Daddy conquered everything, until he met Mama

Daddy was from a swashbuckling, hard-fighting, hard-drinking breed of Cossacks. 
His story will be part of the forthcoming movie based on "Elderly Girl's Secret Passageway."

      The genesis of the Kronstantinople Bazaar is unquestionably one of the great mysteries of American history. Actually, it is one of the very few authentic mysteries that even exists in this coarse, materialistic,  literal country, which has such a short and stupid memory. There is no magic here! SUVs and greasy bags of "fast food," dumbed-down TV and sports. There is no wonderment, no nuance. There is no soulfulness, except among our beautiful black people.  

     You go to other countries, you will find depth and passion, conviction and pride, even among the simplest peasants. Each of them actually has a philosophy! They know their place in this throbbing universe, and it gives their lives a humble majesty that few Americans can even comprehend. 

America needed someone to rise up and say "Awaken, you sleepyheads!"

    There must be all kinds of words in other languages for what we lack, but America, for all its gadgets and gimmicks and "standard of living" is truly retarded.

    Regarding the ever-intriguing genesis of Kronstantinople Bazaar (http://kronstantinople.blogspot.com/2012/02/elderly-girls-fabled-childhood-in-world.html) :  This fabulous building was just sitting there, in the wasteland of Middle America, overgrown and in need of a good scrubbing. No one in town had any idea who built it and what for. There were no documents in the town's meager, messy records division that referenced it. When was it constructed? Who knew? -- it had simply always been there, stunning but incongruous.

Those fools never even bothered to look inside.

    By the early 1940s, it was becoming overgrown and unkempt -- a potential incubator for a new breed of beings known as "juvenile delinquents."
    Something had to be done. 

ELDERLY GIRL'S FATHER MAKES A BIG, BOLD MOVE
    Konstantin Kronstantinople, Elderly Girl's swashbuckling father, happened to be chauffered  through town on his way to a speaking engagement in his nationwide Theosophical tour. He heard about the controversy over the building at the gas station and offered to pay $1.00 a year for a 100-year lease in exchange for sprucing it up and maintaining it.

The building's details never ceased to inspire and amaze.

    The council members laughed behind their hands. They couldn't believe that anyone would want to assume responsibility for this monstrosity. With an accent like his, he probably wasn't very bright.

    He put out the call to his relatives around the world. More than 150 of them would emigrate within the next three months -- some carrying their few possessions in burlap duffel bags, others bringing their servants along to manage trunkloads of valuables.

The Kronstantinople clan's diversity was intoxicating!

    They were a stunning bunch: handsome, argumentative, colorful and enterprising, with a marvelous blend of cultures and races. 

KRONSTANTINOPLE BAZAAR GAINS WORLDWIDE FAME
    Within less than a year, the Kronstaninople Bazaar had become the most talked about emporium in the world, combining the delightful, aromatic ambience of Old World marketplaces with some of the most modern, fashionable goods and services from the cream of American and European style icons.   

Hidden on the back roof was a quaint little pool with water from hot springs.

WHO IS KONSTANTIN KRONSTANTINOPLE?

    That's a good question. Konstantin, who was born in 1918, spent his childhood on a sunflower farm in the idyllic Russian countryside, the son of a rowdy Cossack and a beautiful, hardy girl from Mongolia. He grew to be a big, strong man like his father. From his mother, he inherited an apricot-hued skin and slightly almond-shaped eyes, which his daughters, Elderly Girl in particular, would use to excellent advantage in attracting male attention.

   Konstantin had been studying the night sky since he was old enough to look up without falling down. He shyly told his mother when he was five years old that he could hear "the music of the spheres."

Mongols such as his mother have lovely features and coloring.

    In his youth, he began wading through "The Secret Doctrine" and "The Voice of the Silence" by the founder of the Theosophical movement, Madame Helena Blavatsky, and he later spent time in Tblisi as a student of mystic George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, who had just established the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man.

A TIRELESS QUEST FOR THE DEEPEST OF INSIGHTS
    At the age of 20, he plunged into Buddhism, under His Eminence Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche, and spent days at a time in meditative trance with his fellow acolytes in Nepal. 

    In Italy, he boarded for a year with Franciscan monks to absorb the essence of their mysticism, which "comes into the open air, seeks to transform the stuff of daily life, speaks the vernacular, and turns the songs of the troubadours to the purposes of Divine love," according to Fr. Augusto.

John of Kronstadt was the patron saint of Konstantin's clan.

     He earned money to contribute to the monastery by doing the afternoon shift of the "mushroom police," who roam the hills of Umbria to ensure that those who are gathering funghi do not unwittingly carry home those that are poisonous. He was inadvertently introduced to Psilocybin or "magic" mushrooms, which he would find useful in his future holistic health practice as well as for personal enjoyment.

    He traveled to Calabria, the poorest region of Italy, to become educated in the mystical and magical healing practices that persisted, despite the advent of modern medicine, due to the area's remoteness. 

EMBRACING THE CONCEPT OF A 'VITAL FORCE'
    He was influenced greatly by the fact that the healing arts were freely shared, and self-medication was widespread. Permeating all of these conditions and practices is the notion of a “vital force.” This force is said to be strengthened or restored in miraculous healings; it resides in medicinal plants and foods. 
    When highly skilled healers are needed, they often work in altered states of consciousness. This may involve “merging” with their client’s conditions. All of this meshed seamlessly with everything else Konstantin had come to believe. He was exhilarated.

Konstantin's dream was to alleviate suffering using an eclectic approach.

    He  then obtained certification with honors at the London School of Osteopathy. During his training, he had intuited the connection of the  "music of the spheres" with the discords of the body. He became a healer of great distinction. His published work on energy fields, myofascial trigger points and craniosacral therapy established him in both Europe and North America as a great thinker and clinician.

LARGER-THAN-LIFE POWERS AND PASSIONS

    Konstantin was a ravishing man with a marauding hunger for food, sex and ideas. He had an imposing, assertive physical presence and a resounding voice. But his power was in  his ability to look at you and see everything, and to feel and know everything about you. 

    He didn't see flesh and blood as much as he saw shimmer, color, throb, clench, sob, wilt and bloom. He saw auras. 

Those blessed with special powers can see our auras.

     He could discern more about you than your best friend would ever know  just by looking deeply -- very deeply -- into your eyes. And that is what he addressed as he touched you and tried to ease all of the pains you had, even those of which you were unaware.  

    While he was finalizing his thesis at the Paris Institute of Psychoanalysis, he met Islamina Toledano, a breathtaking, red-headed Moroccan Jew, who was studying alongside Julia Child at Le Cordon Bleu culinary institute.

Moroccan Jews were known as a lusty, clannish people.

 (Islamina's  parents, though feverishly devoted to their religion, admired the culture and ethics of Islam so deeply that they named their only daughter after it.)

ELECTRIFIED ATTRACTION LEADS TO IMMEDIATE ACTION

    Konstantin and Islamina were electrified by the sight of each other at a sidewalk cafe. They were in bed together within thirty minutes after their eyes met, and their passion had never waned after all these years. They found an apartment in Montmartre, in a neighborhood filled with writers and artists, whores and absinthe addicts, and continued blissfully with their studies. 

Life in Montmartre offered both decadence and intellectual stimulation.

    Islamina looked as if she should have been born with silver castanets in her hands. She was an ideal specimen of female homo sapiens from an evolutionary point of view: Her full lips, exceedingly lavish bosom, tiny waist and generous, round hips  screamed fecundity. She was a fiery girl, whose mass of wavy hair practically exploded out of her scalp. Her ever-flushed face reflected humor, conviction and pride. Her eyes, most of the time, seemed to be issuing a challenge: Prove it! Amuse me! Do it to me now!
      Islamina was very nearly expelled from Le Cordon Bleu for rejecting the concept of recipes. She would never have even attended this stupid school except that her parents held education in such high esteem.

Julia Child submitted humbly to the strictures of her male teachers. Islamina scoffed.

     "I cook from the soul, from the heart!" she cried. "I will not be restrained by words on a page!"

JULIA CHILD ROASTS THAT CRAZY ISLAMINA

    Julia Child didn't care for her one bit, and once dismissed her as "that Gypsy dervish."

    But no one could deny the delectability and the artistry of the dishes she prepared with such foot-stomping, head-tossing vigor.

    How delightful that Konstantin had devoted so much of his studies to the concept of "vital force." The love of his life was the very embodiment of it.
   To watch this vivid girl inflict upon a mound of bread dough a session of tyrannical kneading, or to see her on her knees, in her traditional Morrocan dress, scrubbing the floor like a madwoman (with that lovely gluteus maximus of hers up in the air) would make just about anyone (except for the ferocious Konstantin) feel pale and flaccid by comparison. 

    He had met his match. This was love. This was profound respect and admiration. This was butterflies and palpitations. This was NEED. 

A TIME OF RECKONING, AND THE DEED IS DONE
    She was a force to be reckoned with. And Konstantin reckoned he would do just that.

    It was the morning that he got up, looked out the window, and saw her straddling a Palomino, galloping wildly through a nearby meadow -- her mane and that of the pony flying in the wind -- that he decided to make her his wife now, instead of waiting until their studies had been completed. 

Those Moroccan Jews really know how to throw a wedding!

    The wedding party was a huge, loud, colorful, drunken blast, but Konstantin and Islamina didn't stay. They went to bed, and just held each other, and then they repeated their vows to each other, softly and with great feeling. (Vows are not well-served by having an audience. They should be about two people, and they should be private. These public spectacles are really quite asinine, vain, misguided, intrusive and absurdly expensive. If you want to have a party, find another excuse. Especially since the divorce is usually just around the corner!)
    It was now, amid their sunshine-scented white sheets, that they were truly wedded.

Frilled sea anemone is lovely in a stir fry.

     
KONSTANTIN SETS OUT TO CIVILIZE AMERICA
    While Islamina was completing the last few weeks of her training -- doing groundbreaking experiments on the use of royal jelly, flower petals, gold leaf, dew, corn silk, sea plants such as frilled anemone, and aromatic oils in her cooking -- Konstantin was summoned by the Theosophical Society to do a 10-city lecture tour in America to enlighten those barbarians on the spiritual and ethereral dimensions of life, about which they seemed so thuddingly ignorant. 

     It was during that trip, as he was driven across the country in a handsome 1939 Lincoln Continental, that he saw and was irresistibly drawn to the magnificent building that he would soon transform into a sparkling amalgam we know as Kronstantinople Bazaar. 

HE FINDS A MAGNIFICENT HOME AND A NOBLE CALLING
    America needed him. It was a very bland country. Konstantin's rowdy clan would shake things up a bit. And the castle, as he like to think of it, would serve as a home for the children he was already attempting, with surging vigor, to sire.

It was the sweetest little house Islamina had ever seen.

     Islamina was ecstatic when he returned to Paris with photographs of their new home. She would have plenty of room for a restaurant, bakery and cooking school.

Konstantin's gym would be modeled after those in ancient Rome.

    Konstantin's vast warren of breathtaking treatment rooms, massage salons, saunas, steam rooms, classical Turkish baths, and twinkly, rather occult spaces for mystical healing and conventional psychotherapy -- which encompassed most of the third floor -- would give full range to his huge expertise. People who were ailing in body or spirit would come from around the world to submit to Konstantin's piercing insights.

Who could resist a long, vigorous scrubbing by a darling young man?

    Konstantin would invite healers from the Amazon, the Inuit wasteland and the most prestigious institutes in Europe to serve as "guest therapists." Freudian-based assistance was quite popular among his more affluent clients.

Many agonized, even perverted, secrets were revealed on this couch.

    Konstantin was inspired by the great "touch healers," from Christ to the present, who could soothe or even cure those who were suffering, simply by the laying on of hands.

No leper ever sought Konstantin's aid, but Jesus knew just what to do.

    He also learned from experience the concept that is known today as aromatherapy. When he was sitting in the dark with a patient, scrutinizing his or her aura, he realized that a scent as well as a swirling glow was emitted by each of them. More often than not, the scent was not a good one -- it was vaporized sadness, dysfunction or disease.

MESTIZO SNIFFS, AND CREATES 'YOUROMA'
    He began collaborating with Huehueteotl, the Mestizo member of the Kronstantinople clan, to formulate aromas that would neutralize the pathology Konstantin was discerning in so many of his patients.

Konstantin was most at home with his books.

    Huehueteotl was part of the radical Mexica movement that regarded white people as the "illegals" in North America. He had been raised to educate others about the disgraceful rape of his indigenous forebears by colonists from Spain and Portugal, to attack the enemies of his people, and to let the world know that he was fighting for his identity as a Nican Tlaca (of the Indigenous race of this continent), as a Mexica ("the last great civilization"), as part of the Anahuac ("North American"/Northern Western Hemisphere) Nation. 

Mestizos were the product of natives' sexual subjugation by Spaniards.

    Konstantin admired this ardent movement and encouraged Huehueteotl (Sacred Fire) to proselytize to his heart's content.
    But his major duty was to operate the "Youroma" aromatic pharmacy, where he selected from his inventory of thousands of oils the perfect recipe for each of Konstantin's patients.

    Konstantin was not averse to unconventional cures, if the documentation was adequate.

Pain, the piercing of energy medians and blood-letting can be combined therapeutically.

    His opium den, which of course scandalized the few mainstream Americans who were aware of it, was regarded as a delightful option as one wandered through the beauties of Konstantin's  healing emporium. Those magic mushrooms he discovered in Italy, as well as Methylenedioxymethamphetamine, better known as today as Ecstasy, were also used to enhance his patients' perceptions and overall sense of peace and oneness with Creation. 

You can smoke opium without revealing your breast, but why not get comfortable?

      Konstantin was the first researcher to discover the human uses for ketamine, a horse anesthetic, which can produce hallucinations, powerful states of well being and a relief from depression. A half-century later, it would become known as "Special K" on the street.

A BAZAAR THAT IS A WORK OF PERFORMANCE ART
     Before long, as Konstantin elicited the quirkiest quirks and the most radical aesthetics and the most robust warmth of his massive clan, Kronstantinople Bazaar matured into a wildly diverse yet cohesive experiential venue. Vanity Fair would characterize it is the "newest Wonder of the World," and the late ABC news anchor Peter Jennings declared, "You can be in the Celestial Kingdom and buy a pair of fine Italian loafers at the same time."

This was the most minimalist of the couple's several bedrooms.

      Konstantin and Islamina would remain passionately in love, even as the passing decades slowed them down a bit. Islamina became frail and stooped as she entered her eighth decade, but her intellect and joie de vivre were intact. 

DADDY DIES, BUT MOTHER FORGES AHEAD
    She could work all day as hard as any man and still play a killer game of volleyball before dinner. Konstantin lost some of his physical dynamism, and even his brain slowed down somewhat, but he maintained a full-time practice until he developed dementia. He died at age 91. His ashes were scattered in the sunflower fields of Kursk, Russia.

A sunflower field in Ukraine. The seeds are used mainly for their oil.

    A brokenhearted Islamina shut down the bazaar and reconfigured it to provide a beautiful, stimulating, warm and caring residence for those with Alzheimer's disease. At the time of this writing, she and her staff were caring for nearly 200 people, in splendid accommodations, at no charge. Kronstantinople always did provide another world, another reality, to people. It is striving now to make the "other reality" that is dementia a world of security, sparkle and sensory joy.
    Elderly Girl will miss Daddy forever. She is very proud of her Mama, and continues to be awed by her compassion and vitality, her delight in beauty, and her ability to create beauty in the lives of others.