests. It was in their forests that they lived when the Teutonic Knights ransacked the neighboring countries in the Middle Ages. The Lithuanians, unlike their neighbors, decisively beat those early Germans, and before long (that is, in the 1300s) Lithuania had a vast empire that stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea.

Delighted, I gathered the easy firewood that lay about and built a fire. With a single match, the flames engulfed the sticks, crackling and sparking. The fire was hungry. Staring at its desire, it seemed like the fire of human ambition, a fire which can never get enough until it consumes itself -- or a human heart. Yet, of course we all need a little fire to follow our dreams. We need a little fire to cook the food, but too much burns down the house. How difficult it is to manage desire. I munched on the duona and suris, and gazed deeper into the flames. An utter relaxation overcame me as I thought over my entire life. Regardless of what happens to me, I'll always be able to set off alone and start a fire. I wrote a poem about it. I praised it vaingloriously. I laughed at myself.

Like sudden orgasm
flames erupted where only
hot smoke and coals had been --
a dead stick and it's needles of brittle brown
flashed into grasping, groping fingers of bright orange
and I stared in delight.

every pleasure has it's guilt
and here fire is illegal,

here, on this promontory
in lakes and fairytale forests
with chirping birds and hairy green moss carpets
under a nighttime sun,
I hope no police will come, for I am scared to be discovered.

if the woman of my dreams
loves me for all I am and even more,
or if my beloved in a raised and nasty voice
calls me all my inmost fears,
I'll still be no more nor less than this man
who set this crackling fire and fought and tamed those orgasmic flames
until they knew their place
and who is scared.

if all my dreams come true
or none,
if my poems are loved
or hated,
if i hit every note and am the master of music
or squeak with clumsy fingers,
if my political notions are laughed at
or i am president,
if my book is sold and praised
or burned unread,
i'll still be no more nor less than this man
who set this crackling fire and fought and tamed those orgasmic flames
until they knew their place
and who is scared.

twigs and branches and arm-sized logs --
I place them and they take turns
carrying the torch of my meditation
licking each other like the unbound passion of the nighttime sun.

The sun finally sank, around 10 pm. I pissed out the fire. Smoke hissed from the black coals. I strode amid the erect trees thinking over my life again, over my job and book and art and future. Then it was time for bed, and I managed to hop into the tent without any of the countless hungry mosquitoes following me. I fell asleep quickly on the soft moss. I awoke several times to the sound of the wind crackling in the branches overhead, and it never seemed to really get dark. Once, I awoke to an odd smell of smoke and I got out of the tent to stretch (even now as I remember this, it fills me with pure terror). There, by the night's fire site, flames were dancing on the moss. Flames. Everywhere. They covered ten square feet. Eagerly they were consuming the thick carpet of the virgin woods. I was in my shoes in a second, grabbing my drinking water. I stamped and danced and poured and it was a frenzy of pure fear. This whole forest -- Lithuania's treasured heritage -- could go up in smoke. 30 seconds, and the flames were out temporarily, but then there was all the smoke and heat. I raced with the empty bottle down the sheer slope to the lake, half sliding. I filled the bottle. Then I was back up, rubbing out the hot soil with my shoes and dousing the area with water. My heart was in my throat. For half an hour, I raced up and down the slope. Then I was on hands and knees, turning over the soil, feeling for heat with my fingers. The fire must have started from heat stored last night in the sand just below the topsoil. My fingers strained and ached, pulling up the sand, but I discovered new pockets of heat and poured water into them. Lord, this ancestral place could disappear from the Earth on account of a personal moment of failure now. Finally, everything was cool to the touch. I sat and stared for a long time. There was no heat anywhere, just a gaping scar on the skin of the forest.

I packed up and rowed off. It was still early and I encountered a trolling fisherman in a cove and greeted him. I felt both delighted and ashamed to see him. "Yes, I'm alone," I replied when I understood his question, and that was about as far as my Lithuanian could take us, so we just smiled at each other and then he moved on. The sun was already hot, and I was filthy, so I dove off the back of the boat into the frigid lake to bathe. I spun in the water and quickly swam after the boat as it took off swiftly in the other direction after I dove in. I climbed back aboard, and dried in the sun. Eventually, I stopped in an inlet with a grassy clearing to have my breakfast. Thankfully there was more drinking water left than I had thought, which was good. I savored a tomato, biting into it like an apple. The wind whipped off Lake Asalnai and dried my hair, but as I tried to mingle there with mother nature, I felt cut off. I had wronged the earth. I tasted for perhaps the first time ever in my life real, deep shame. I felt hollow, powerless, disconnected, as if my umbilical cord had been snipped -- by me, voluntarily, by my own ruinous choice. I was floating off into isolation now. I survived, but I will be unable to enjoy any real pleasure ever again. Then I realized I had to go back to the firesite to make sure there were no more flames -- oh how those flames will live in my dreams and nightmares! I was such an idiot, the whole thing was just idiotic and wrong. Why did I pitch my tent around the tree where I couldn't see the fire? The wind doesn't "crackle" in the boughs of the trees -- that was the fire returning to life!

I rowed back across Lake Asalnai, fighting the wind, and then climbed the slope again. To my relief nothing had changed -- no fire, just a pit of overturned dirt. My scar. I meditated beside it a while. Then I just sat and stared and thought of all the stupid things I've done in my life. I thought back to the poem I wrote and yes, indeed, here I am, the guy that "set this crackling fire!" Yet I didn't regret the fire itself, just handling it so foolishly. And I still couldn't tell anyone (as if there was anyone to tell). No, I could do my duty to the forest but not to the park rangers (if there were any). And after several hours I rowed off again.

It grew cold that evening and I didn't sleep much. I felt acutely alone. I arose early, and rowed across several lakes. After some back-breaking rowing, I reached a farming village in yet more pristine forest, but saw only one old woman and a dog that barked at me ferociously. Still, I strolled about the village a bit, marveling at the ageless farm life that occupied the residents. Large, furrowed plots of soil surrounded the village. I boated on, and ducks swam out of the reeds to see me. I ate the last of my food on an old wooden bridge over a narrow channel.

Finally, it was time to row all the way home. I knew it was going to take hours of hard rowing. My body was sore already and my hands blistered. The sun was intense too, and I was out of drinking water. I clothed myself head to toe to fend off sunburn and I rowed. I rowed and rowed. I rowed and laughed at myself, at how I always find myself in these situations, measuring myself up against nature, though so many of the challenges have ended poorly. Gale winds sprang from nowhere on huge Lake Asalnai, blowing me into inlets. I fought the wind and lost. Then I fought some more, and won. I rowed my dinghy, cutting through waves that were as tall as the boat, but at times I was rowing with all my might just to stand still. I felt pain shooting through my right elbow. I had to adjust my stroke from the pain. At times I just shut my eyes and sang loudly, rowing, going half insane for the fun of it. I shrieked and cried and sang. It was endless. But like the sunset that finally comes after a mindless day, I found myself back in the narrow arm of water with the island where the cows came out to bathe. I glided past the cove with the fisherman, and then back in the Paluses lake. I dunked my head in the water like a blacksmith tempering hot iron. I guided the boat into the dock.

The man was not there to greet me. Nor were there any buses out of Paluses. The following day I was still in the town, unsure how I would ever leave. I ran into a pair of Czech tree specialists who were in town to visit the park. The two guys were also in a heavy metal band, and I hitched a ride with them into Kaunas, Lithuania's second largest city. They drove their Citroen like maniacs, and we flew over the narrow forest highways, listening to Metallica. As we rolled into the metropolis, I thanked them and we exchanged addresses. The city was pretty, but I was still exhausted, half-starved, and surprised to be there. My body and mind adjusted again, and by evening I was in a cafe sipping a beer and feasting on a wonderful fish dinner. Lithuanian food, like it's geography, is halfway between Russia and Scandinavia. There's lots of meat and dairy and potatoes. After my second beer, I was still hungry enough for a delicious pot of kugali, a potato pie with sour cream and chunks of meat. The beautiful women of Lithuania were walking by the cafe, and an idea for a book came to me, which, as opposed to all the other book ideas that have come to me, I'll actually have to write. It felt strange and I'll think about it much more. It will be short, and either a straight manifesto on philosophy and spirituality, or set out in the form of a novel. There will be freedom in it, and a little bit about shame and fear and greed, and a lot about the heart, mind, body, and soul, and their endless competition and harmony.

Finally, I rose and left, saying aciu (thank you) to the waitress. Walking away through the streets in the darkness, I said aciu again, this time to the whole country.