I’ve been a foreigner longer than I’ve been a citizen,
and no longer have a mother tongue.
I’m a painter and a teacher, and I write
in one of the four languages foreign to me.
Grammar was never my strong suit, and yet I
shamelessly enjoy telling stories in my broken languages.
I came across ‹Taxi-Lingua› in an old cyberpunk novel,
a future dialect spoken by urban inhabitants.
It is a language that emerged from the world of taxi drivers.
The result of immigrants communicating
via radio dispatches and in late night cafes.
The Term ‹Taxi-Lingua› touched me more
than it was meant to.


For twenty-four years, I worked as a co-director, teacher, and
founding member at the neueKUNSTschule in Basel.


I was born in Israel, my parents were born in Argentina
and my grandparents come from Central and Eastern Europe,
according to our surname, they, the Szir side of the family,
come from Syria, which means our ancestors were banished
from Spain or Portugal in the 15th Century, and yet my
grandmother’s maiden name on my mother’s side was ‹London›.


I’m married and have two children.


Art, thinking and the reality of the mind
make up the core of my interests since
around the age of sixteen. Now, as I write these words,
I am around fifty-six-years-old.


Books, music, comics and all forms of storytelling,
films, series, myths and even literature
have accompanied me since I can remember myself.
Immersion in imaginations, my own or that of others, seems to me
a basic need and a human right. When I was twenty, I made a note
'Read philosophy as poetry and poetry as philosophy'.


I wrote a sort of poem for the Chinese edition of my first Book,
maybe an undogmatic credo. This,
to this day, has only been published in Chinese:

What I love is the lucidity of dance.

The path’s manifold folds, that show themselves as
truth, which challengingly call me to leave the house.

There, in the flowing path of awayness, I am home.

There, before settling moves into the soul,
there I am home.

It’s not a place, but the placing,
where my childhood will forever begin.


That’s the second book I’m completing
and getting print ready. The first book
was dedicated to thought, the second is an extensive
examination of the relationship between colors and the
human soul. That, which you just read, interposed itself.
Perhaps it’s a travel guide, certainly there are islands of the souls,
whose visit is necessary for some
paths, sometimes even unavoidable.


or:


I grew up in a village, not
far from the border of Jordan. Our name,
in English, means ‹keepers of flow›,
but there’s neither an arrow nor a sign at the entrance
to the rural road leading into our Wadi.
We had, and they still have, a holy
tradition, we guard the stream of stories. My parents
firmly believe that this is not to be interrupted, when the telling
of stories stops, the end begins. Therefore they string stories
like pearls on a necklace, twenty-four hours
a day, seven days a week, twelve months
a year, one century after the other.
The holiest of stories says it’s been like
this since the beginning of time.


The telling of stories has a location, a sort of temple
under the trees. A desert tent is pitched in the winter
to surround the storytellers. Anyone older than twenty-one
who’s committed themselves to the duty are recognized
as keepers of the flow. When the times comes for their duty,
they join the temple’s circle and listen. When it’s their turn,
they tell a story, one that has never been heard before. One
must never fall back on a used story. Around the clock, throughout
the year and the years - the flow’s never broken. The younger ones,
not yet allowed to tell stories, are always warmly invited to listen
as long as they are members of the community. There are no guests,
it’s an act of magic, not a tourist attraction. For centuries,
it has been the flow that held and holds the community together,
the flow and the secret.


Those who decide to leave the community, like I have, promise
never to return and never to expose the truth of the keepers’ settlement.
So it goes without saying, that what I am describing here
is not the truth
but just another story.

—

From ‹portraits  and islands› Zvi Szir 2022
Übersetzung Grashina Gabelmann