Etty and Me
Etty Hillesum Takes Inventory of My Apartment
1. postcards of flowers and crows and Monet's Water Lilies
2. small sickly cactus with one spiky pink flower still defiantly growing
3. plainspoken white tea lights for Shabbos candles
4. box of cardamom tea
5. lemon lip balm
6. print of Vermeer's Officer and Laughing Girl
7. meaty hunk of orange calcite from the Natural History Museum
8. Les Fleurs du Mal by Charles Baudelaire
9. my cat's favorite warm yellow blanket
10. wall clock that doesn't tick
11. drafty windows
12. cynical nature
13. purple vase devoid of flowers
14. heart that festers with the guilt of existence like black mold on bathroom tile
Judaica
after Allen Ginsberg
Etty you gave me all and now you're nothing.
Etty one mother one father two brothers and one sister (you) September 7, 1943.
I can't stand my own history.
Etty when will you be demonic?
When will you take off your mask?
When will you look at me through the mass grave?
When will Europe be worthy of its millions of murdered yous?
I'm sick of your irrational gentleness.
Etty after all it is your corpse that is perfect not the real woman.
Your mysticism is too much for me.
You made me want to be like Abba Kovner.
I refuse to give up my cynicism.
Etty stop hoping you know what they're doing.
Etty the lupines are blooming.
Etty I'm aroused by swastikas and jackboots.
Etty I fantasize about fucking the antisemitism out of Hitler I'm not sorry.
You should've seen me watching Salon Kitty.
I won't say Kaddish or the Shema.
Etty you still haven't told me if you remembered to bring G-d the cloud that drifted
past your small barred window in cell block number whatever or if you laid
your shaved head on the wooden slats of your bunk bed and silently starved.
Etty run for your fucking life
Etty save yourself put down your pen shut up about philosophy and RUN
Etty you must not die
Etty I am the commandant at the train station
Etty when I was seven I didn't even know I was Jewish my teacher told me they killed
Anne Frank because she had brown hair it scared me stiff because my hair's
the same color years later I went to Hillel everybody had Jewish mothers and
American accents it was all so authentic you have no idea what we've done to
Palestine for the past seventy-five years your diary made me cry and they killed
you anyway
Etty you don't really want to die.
It occurs to me that I am not Etty.
I am talking to myself again.
Beethoven
Voicemail
Hi Etty I'm just leaving you a
voicemail you haven't been returning my
calls I guess the cell service in Sheol is
shitty is it dark down there is the food good it
must be crowded just like the sealed train car but
altogether more pleasant I imagine since
everyone must be quite calm and at peace or
at least I hope so I really fucking hope so when
you woke up were you as you'd been in life or did
your hair take a while to grow back does hair even
grow in Sheol do you get to wear your favorite clothes or
are you still in that striped uniform that would be
awful or does a floating disembodied spirit even
need clothes did you find your parents were they
happy to see you did you all give Mischa and
Jaap a welcome home party what's it like down
there anyway do you have to listen to sermons by
thousands of dead rabbis Mark Twain described
heaven as excruciatingly boring but he was talking about
the Christian heaven so his loss I guess I miss you I
wish you'd call or write or at the very least send
me a postcard I don't care if the paper is a bit
moldy it doesn't have to be anything fancy just a
quick Hello Wish You Were Here would be
nice anyway say hi to your family and Julius for
me and if you get the chance please also say hello to
my grandpa Baruch and my great-grandparents Yankel and
Yenta and my granduncles Daniel and Aaron and also
David and Golda and Sara and Yenta and Sara and
Shepa and Rakhil and Mika and Munya and Sara and Lena and
Bunk
Interview
[all answers are real quotes]
What's your favorite place to write?
By my faded hyacinth out on the veranda.
Do you have a Tumblr?
Keeping a diary is an art I do not understand.
What do you think about the war?
Thinking gets you nowhere.
Any practical tips for staying safe during an air raid?
A poem by Rilke is as real and as important as a young man falling out of an airplane.
How do you stay positive?
The threat grows ever greater, and terror increases from day to day.
How do you identify?
I tell myself: keep calm, Etty, why get so worked up about a young lady with the sleek head of a boy, who wears trousers, has piercing blue eyes, and wants you to teach her Russian?
What are your top artists on Spotify right now?
Living and dying, sorrow and joy, the blisters on my feet and the jasmine behind the house, the persecution, the unspeakable horrors.
Do you have any weird phobias?
There is a really deep well inside me. And in it dwells God.
How do you prioritize self-care?
Every pretty blouse I put on is a kind of celebration. And so is every occasion I have to wash with scented soap in a bathroom all to myself for half an hour.
What's on your desk?
Exotic Japanese lilies, a geranium, faded tea roses, pine cones that are now holy relics, that Moorish statue; there are also Saint Augustine and the Bible and Russian grammars and dictionaries and Rilke and countless little scribbling blocks, a bottle of ersatz lemonade, typing paper and carbons and more Rilke, all jumbled together, and of course Jung.
Am I valid if I'm Jewish only on my dad's side?
We are but hollow vessels, washed through by history.
What can I say to make you feel better?
Etty, I loathe you.
Are there any good Germans?
German soldiers suffer as well.
What do you do when your phone is running out of storage space?
Such words as "god" and "death" and "suffering" and "eternity" are best forgotten.
What's your opinion on the flat earth theory?
Perhaps I shall walk right across Russia one day, who knows?
Why are you taking your notebook on the train?
A camp needs a poet, one who experiences life there, even there, as a bard and is able to sing about it.
What'll you do in the winter, if you live that long?
I shall imagine I am on an expedition to the North Pole, forced to spend a few years in the Arctic.
Don't you want to live?
In a few days' time I shall go to the dentist and have lots and lots of holes in my teeth filled. For that really would be awful: suffering from toothache out there.
What remains?
Sun on the balcony and a light breeze through the jasmine.
No, what really remains?
The field of yellow lupines stretching as far as the delousing barracks.
Char
Telegram
I HAVE A PARASOCIAL RELATIONSHIP WITH YOU STOP
I THINK OFTEN ABOUT THE CURVE OF YOUR LIPS AND
YOUR COY MYSTERIOUS EYES STOP I WONDER WHAT
YOUR VOICE SOUNDED LIKE STOP I NEVER HAD A BAT
MITZVAH BUT I SURE KNOW HOW TO OBSESS OVER
THE DEAD STOP I DECIDED TO LEARN DUTCH FOR
YOU STOP THE GOING IS SLOW STOP YOUR LANGUAGE
SOUNDS LIKE A VERY FUNNY VERSION OF GERMAN
STOP LIKE IF SOMEONE SPOKE GERMAN WITH A
HEAVY ENGLISH ACCENT STOP IS THAT REALLY
WHAT YOU SOUNDED LIKE STOP SORRY THAT WAS
RUDE STOP THE SORROW IS NEVER ENDING STOP
PLEASE COME BACK STOP PLEASE RESPOND STOP I
TRIED LEAVING YOU A VOICEMAIL BUT IT NEVER WENT
THROUGH STOP IT WAS TOO ANACHRONISTIC STOP
SOMETIMES I FORGET THAT TIME IS AN ANIMAL THAT
HATES HAVING ITS FUR RUBBED THE WRONG WAY STOP
NONETHELESS THIS WILL NOT DETER ME FROM TRYING
TO GET AHOLD OF YOU STOP I WILL KEEP TRYING AGAIN
AND AGAIN STOP I WILL SEND YOU FLOWERS AND CARDS
STOP I THINK GERMANS ARE ALL RIGHT STOP THEY ARE
QUITE NICE PEOPLE AND VERY SOPHISTICATED STOP
THIS TELEGRAM IS GOING TO BE SO EXPENSIVE STOP
THERE IS A LONG LINE OF IMPATIENT PEOPLE BEHIND
ME STOP I AM SURE THEY ALL HAVE VERY IMPORTANT
MESSAGES TO SEND BUT I DONT GIVE A FUCK STOP
ETTY I LOVE YOU VERY MUCH AND ITS SPRINGTIME STOP
Nein
This is not a poem about Auschwitz.
This is not a poem about dead Jews.
This is not a poem about blood.
This is not a poem about guns.
This is a poem about bicycles.
This is a poem about lupines.
This is a poem about notebooks.
This is a poem about houses.
This is not a picture of Hitler.
This is not a picture of a prisoner with a shaved head.
This is not a picture of a dark pit.
This is not a picture of me.
This is a picture of Etty.
This is a picture of her father Levie and her mother Riva.
This is a picture of her brothers Mischa and Jaap.
This is a picture of me.
This is not a piece of bone.
This is not a piece of charred flesh.
This is not a piece of striped cloth.
This is not a piece of paper.
This is a piece of paper.
This is a piece of paper.
This is a piece of paper.
This is a piece of paper.