Agora

Agora. From Sarah--Sarah Rothberg, that is. She and Jilly showed up in my afternoon studio class one semester, maybe 2008 or 2009--one of the last times I offered it. The idea was they'd learn to paint--but I needed some verbal types, too, just to keep things lively, and the two of them had come over from English, so they fit the bill. Animated and engaged--good talkers, of course--sometimes too good--almost anything I came up with they're run with, keep Dubo on his toes (Sarah renamed me more than once!) Actually, they were pretty good at the painting, too--mainly because they took me seriously, and were willing to leap in. (Jilly's portraits, with their particular exuberance.) So that their two desks, side by side against the plywood wall of the big sliding door, became a kind of focal point for the endeavor...

Sarah's grandmother was from Thessalonika--the old city in northern Greece, where so much of the Jewish community had been lost during the War. But she'd been transplanted to Los Angeles  sometime after, part of that mysterious, displaced Ladino world--of which Sarah knew a only a handful words, a few customs, but these were somehow deeply inside her. Hard to explain. Gave that Sarah edge. (LA, too, no doubt.) When Purim arrived, she brought in some hamentashen--wrapped carefully in a paper napkin--from her grandmother down south. Mishenichnas adar marbim b'simchah... (When Adar arrives, our joy increases.) They did things like that, these two, inexplainably--and the flavor and taste of something so real--so exactly what we were aiming for, with all those paintings, in our afternoons as a whole...

One day they said to me, "You have a good friend here, but you haven't met him yet." Cecil, of course. Just like the two of them--Jilly and Sarah--jaunty, a little provocative, their playful challenge. And they were right, of course--that was Cecil Giscombe, the poet--who really did become a friend not long after...

Sarah is in New York now, doing something inevitably interesting with goggles and virtual reality. Or maybe just virtual reality without the goggles. I watched a video of one of her evening performances--the crowd (all young people, Sarah's age)--well, of course--animated and engaged!
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Sarah gave me the painting above. She knew I'd like it--her fearless use of cardboard--or maybe she just knew I'd keep it. Which I have.  And it's only now that I see there's a touch of Greece in there, too...

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