Down near the touristy end of Duval Street there are many attractions. One is the Indian swami in his booth. He sits in his white alcove, dressed in layers of floaty white things. His dark eyes are serene and his narrow face ends in a pointy white beard. I’ve never seen him smile, I’ve never seen him laugh, I’ve never seen him angered. But I always see him, seated at his table in his alcove and invariably he has a customer and then another one or two waiting their turn.

I have never ventured too close, only glimpsed in passing, but his method of channeling is he reads the lines in people’s palms. As I cruise past I try but cannot decipher the whispers as he engages with clients, presumably explaining the meaning of life, maybe even counseling them on having chosen Key West, assuring them it was indeed a good choice for a holiday.

I noticed recently his booth is empty, not just of him, but also his signage of graceful palms with deep dark lines, the roadmap of life. But he is never there and time goes on and still he does not appear. I have to ask a local where is the swami?

‘Don’t you know? It’s been all over the local papers!’
I write for the local papers but I don’t read any of them. 
‘Where is the swami gone?’

The story I heard was that after a quarter century of diligent work the swami decided he had earned the time and money for a vacation. With his wife and children they had all excitedly flown to Jamaica. In a matter of days they had all been mugged and slaughtered.

I have heard soothsayers are not able to read the future for themselves, the sharper edge of the double edge sword of the medium of being a medium.

Image by talented Serb MARKO NIKOLIĆ

For more CHRISTINA OXENBERG

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Christina Oxenberg aka Kristina Karađorđević

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Are you there?

Is anyone reading my posts here on this website?

I ask this because I get no feedback on this site and will happily close it down if no one is reading me here.

Every Sunday morning I post these same stories on Facebook and LinkedIn and LOVE comments.

But no need to use up my time posting here if …. if … there’s no one visiting?

Years ago I lived in Paris with an artist, how cliché!

We shared a ground floor apartment (read: lean-to) in a courtyard of perpetually damp buildings. The entrance was the kitchen and also the bathroom with a half tub covered with a plywood board. The roof was corrugated plastic so that during rain storms, it was deafening. The toilet was hidden in a cramped closet and here we nailed shelves and stacked them with books. We named the room Loo Read. My artist hubby cut a section of canvas the size of the widest wall of the studio and he painted the interior of Rodin’s sculpture garden. A vista of figures in various stages, and chunks of marble scattered, center stage was a statue of myself, beyond kitsch! We were in love, and it all seemed fantastic. 

My future ex-hubby set up his easel and oil paints on the Pont des Arts, and I sat beside him all day watching the passers-by watching him work. If they interacted at all it was to ask us where they could take a piss. Meanwhile, for the guitar players and the jugglers farther along the bridge these same amblers shelled out coins. So I hung a sign off the back of the easel, ‘My wife is thirsty and needs a coffee. Contributions please.’

Brits dawdled and read the sign, and laughed, and kept their hands rammed deep in their pockets, before sauntering off. American tourists would stop, read the sign and laugh and then they would hand over handfulls of cash. The French, however, took umbrage, accusing us of mocking the ‘tradition’. They never upped a single sous.

Daily we earned enough francs to stuff our faces at McDonald’s. Along with our ‘amburgers and French fries, we raised cups of soda pop, and toasted, ‘Vive La France! Vive la difference.’

For more Christina Oxenberg  visit: Amazon.com Royal Blue Christina Oxenberg

Join me please as I trip down the incomprehensible trail of proper nouns. I ask you this, what is with the peanut? When I owned my hill in southern Colombia I grew peanuts, not on purpose, they managed to grow themselves springing right out of the ground. My only contribution was to sit amongst them, and eat them, raw and delicious, despite the local’s many ways of roasting them or crushing them into ‘butter’. Every alteration only ever enhanced the taste of this simple staple.

While I called them peanuts, the campesinos called them maní, and at each other’s stumbling pronunciations we laughed.

In English it is the peanut, but why? To the best of my understanding peas have no gender specific markings; so what of the nut? In Spanish they are ‘maní’, pronounced like ‘ma knee’. In French, the worst yet, ‘cacahouètes’,  pronounced exactly like ‘caca wet’; Quoi?

In Serbia they call them ‘kikiriki’. For real! I’m told the reason for this is they are a newish product to these environs, until one day they came packaged by a brand named Kikiriki, which is at least a, if dubious, explanation.

I still have a long way to go with learning Serbian, but I can manage to pronounce ‘kikiriki’, even while I’m not convinced of its veracity.

Aside form this aberration, however, I find the sound of the Serbian language mellifluous. There exists today a Serb poet by the name of Milos Mitrovic whose work, while I cannot read it in its original language, even in the English translation is so beautiful and clever and sharply funny, I’m that much more encouraged to learn the mother tongue.

image is a fragment of the poem

CAPITULATION

by

Milos Mitrovic

Another talented Serb

www.milosmitrovic.com

  For more Christina Oxenberg  visit: Amazon.com Royal Blue Christina Oxenberg 

My NYC pal Spencer glommed on and the three of us trickled south along the Honduran coast. Turned out Spencer was repairing a splintered heart. He got no sympathy from sullen Ivan.

One day at a restaurant on a beach Spencer and I shared lunch as we watched Ivan strolling in the surf, inevitably swirled by excitable kids like gulls around a fisherman’s haul. Spencer, the grandson of an American President with his own trust fund and a loft in Tribeca, said, “What makes Ivan cool? Kids never come near me.”

Our tribe ripped apart when Spencer returned to NYC. Ivan slung on his backpack and left to meet an Aussy buddy at a bus depot. Before leaving Ivan offered me his copy of On The Road. “I want it back,” he said, and he made me promise I’d mail it to an address in Melbourne. I swore I would and we awkwardly hugged goodbye.

I bought a ticket to Roatan and there I joined an unofficial commune in a forrest of palm trees. I rented a hammock for a dollar a night and here I read and jotted notes.

Books to travelers on the Gringo Trail are a currency and I traded down for The Firm. Mentally I drifted, wondering how I reached this path leading nowhere in particular. Was I a reader, was I a writer, was I a paperback book rustler?

Weeks into the void I suddenly remembered I had interviewed at a women’s magazine for the position of book reviewer. A dream job! And I had somehow forgotten. Shock bolted me upright and I spilled out the hammock.

Spencer lost his girl, Ivan lost his book and I lost out on that job. Yet, somehow I feel certain none of that changed one jot of the rest of our lives.

Image by talented Serbian

Alexander Mihaylovich

currently exhibiting at (click here) 

www.alexandermihaylovich.com

  For more Christina Oxenberg  visit: Amazon.com Royal Blue Christina Oxenberg

I WHILED AWAY A fortnight on Ambergris Cay in an unadorned room above a liquor store. Still I was restless and I took a short flight to the mainland followed by a long bumpy bus journey westward to northern Guatemala.

Here I roamed an archaeological park and scaled the partly excavated pyramid of Tikal. Oversized stone steps covered with heavy mosses and loose rocks and slowly I clambered as far as I could go until I was above the clouds with a view of monster raptors slinking on air currents and gradually I was stunned into an interior silence I had never before experienced. A magic quality I could not identify but that I could feel. It hushed my worries and transported me further than any bus ride into the jungle. Something profound was happening and by the time I returned to earth I was changed, lighter somehow.

Another bus trucked me east into Honduras and I began to feel I was a fully fledged explorer and lost in a great space, just as I had hoped for.

I befriended Ivan, a traumatized Australian orphan with outrageous stories of childhood abuse, locked in attics by nuns. Together we wandered the ruins of Copan, and whenever I bleated I was thirsty or hungry he would eye me coldly and say, “You’ll live,” and I imagined this was what he had been told a hundred times as a frightened child.

We traveled together and wended south and along the coast, bonded as if I had adopted him. Together out on the open road with our open emotional wounds and it was a glorious sensation to feel that level of unfettered freedom. Anonymity the ultimate soothing balm.

One evening we entered a rickety restaurant and because I was not paying attention I body-slammed into a grown man exiting. “I’m sorry,” I exclaimed, but gradually and shockingly the man and I recognized one another. A friend from New York City. Him in his preppy attire and me with my feral orphan.

So much for getting lost!

 Image by  

MARKO NIKOLIC

~from my library of super talented Serbians~

  For more Christina Karageorgevic Oxenberg visit:

Amazon.com Royal Blue Christina Oxenberg

Long ago, withering in NYC, I suddenly remembered my friend from high school with her own island in Tahiti. I tracked her down and invited myself. “Sure,” she replied, screaming down a fuzzy phone, “All you’ll need is a bicycle!” I was surprised I hadn’t figured this out sooner. I planned on staying the rest of my life. Giddily I resigned my job, gave up my apartment and tossed out my belongings. I invested in a red bicycle and a one way ticket to Papeete.

The airline refused the bike unless I bought an ‘airline approved’ box. Several days later I landed in French Polynesia to warnings of a cyclone.

Jubilant squeals as my girlfriend and I met after so long had us howling at the crushed bicycle box where spokes stuck out like buck teeth.

We shoved it in the back of her car, along with my bags, and drove to the cove where you can see her island, a sultry emerald headdress as if adorned with peacock feathers.

The winds whipped about and we selected only the necessities and canoed across the bay.

That night, in a thatched hut filled with bright silk pillows, we caught up. At some point she explained there was the possibility the winds could change direction and the island would be washed over with seawater and essentially vanish, and we laughed louder and toasted the storm and our courage.

Next day the menace was traceless beyond broken trees and we paddled to the mainland. Oddly, the car was surrounded by shiny particles, the windows smashed, storm damage we concluded. On closer inspection we discovered my things, including the broken bicycle, were gone.

My shock compounded when I realized I did not like the mosquitoes, I did not like the sweltering heat, I did not like Tahiti. This was somebody else’s paradise.

I lasted one week.

Image by Amy Badass©

  For more Christina Oxenberg  visit: Amazon.com Royal Blue Christina Oxenberg

The day began with a chilly mist and a liaison with a trusted friend to discuss business. The business of my private life. I’ll confess the talks went better than expected. Including a walk on pink paths under arches of iron laced with vines and everywhere tall palm trees and snoozing dogs.

As with opening any door another door, different shape and size, reveals itself directly behind the first, and on it goes.

In the lobby of the smart hotel a man with a walking stick is a relative. He would be King, if this were still a Kingdom. I neared and introduced myself. In the habit of being approached by strangers I felt his warm relief emanate when he heard my name and he pulled me close to embrace, exclaiming, “A cousin!” My early training had me reaching for his hand and raising it to my lips, in full automatic mode I kissed his hand and I curtsied, as I had many times in the altered universe of a childhood. My grandparents, on my mother’s side, maintained an exquisite level of formality which never seemed strange to me at the time. In retrospect, however, strangely okay.

By midday the mist evaporated revealing cerulean skies woven with strands of pearly clouds.

Later, another variable, a free radical of a marvel, developed before my eyes, a friend from the distant past. To see her in person rather than as characters on my computer screen was an immeasurable pleasure. We sat close and exploded with laughter for hours and the quarter century separation dissolved in our raucous joy and zealous hugs. Day traveled into night lit by red lights embedded in a fountain and warmed by love.

Today I fly away, leaving nothing behind. Instead I walk carrying everything I came with and so much more. Turns out the night never ended!

Image by John Martini©

www.johnmartini.com

 For more Christina Oxenberg visit: Amazon.com/Christina Oxenberg

‘Where are you from?’

This is a question posed by strangers, meant innocently I understand, but one that gets on my nerves, mostly because it is exasperating to have repeated this conversation ad infinitum. Here’s how it, reliably, goes:

Q: Where are you from?
Me: I’m from New York
Q: No you’re not!
Me: You know better?
Q: But you have an accent!
Me: You must be a musician with such a fine ear
Q: Australia?
Me: No
Q: South Africa?
Me: No
Q: Canada?
Me: No
Q: New Zealand?
Me: No
Q: Ok, I give up, where are you from?
Me: I already told you a fucking hour ago, I’m from New York. Born in New York City. Would you like to see my ID?
Q: But you have an accent?
Me: I’m half American and my mother is from Serbia.
Q: What?
Me: What?
Q: What?
Me: What?
Q: So, where is Siberia?

Image by John Martini©

www.johnmartini.com

 For more Christina Oxenberg visit: Amazon.com/Christina Oxenberg

Winter weather is one of many reasons to move to Key West. Writers thrive here. Made famous by Ernest Hemingway whose legend is steady like a patron saint. Tennessee Williams spent far longer here, and later the likes of Truman Capote and Tom McGuane, and onward the list of venerables goes.

Oddly, this winter even Key West has been chilly. Still the tourists come, searching for succor. Tourists are identifiable, besides their pallid skin, they optimistically wear tee shirts and shorts while locals don caps and bluejeans.

Since moving here, I very luckily met the local tribe of writers, and because my education is a pockmarked mess I had never heard of most of them. I set about reading. I imbibed all of Annie Dillard with my mouth open in awe at her skill; Ann Beattie, William Wright, Phyllis Rose, Judy Blume, Alison Lurie, Marie Chaix, Harry Mathews, and many more. Laurent de Brunhoff of Babar was the only name I knew, having perused his cartoons as a child, and it was my honor to meet the man behind the elephants of my youth.

The undisputed top of the heap was Robert Stone. Another I’d never heard of. Yet, everyone here resoundingly agreed he was the best, described as having ‘the finest mind on this island.’ I threw myself into Dog Soldiers and Damascus Gate and fell forever for his deft expert touch.

Two years ago, having dinner at Bill Wright’s (another whose oeuvre I absorbed like elixir, every word so perfectly chosen), I was seated next to Bob Stone and having read his work I made a point to listen rather than gab. He and his wife Janice share a deep connection. They are the sort of couple you dream of but rarely meet, people who like one another, who operate as a team, pulling the cart of life together.

In 2013 Bob published The Death of the Dark-Haired Girl. It is flawless. I’m told he fretted over every word and took the task deadly seriously, at no point did he relax into his reputation, his perfectionism always hand-in-hand with his genius.

Robert Stone died January 10, at home with his beloved Janice. Early February his memorial was held in a brick turret in the old Fort by the sea, suitably ravaged by time. Someone thoughtful had interlaced the space with flowers, I’m told Bob loved flowers. Every one of the vaunted artists came to pay their respects, wrapped in sweaters and long pants, and many spoke their thoughts and memories. Bill Wright pointed out Bob’s sincere kindness, the rarest of attributes. Judy Blume told of a time when she unexpectedly ran into Bob, on a day filled with anxiety for her, and in the most tender way he soothed her. Like everyone who knew him, they deeply appreciated him.

The end was signaled by a bagpiper piping his melancholy notes, but just as he began he was silenced as Bob and Janice’s daughter decided unexpectedly to speak. But when she took the podium she lost control of her tears and rambled ever so slightly, and she returned to her seat. Then the bagpipes resumed their gorgeous lament, no doubt mingling with Bob’s laughter in the sky.

There was as much love as sadness that blustery sunshiny day.

Image by John Martini©

www.johnmartini.com

 For more Christina Oxenberg visit: Amazon.com/Christina Oxenberg