Dear Senda,

When you invented women’s basketball, you wanted women to move in space unhindered.

There are many things that hinder movement:

corsets, and metal barriers,

turnstiles, and borders,

pet gates and outstretched arms.

.

Best wishes,

Glauco

Dear Senda,

Here is a list:

My grandmother, a hero of love and duty.

My mother, a hero of non-conformism, and exploration.

My sister, a hero of listening, and protection.

Gabriela, a hero of resolve and wholeheartedness.

Veronica, a hero of empathy and introspection.

Best wishes,

Glauco

Dear Senda,

The road to your village from Kaunas where we were staying goes through some other villages, and village after village there’s this endless stream of life as I will never know. There were signs of it, on the road and on shops and on people’s breath. 

I listened, and I realized there are so many more languages I don’t understand in the world than languages I do understand,

and even fewer I can speak.  

Best wishes,

Glauco

Dear Senda,

They offered tours of the school when we visited Butrimonys. They gave us food and everyone was very happy because I could pronounce “grybas”. When people speak a language you don’t understand you can still read the movement in the sound, and in their bodies. I was listening for a while. 

Best wishes,

Glauco

Dear Senda,

My body and your body are an ocean apart. I am standing very close from where your body came out of your mother’s body. Your body was here under the sun for seven years. Then your bodies and all these other bodies close to your body when on a boat, full of bodies, to a place in the United States that had way more bodies than the one you left.

When your body was old and tired, the fire in hundreds of bodies that looked like yours was snuffed right here where your body was before. Bodies threw other bodies in a ditch because it didn’t matter what those bodies did or who they belonged to. Your body was far away, and now my body is close.

Best wishes,

Glauco

Dear Senda,

Your brother didn’t like modern art, I wonder what is your opinion on the matter. I’m sorry we’re making some about you. I hope you like it.

Best wishes,

Glauco

.

Best wishes,

Glauco

Dear Senda,

Competition is good, but with moderation, that’s what you said. You want everyone to play the game, but you want everybody to be able to benefit from it, even if some people are better and some people are worse, that’s what you said. Everyone should have access to health and be able to look after their body, even if others try to stop it, that’s what you said.

Best wishes,

Glauco

Dear Senda,

When my sister was a teenager, she wanted to feel good about herself. We had to go to a salon very far away and pay a lot of money for someone to apply this product on her hair. The idea was to make it look straight, a bit more like yours I guess.

She was happy on the bus home. 

Best wishes,

Glauco

Dear Senda,

I have a friend who is a man and he sometimes calls me crying. I’m not supposed to tell you that, but it’s true.

Best wishes,

Glauco

Senda Berenson was born in Butrimonys, an old village in southern Lithuania with a current population of nine hundred people. In Butrimonys there is a fountain that is an acrylic tank with a vortex inside. It glows in multicolored lights at night.

In Butrimonys there is a school, where locals welcomed us and gave us smiles and knowledge and lunch and afternoon treats.

“Grybas” it was called, a small gingerbread-like cake in the shape of a mushroom. I asked the principal:

— How do you say “mushroom” in Lithuanian?

— Grybas.

— So the treat is just called “mushroom”?

— Yes.

Grybas.

After lunch we drove just a few miles outside the village where there is a Jewish mass grave. Once almost eighty percent of the population of Butrimonys, Jewish people people were slaughtered by the hundreds in a massacre ordered by Germans and carried out by Lithuanians in 1941.

They were murdered by their neighbors, with whom they shared a town square, a school and a variety of shops.

The grave is large rectangle in the forest on the other side of a creek. It’s demarcated by a fence, and commemorated by one single headstone for all those who were killed. 

We discussed the history, the details, while we stood on top of hundreds of corpses. On top of the corpses there was grass and weeds.

Growth on graves.

I looked down and found a mushroom and I bent over to photograph it. 

“Grybas” the principal said, pointing.

“Grybas”, I repeated, nodding.