City Soul
Artwork by Mirjana M.
“The artwork depicts the many contrasting cityscapes we carry around with us, wherever we go. Often times, when moving to another country, vacationing, visiting or exploring, I always find that a piece of a place beats in my heart and sometimes makes the buildings and the streets made from same bricks feel different and with their own unique personalities.”
Mirjana M. (they / them ) are a digital artist and writer from Belgrade, Serbia. Their work explores concepts of duality and has appeared in magazines and other places. They authored 4 poetry collections.
IG @cyanide_cherries / X @selena_oloriel / BS @cyanidecherries.bsky.social
IG @cyanide_cherries / X @selena_oloriel / BS @cyanidecherries.bsky.social
The Bone Gods
CNF by Rebecca Tiger
When the waitress returns, she puts two small Alfa beers on the table and an ashtray for Eleni who uses it to extinguish her first of many Dunhills. I am in a city where people gleefully smoke, no guilty looks or furtive puffs, no bags under the eyes signaling a deviant orientation to life. People smile, glow in the sun, sip their beers or freddo espressos or freshly squeezed orange juice, kept cold by two or three small ice cubes, roll their tobacco in tissue thin paper and laugh and inhale and light and re-light, an entire afternoon spent on a glorious ritual in company with others. To my right, a woman with yellowed teeth that have bits of food in them smiles flirtatiously at a man whose face is close to hers. She puts the cigarette to her lips, inhales, and the man’s face comes even closer, rapt, a clear prelude to something else.
“Don’t tempt the bone gods,” Eleni says. Just that morning I had announced that I was in a ridiculously good mood and have been ever since I arrived in this city by the sea on the cusp of east and west. A few days before, as I sat on a bench in my favorite plateia, drinking an iced cappuccino, a stooped old lady shuffled by and said: you are very beautiful. In Greek. I understood her - a triumph as I try to learn this complicated language. I said thank you, also in Greek. She told me she is taking her afternoon βόλτα, something between a stroll and an excursion.
A friend from Vermont sends me a picture from the hospital: he slipped on the icy sidewalk and cracked his orbital bone. One side of his face is swollen, there is a purple sack under his eye, blood caking his left cheek. He just wanted to leave his apartment, see another person, conquer the months of cold loneliness. Coincidentally, when I get his text, I am reading the book Orbital for the English-language book club my favorite Greek bookstore invited me to join. It is about astronauts, together in space, floating, getting to know each other as their muscles wither, their bones weaken. The book club was divided. Some found it beautiful. Others, like me, lamented the lack of story, the absence of a narrative arc. It felt heavy with meaning that I didn’t understand.
“What?” I ask Eleni.
“Don’t tempt fate by leaving,” she answers.
I do. I fly to New York City then to Bangor, Maine then drive an hour north, to spend a month at an artist’s retreat in a desolate town. My first day, I fall down the narrow short stairs in the house they’ve assigned me, hitting the back of my head on every wooden step. I dizzily go to orientation to meet the other residents. There is a painter, a photographer, a sculptor, performance artist, fiber artist, a poet, a screenwriter. We become fast friends, together in the middle of nowhere. We too are floating, getting to know each other as our muscles wither, the ice and snow in what passes for spring here keeps us inside our studios. Sometimes we brave the cold to smoke cigarettes together, a transgression that feels decadent in this forlorn place. At the beginning of the last week, I slip on the ice that camouflages itself as concrete and hit my head again, twice, as I go down. “Are you okay?” a voice asks as I lie on my back. “No,” is all I can muster. I leave the residency early, with only photos on Instagram to tell me how that story ends.
Over the past month, my condition takes a downward turn. I write these words with a headache. I forget things that have just happened. I don’t trust myself out in the world; the noises are too loud, the lights too bright. Time is what I need, everyone tells me. One neurologist says it could take a year for me to feel normal again. She uses language like “traumatic brain injury.” I worry that my mind will never rebound, that I will eternally search for words, only finding ones that imperfectly convey my meaning. I tell my new concussion doctor that I am scheduled to spend the summer in Greece. Can I still go? “Of course,” he says, “Go to where you are happy. Sit in the sun. Stare at the sea.” His words hearten me. “Will that help me get better?” He is non-committal. I have scored abysmally on the cognitive test he administered. “Will I always be this stupid?” I ask. “Your stupid is most people’s smart,” he says. “What can I do?” I am desperate. “Don’t fall again,” he advises.
I was going to wait until my brain healed to write about this experience, so my story could end on a triumphant note. But my recovery is more like a spiral than a straight line, some days are okay and others worse. There is a dam stopping the flow in my brain. I loved the feeling I used to get that told me I had gotten my story right, even if others disagreed. Okay will have to be good enough for now. Soon, I will return to my favorite place, my plateia in Athens. I will sit with Eleni at our café drinking cold Alfas though probably orange juice with a few ice cubes for me, follow the smoke from her cigarette as it rises until the sun’s rays sting my eyes, admire people who spend hours in each other’s company, satisfied by meandering conversations, whose beginning are ancient history and to which there are no ends. And this time, I plan to heed Eleni’s advice. I will stay.
When the waitress returns, she puts two small Alfa beers on the table and an ashtray for Eleni who uses it to extinguish her first of many Dunhills. I am in a city where people gleefully smoke, no guilty looks or furtive puffs, no bags under the eyes signaling a deviant orientation to life. People smile, glow in the sun, sip their beers or freddo espressos or freshly squeezed orange juice, kept cold by two or three small ice cubes, roll their tobacco in tissue thin paper and laugh and inhale and light and re-light, an entire afternoon spent on a glorious ritual in company with others. To my right, a woman with yellowed teeth that have bits of food in them smiles flirtatiously at a man whose face is close to hers. She puts the cigarette to her lips, inhales, and the man’s face comes even closer, rapt, a clear prelude to something else.
“Don’t tempt the bone gods,” Eleni says. Just that morning I had announced that I was in a ridiculously good mood and have been ever since I arrived in this city by the sea on the cusp of east and west. A few days before, as I sat on a bench in my favorite plateia, drinking an iced cappuccino, a stooped old lady shuffled by and said: you are very beautiful. In Greek. I understood her - a triumph as I try to learn this complicated language. I said thank you, also in Greek. She told me she is taking her afternoon βόλτα, something between a stroll and an excursion.
A friend from Vermont sends me a picture from the hospital: he slipped on the icy sidewalk and cracked his orbital bone. One side of his face is swollen, there is a purple sack under his eye, blood caking his left cheek. He just wanted to leave his apartment, see another person, conquer the months of cold loneliness. Coincidentally, when I get his text, I am reading the book Orbital for the English-language book club my favorite Greek bookstore invited me to join. It is about astronauts, together in space, floating, getting to know each other as their muscles wither, their bones weaken. The book club was divided. Some found it beautiful. Others, like me, lamented the lack of story, the absence of a narrative arc. It felt heavy with meaning that I didn’t understand.
“What?” I ask Eleni.
“Don’t tempt fate by leaving,” she answers.
I do. I fly to New York City then to Bangor, Maine then drive an hour north, to spend a month at an artist’s retreat in a desolate town. My first day, I fall down the narrow short stairs in the house they’ve assigned me, hitting the back of my head on every wooden step. I dizzily go to orientation to meet the other residents. There is a painter, a photographer, a sculptor, performance artist, fiber artist, a poet, a screenwriter. We become fast friends, together in the middle of nowhere. We too are floating, getting to know each other as our muscles wither, the ice and snow in what passes for spring here keeps us inside our studios. Sometimes we brave the cold to smoke cigarettes together, a transgression that feels decadent in this forlorn place. At the beginning of the last week, I slip on the ice that camouflages itself as concrete and hit my head again, twice, as I go down. “Are you okay?” a voice asks as I lie on my back. “No,” is all I can muster. I leave the residency early, with only photos on Instagram to tell me how that story ends.
Over the past month, my condition takes a downward turn. I write these words with a headache. I forget things that have just happened. I don’t trust myself out in the world; the noises are too loud, the lights too bright. Time is what I need, everyone tells me. One neurologist says it could take a year for me to feel normal again. She uses language like “traumatic brain injury.” I worry that my mind will never rebound, that I will eternally search for words, only finding ones that imperfectly convey my meaning. I tell my new concussion doctor that I am scheduled to spend the summer in Greece. Can I still go? “Of course,” he says, “Go to where you are happy. Sit in the sun. Stare at the sea.” His words hearten me. “Will that help me get better?” He is non-committal. I have scored abysmally on the cognitive test he administered. “Will I always be this stupid?” I ask. “Your stupid is most people’s smart,” he says. “What can I do?” I am desperate. “Don’t fall again,” he advises.
I was going to wait until my brain healed to write about this experience, so my story could end on a triumphant note. But my recovery is more like a spiral than a straight line, some days are okay and others worse. There is a dam stopping the flow in my brain. I loved the feeling I used to get that told me I had gotten my story right, even if others disagreed. Okay will have to be good enough for now. Soon, I will return to my favorite place, my plateia in Athens. I will sit with Eleni at our café drinking cold Alfas though probably orange juice with a few ice cubes for me, follow the smoke from her cigarette as it rises until the sun’s rays sting my eyes, admire people who spend hours in each other’s company, satisfied by meandering conversations, whose beginning are ancient history and to which there are no ends. And this time, I plan to heed Eleni’s advice. I will stay.
Rebecca Tiger teaches sociology at Middlebury College and in jails in Vermont and lives part-time in New York City. She writes on the long train ride to and from work.
rebeccatigerwriter.com
IG @rtigernyc / X @rtigernyc
rebeccatigerwriter.com
IG @rtigernyc / X @rtigernyc
