{"id":95,"date":"2006-06-17T16:01:06","date_gmt":"2006-06-17T23:01:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/wordpress\/?p=94"},"modified":"2006-06-17T16:01:06","modified_gmt":"2006-06-17T23:01:06","slug":"banya-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.oliverk.com\/blog\/?p=95","title":{"rendered":"banya world"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\"chainlink\"<\/p>\n

hot city<\/small><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n\"Banyaworld\"<\/p>\n

banya entrance<\/small><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n \n<\/div>\n

On my most recent foray into New York, I was introduced to the world of the Russian banya<\/a>. Despite the heat wave outside, I was amazed to discover that communal sweating, (in a hot, dark room, full of boisterous Russians who are beating each other with birch branches), is oddly refreshing. After it was all over and we went back out into the fetid Brooklyn night, I felt as if my pores had been thoroughly cleansed by an army of mop wielding nano-dwarves. The polluted air no longer felt so nauseatingly oppressive and I floated back onto the subway in a blissful, body stoned stupor. Check out a real banya blog<\/a> to get a sense of the kind of atmosphere to expect. I can’t wait to buy myself one of those rakish white felt hats<\/a> for my next banya visit.
\nI was jolted out of my thermally induced euphoria, when, as we walked uptown from Delancey St., we hit a dark patch of sidewalk under a burned out street light. Blithely carrying on, we noticed that the concrete underfoot was a bit sticky and strewn with a great many shiny, button-like objects. Then it hit me. . . We were walking across hundreds of lustrous, skittering cockroach<\/a> carapaces, some as big as baby turtles, teeming across a rank slick of heat fermented dumpster juice. It seemed we had gotten a little *too* relaxed during our banya outing, otherwise we might have noticed our predicament a bit earlier. E-e-e-e-w!
\nNow I’m back on the West Coast and living in a landscape that resembles something right off the front of a Celestial Seasonings tea box<\/a> I’m getting ready to take another poetry course with the inimitable Susan Musgrave<\/a> In preparation, I thought I’d better write a quick banya poem:<\/p>\n

\nNinety five degrees
\nin Alphabet City
\nand she says we’re going to
\na steam bath
\na *steam* bath, I say?
\nYeah, a steam bath, she says
\na *Russian* steam bath, as if
\nnationality mattered and a
\n“schvitz” will cool us down
\nand we’re already traversing the
\nshimmering, simmering fields of tar toward
\nthe F train’s burping burrow, my face all sputtery like a
\nlard candle, the seething distance mis-
\naligned, de-
\ninterlaced
\nfrom the tired atomic
\nfirmament
\nthe magnets focusing the world
\nhave melted off their mounts, we
\nmince
\nacross hot dumpster juice
\nlapping
\nat my ankles even
\nthe ghetto palms
\nhave had
\nenough
\nfolding feathery leaves
\nin chlorophytic
\nbeseechment
\naway
\nfrom tormenting sun
\nI see the hole, the sweet sweet hole
\nof subway deliverance
\nof fetid dankitude
\nof stale metal aircon
\nrelief
\nin the warm electric bosom
\nof motors
\nI flop all nauseous and swirly brained
\nstick to the vinylette like a freshly licked stamp
\ncommemorative Zen, heat stroke edition, anything
\ncould happen to me now, it no longer
\nmatters, I wish this ride would go on for
\never but the alphabet runs out at
\n“I”
\nand down the stairs we clang clang clang from
\nthe rusty platform that straddles
\nthe street
\nwith its overarching Meccano legs, a giant spider
\nate a Taiwanese freighter, scuttled, I think they call it, ready
\nto pounce on the kids with the forelocks and bowler hats
\nrunning
\nunder a Carboniferous sky
\nold as amphibians
\nbeneath the sheets of street
\nheat lightning over Coney Island ozone
\ntickle of electrified window
\nscreens and
\ncarack carack kablam
\nthe first fat drops
\nzisching
\non the pavement, outside
\nthe bath house
\nawning now
\nand thank God
\nMarina mayfly
\nflits toward us
\nall mouse ears and
\nkiss kiss kisses
\nthe dioxin sweetness
\nof freshly laundered terry cloth, where
\nbirch branch beaten
\nmounds of
\nman meat
\nquiver under white felt
\nhats, lost in a haze
\nof smoked fish and watermelon steam
\nwe head for the ovens
\nand emerge
\nonce more as
\nshining ingots
\npure, revirginated
\nand ready
\nto be defiled
\nagain.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

hot city banya entrance   On my most recent foray into New York, I was introduced to the world of the Russian banya. Despite the heat wave outside, I was amazed to discover that communal sweating, (in a hot, dark room, full of boisterous Russians who are beating each other with birch branches), is oddly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oliverk.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oliverk.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oliverk.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oliverk.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oliverk.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=95"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.oliverk.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oliverk.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=95"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oliverk.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=95"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oliverk.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=95"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}