Russian artist fighting to make America her home

Yulia Kuznetsova

    Fiona McEntee is an immigration attorney. Born in Dublin, she has practiced law in Chicago for the past 10 years. Hundreds of would-be clients have found their way to her office, seeking her help in maintaining their tenuous finger hold on the American Dream.
    Only one, Yulia Kuznetsova, made her weep.
    "I actually cried, and I never cried in a consultation before in my life," said McEntee. "This is a really emotional situation. I felt the weight she has on her shoulders. She is just so talented."
     Kuznetsova is an artist, a painter from Russia. Twenty-four years old, she was 19 when she was accepted to the School of the Art Institute. Her parents sold their apartment in Moscow to pay her tuition.
    There's a lot of that going around. Some 900,000 foreign students come to this country, where American colleges accept them—and their rupees, pounds, euros and rubles—with open arms. Then the students graduate, and the United States tries to boot them out, just when they're ready to be productive. A cruel trick, really.
   As I dug into Kuznetsova's life, now-you-cry part eluded me. There seemed to be a dark buried something that I couldn't put my finger on.
     I spoke with one of her teachers at the School of the Art Institute.
    "She's very agile with paint," said MaryLou Zelazny, a professor of painting and drawing. "She's masterful, and has got a tremendous facility. She comes up with images that are very heartfelt and personal."
    Can't a person paint in Russia?
    "No," replied Zelazny. "Not with the censorship they have now."

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Asombro en el agua

Photo by Matt Beard

      I didn't think they could do it. Not again.
      My strongest memory of the first time I saw Cirque du Soleil,  some 30 years ago, was walking out of a tent by Navy Pier with open-mouthed wonder. I had never seen anything like it; they had taken the circus, trimmed away all the problematic animals, and created a show out of pure whimsy and athleticism, twirling acrobats gibbering in an invented language, wicked clowns snatching eyeglasses from audience members and depositing them on faces far away. I felt like a child staring at the stars.
     Since then I'd seen the show a few times, in various incarnations, the most recently a decade back, with the family in Disney World. It was still very good, but that sense of miracle had faded into something expected: 80-pound Chinese acrobats forming a pyramid.
     But they invited me to the Friday opening of "Luzia: A Waking Dream of Mexico," playing until Sept. 3 in a big top in the parking lot of United Center, and my wife and I went, hoping for a diverting evening, nothing more. What we got was amazement. "Wow!" my wife kept saying. "Wow!"
     Any one stunt—aerialists leaping from swinging platforms, tumblers dressed as birds diving through hoops, a lady performing in a rolling ring, strong men bracing against high poles—might have been merely well-done, a perfectly executed trick seen before. But taken together, the music, the costumes, the sets, colorful and redolent of Day of the Dead iconography, worked together to nudge it toward magic, not a word I use lightly. Lucha libre wrestlers, bird people, musicians, a Mexican carnival come to life.

Photo by Matt Beard

    The show opens on a treadmill--a butterfly dancer running before a giant horse, one of several enormous puppet creatures Cirque employs to good effect. The seamless integration of the contraption amped up the wonder, the first of several mechanisms well integrated into the show. Particularly the "rain curtain," which added comedy—a lanky clown trying to fill a canteen—difficulty, for artists doing once familiar stunts, now in a downpour, and visual interest, as the water was manipulated into marvelous shapes, fishes and birds and flowers.
    It's a difficult performance to convey in words, or even in pictures. Looking at the press photos, I kept thinking, "No, that it isn't it at all." They were fine photographs, not a question of their quality. But separated from their context, from the trilling enthusiasm and happiness of the performance and they were beetles tacked to a board, beautiful, but lacking the life that was pulsing through them.  Like stills from a gorgeous movie.
     If I said there was a juggler you might shrug—we've seen jugglers— but this juggler, blazing, intent, energetic to the highest pitch, doing the fastest juggling I've ever seen, six sparkling pins in the air, was breathtaking. If I said a man and a woman came out and free-styled with a pair of soccer balls, you might reply "So what?" But to see them do it, the balls one moment spinning on their heads, the next deftly held in the arch of their foot, moved around their bodies as if on a track, was a wonder to behold. And the contortionist—at one point I had to shield my eyes. Creepy and incredible.
    Earlier in the day, at the paper, I told a colleague that I was going to "Cirque" and he looked at me strangely. "That doesn't seem your type of thing," he said, or words to that effect. And yes, while I'm more given to "Medea" or "Valkyrie"—which starts tech rehearsals soon at the Lyric—I really think you'd have to be dead not to be thrilled at "Luzia." My wife already wants to go back. And at the risk of politicizing a circus in our very political times, to present such a joyous and amazing romp through the lens of the rich culture of Mexico, a country constantly scorned and mocked by our toxic shame of a president, well, that's icing on the cake. 
      There's so much going on in "Luzia." Aerialists, acrobats, clowns. At one point, three cast members came onstage dressed as cacti, a bit of comic relief. "Look at the cactus in the middle" I said to my wife, and she laughed—a strategically-placed stem jutted suggestively from his mid-section. We both did, smiling at the bobbing cactus part; it was funny, both understated and in plain view, at least in profile. You had to admire the directness of it, of the whole thing, the entire enterprise, from high to low, soaring aerialists and flights of comedy, taking the familiar, cherished Cirque du Soleil formula and somehow making it fresh and fantastic once again.

Saturday fun activity: Where IS this?

     As with last week, I was going about my business, not thinking of the blog at all—it does happen—when I noticed a tableau that fairly shouted: "Saturday fun activity!"
     On the plus side. Very few people could have been in the room with this avian menagerie. It isn't some public spot that readers are constantly traipsing past. So that ramps up the difficulty factor.
     On the negative, someone knowledgable about the circles I travel in might hazard a guess.
     Which makes it doable and, who am I fooling, if history is any judge, it'll be cracked at 7:03 a.m., as always.
     Still, a guy can dream. Right? Right?! I mean Trump hasn't banned it yet, has he?
     So where is this flock of birds? The winner gets my already-five-years-old-Christ-I-can't-believe-it book about the city, "You Were Never in Chicago." Place you guesses below. Good luck. 

What are you doing up?

     It's Saturday, and once again I've blundered onto grist for the Saturday fun activity. Which posts at 7 a.m. G'night. 

     Oh, and it's not the place above. I just picked that photo. 

Two women share their thoughts on the Holocaust, abortion

Paris Pantheon

     The names Simone Veil and Brittany Carl probably shouldn't be mentioned in the same sentence. It's an insult to one; I'll let you figure out which.
     Veil was an icon of French politics, its most significant stateswoman in the past half century, twice the nation's minister of health, the first woman president of the European Union. She died June 30 and was interred in the Paris Pantheon, a rare woman honored among French heroes such as Voltaire, Victor Hugo and Emile Zola.

Simone Veil, left, and Brittany Carl

     Carl is the communications specialist just hired by Gov. Bruce Rauner, part of a group of hard right ideologues our billionaire governor brought in after sacking much of his loyal staff. The new crew proved instantly embarrassing — or would have, if Rauner could be embarrassed, an open question — because of their various racist, sexist and homophobic baggage. Rauner's valet, or "bodyman" as they're called, was fired Monday, the day he started work.
     Carl's lapse is no less odious but probably survivable, in that it doesn't directly attack a particular group but merely perverts history. Besides, it's so well-worn. In April, Carl wrote a piece for the Huffington Post airing the standard anti-abortion trope comparing a medical procedure voluntarily practiced every day by women around the world to the Holocaust of the Jews during World War II.
     A subject Veil knew something about, having been sent to Auschwitz when she was 16.

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Smell the roses

     "This is not life!" I said, with all the severity I could muster.
    An odd remark, given the setting. Our bright kitchen on a lovely summer Sunday morning. My wife at the stove, preparing an iron skillet filled with salami, onions, eggs, red and green peppers. Me helping out, slicing Italian bread for toast, setting out plates and silverware, brewing coffee.
     She had just said, "Could you put those cherries in a bowl? They're already washed,' and I leapt to do so, going to the buffet in the living room, selecting a whimsical handmade bowl from the Boulder Artists' Cooperative, pouring the bag of cherries in, and setting them on the kitchen table with my bold declaration.
     "This is not life!"
     Maybe it was too obvious. But she reacted not at all, not even a flutter of perplexity, which is sort of my goal. The remark, she knew instantly, even if the reader does not, was playing off the bowl of cherries. This bowl of cherries is not life, or, more commonly, "Life is not a bowl of cherries." She got it immediately, which I noted with silent satisfaction. 
     Another woman would have murdered her husband long ago and no one would blame her. But bless her, she tolerates it. Writers and their idiosyncrasies. In my case, I have a certain affinity for cliches in real life. You don't often get the chance, and opportunities must be seized. It's a kind of duty. I once cut across Grand Central Station in New York City, just so I could pause, look around, raise my hands and declare, "What is this, Grand Central Station?"
     No it's not funny. But somehow, immensely satisfying. At least to me, and I'm the guy I have to hang out with all the time. 
     Over time—and my wife and I have been keeping company for ... 34 years now—some lines become, well, if not enshrined, then at least expected.
     We were at the Chicago Botanic Garden. This was years ago. And my wife said, "Do you want to walk through the rose garden?"
     I replied, "Well, I never made any kind of formal commitment that I would."
     A curious remark.
     "Excuse me?" she said.
     "I mean, I made no kind of vow, or oath regarding the rose garden..."
     A kind of a hint.
     She chewed on that for a while as we walked among the beautiful roses, then realization dawned.
    "I never promised you a rose garden," she said, and I smiled inwardly, pleased she had unraveled the little puzzle. 
     Now, whenever we walk into the rose garden, if I don't say it, she seems almost disappointed. Almost. 
    Then Sunday, it finally happened. She paused before a huge pink bloom, and gave it a deep sniff."
     "It's important..." she began. "That we, you know, stop, and..."

     Mere coincidence? Or is this proof ancient astronauts once walked the Earth, thousands of years ago? Exactly two years ago, I posted something also about punning marital wordplay, using entirely different examples. 

Roses, Chicago Botanic Garden

Trump is doing exactly what supporters want him to do. Over and over.

     Ah. Now I see. Finally, finally I get Donald Trump. It all makes sense to me now.
     Took long enough.
     He has been president for nearly six months — the grim half-year anniversary is Thursday — all the while I, along with the rest of the mainstream media, have been baffled, thickly pointing our trembling index fingers at all the promises he repeatedly made and then glibly broke. There would be no border wall, never mind one paid for by Mexico. No overturning Obamacare. No infrastructure renewal. Coal's still dead, manufacturing still sputtering.
     But when we document this to his supporters, they don't care. They just shake their head and smile, or rather, sneer, pityingly at us, the lamestream media. "Sad!" they mocked, echoing their hero. They still love him.
     How can this be? It's easy to dismiss them as dupes, as ripped off, gulled, credulous marks who, pockets turned inside out, would rather hold tight to a fantasy than confront a difficult truth. And I did that for a while. But as the months clock on, castigation seems too simple. Too easy. Dismissing the other guys as mere idiots is what Republicans do. It makes a person feel good, perhaps, but leads nowhere. An empty high.
     So I looked again. And realized that in one realm, Trump constantly and consistently delivers: invective, a steady stream of insult, against the media, against politicians like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, against elites and whatever unlucky individual falls under his basilisk gaze. Machine-gun chatter of "Disaster!" Funny nicknames and repeated fabrications. This isn't the sideshow. It's the main act. Not a flaw but a feature.
     That's why he was elected. Donald the Destroyer, the scourge of liberals. And that dynamic makes perfect sense. The game was up, the world trotting toward its future. Part of the liberal miracle over the past 60 years is to take marginalized people—minorities, gays, women—and invite them into the tent. Good for them, bad for people who used to own the tent and now feel threatened by these interlopers. What about their hopes and dreams, of a white America that manufactures stuff out of iron? They were not going to be ignored.
     So they elected Trump, to flay the infidels. They'll hate me for saying it, but there's a clear parallel between right-wing America and radical Islam. Both see themselves mooted by a world they can only lash out at as it flies by. Both spend their lives bitterly resenting who they aren't rather than joyously being who they are. If you think America should be frozen in 1953, with Hispanic serfs hidden back in the kitchen, what do you do? The same as if you think any woman who isn't veiled is a whore: extract vengeance.
     Trump never has to create a job or lay a brick. All he has to do is say he will, any moment now, and keep a constant bead on those already long demonized by Fox and Friends. The soil was prepared for him, turned and broken and fertilized. Ready for Trump to bloom.
     The media has been slow to catch on. We are used to it playing news certain way—we keep reporting each new development in the Russian scandal, not realizing that Trump's shape-shifting supporters simply morph. Big thumbs up to Putin and the Russian Federation, our new best friend in the world.
     Then again, the media always tends to lag; newspapers still create a product out of mashed wood pulp that is thrown at customers' houses every morning. We still print comic strips. If a giant meteor were discovered that would end the world tomorrow afternoon, we'd report it on the front page but the baseball schedule for the rest of the week would still be in the sports pages. Slow on the uptake.
     And what would that headline be? "Earth to end today." Too weak. "Rock shock!" Better, but a bit New York Post-y. "WE'RE DOOMED!" feels about right, though we might want to save that one for Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2020.