break into flower

The part of us that did not become human

2012-01-31T04:12:00.000-08:00

Reading about the Dou Donggo people and their understanding of rain:

"The mischievous spirits who interfere with this natural process have their origin in human birth: they are formed from the placenta discarded in the bush after a woman has given birth to a child. They are, as the Dou Donggo say, 'the part of us that did not become human', and they are envious of us because of this."

(Social and Cultural Anthropology: A Very Short Introduction, by John Monaghan and Peter Just; p. 121).

How cool is this? From now on, I want to believe that there is a part of me roaming around the world and creating mischief. Seriously, though, the phrase does somehow ring true. A part that did not become human. I know it, I want to know it: maybe not intimately, but just to know it exists.

Quick Thoughts About A Dangerous Method

2012-01-29T10:37:00.000-08:00

- The film, combined with other things that came up lately, is inspiring: be brave; do what you feel is needed right now; enjoy and suffer that which is right and which is yours. Which for me, at this moment, is to study religion, esotericism, psychoanalysis, poststructuralism. To learn what people did (and do) because they believe in it and need it, because they need to ask questions and live them out. What matters is only the right now.

- I feel grateful that for me, Freud and Jung are still, and will always be, verbal and academic constructions, rather than film characters (Viggo and Fassbender) or, more broadly, cultural characters, heroes of popular imagination (which enables them to be represented as a) condensed clusters of theoretical thought b) little gift shop plush dolls).

To be more precise, I do imagine Freud primarily in academic terms, but when it comes to Jung, a subjective and emotional perception will always be more important. What I care about is how I myself am free to imagine him, and how I am free to imagine an affinity between us. In a sense, Jung represents the part of me that is less social than other parts, that wonders and questions and trusts and is creative and dreams and listens to dreams.

From Jung's Red Book. http://www.rmanyc.org/nav/exhibitions/view/308

- I feel grateful for knowing psychoanalysis as a thing that people did and discovered and created, and knowing that I, too, am discovering and creating some field of my own (our own), some theory and practice of inhabiting the world. And I would rather do whatever I am doing because I believe in it and feel drawn to it. I want to have this honesty -

- which means, now, that I might again be returning to this way of being when my primary motivation is not money, comfort, prestige, relationships, even - not "staying afloat", but this: staying true, growing truer! Doing something because I long for it. For Estonian politics of memory, I do not long. Nor do I long to understand texts, or linguistics, structuralism, death of the author, power structures etc. etc. I like it, and, let's face it, I need it. But still -

what I have always longed for is transcendence, damn it!

TRANSCENDENCE

Budapest

2012-01-28T09:31:00.000-08:00

We followed Anna's instructions closely, and visited almost all places she marked on the map, including her house, her favourite pub, her former place of employment, and the university she had dreamed of attending.

Freud Spitting on the Stairs

2012-01-27T13:48:00.000-08:00

Freud, in the last year of his life, would spit on the floor when walking up the stairs in his patient's house. The grumbling maid would hurry to clean up after him. He describes it in his diary with mild irritation and (to my mind) a degree of smugness and self-righteousness:

"On neither of these floors was there a spittoon; and the view I took was that the cleanliness of the stairs should not be maintained at my expense but should be made possible by the provision of a spittoon. The concierge, an elderly and surly woman (but of cleanly instincts as I was prepared to admit), looked at the matter in a different light. She would lie in wait for me to see whether I should again make free of the stairs, and, if she found that I did, I used to hear her grumbling audibly; and for several days afterwards she would omit the usual greeting when we met..."

The figure of Freud is growing on me, especially since yesterday's visit to the Freud Museum in London (the fascination with antiquities betrays a kindred spirit; the creativity shines through and lights up the jungle). But oh, the spitting! The nauseating cancerous goo on the carpeted steps!

Loathsome corporeality: spitting, eating, sleeping, wanting, buying. I want to be free from the body, or at least get used to it: I should have, by now.

Wang Xingwei, Untitled (Spittoon)
From http://arttattler.com/archivewangxingwei.html

Mixed Blessings Bakery

2012-01-26T02:00:00.000-08:00

This idea of templates, ready-made patterns that we talk and think with. Instinctive reactions, almost stereotypes but not as annoying, less noticeable than cliches - conventionalities employed by many (or few, or maybe just one person). These templates help us organise the world without giving it too much thought. We look at a thing and we place it in a category. This book is a classic, that one a crime novel. This girl is a girl who broke up with her boyfriend (we enter Sex and the City mode). Things like that. Makes sense?

So, life (at least my life as I have experienced it) can be seen as a continuous series of alternating moods, states of being - or rather, directions of being. First, there is a desire to learn the templates in order to make life easier, enhance your effectiveness in communication and generally further you along in the world. Oh, this man talks to himself. He is mad, must be avoided. Oh, this conversation is about the world of finance. Must make a comment about Occupy. There is, less obviously, a related desire to develop perfect templates for personal use: templates that explain particular situations and enable you to approach them correctly. You go through life looking for these perfect correct attitudes, thinking that your worth and survival depend on them. (Most certainly that is the case.) A search for the meaning of life is such a project, the meaning of life being the ultimate template that explains it all.

Side by side with these tendencies, there exists an intense desire to be free from language (using critical theory tropes now, reluctantly.). This desire is accompanied by a hatred of templates, an inability to stand them, whether used by yourself or others. It's the desire for liberation, for change: desire to float in an ocean of meanings, objects, events (the ocean of being - here's a New Age trope, for a change). In an attempt to escape templates, you laugh and scream and roll on the ground. You stop in the middle of the city, you talk to bizarre, potentially crazy people you don't know. You want to go mad, at least a little bit, and are secretly afraid that language will follow you even into madness.

Here is the irresolvable conflict that I made up and outlined. And here is a ready made solution for all irresolvable conflicts - a Jungian trope now: live with the opposition. You have no other choice, really, so live as though this is the most natural state of all. Try at all times to remain cheerful and creative.

This week, Myrthel came up from Belgium, and we exhaust ourselves by walking, walking, walking, and I am on holiday in London again. I find that being very tired makes you a bit freer; templates fear tiredness.

clichés run wild

More than all the fires that fence in the world

2012-01-24T01:00:00.000-08:00

In Budapest, we walked up to the castle in the evening, and were astounded and made uncomfortable by the lack of tourists. The castle was dark and enormous, and practically deserted, if you don't count the locals going about their business, looking completely out of place in their mundaneness and matter-of-factness.

Castles and palaces are supposed to be cool and safe. Fun to explore. Adapted for children. Lit up, labeled, explained away. This one wasn't: it loomed over us, shadowy and threatening. And there was nothing between us and this earthly power (gold, death and blood), this haunted power from the other side.

A sort of terrible picture of what was essentially unphotographable

We followed some people (passersby as unfazed and determined as a White Rabbit) through a single open door, which led to a corridor (ordinary, grey, modern). We sat on the windowsill, watching people go by and disappear into the elevator at the end. And their passing was a passing between worlds.

Things like this have happened to me before, but never in such a place, never in a nighttime Central European castle, which was supposed to be processed and redefined, and made safe - rather than turning into a portal and confusing me by being so uncanny.

Belgrade Zoo

2012-01-23T02:07:00.001-08:00

Belgrade Time Travel. Sveta Petka.

2012-01-22T06:19:00.000-08:00

In a small chapel on the Kalemegdan hill, we were approached by a gregarious theology student named Slavko. Having learned about our various foreign origins, he led us on an unsolicited, if highly appreciated, tour of the local Orthodox landmarks. This may have been the first time in my life when the knowledge of Orthodox traditions implanted in my head by my mother has actually proved socially useful: I was able to sustain a conversation about Saint Seraphim of Sarov and kissed the icons in the correct order, with the correct attitude. Slavko was impressed. Urged Philip to hold on to me, such an uncommonly religious girl. Insisted we take a picture next to Saint Petka.

Sveta Petka

Gerard Butler as Slavko

Like Gerard Butler in the 2003 movie Timeline, Slavko could have led us through the centuries, making use of his theological training and eventually finding his happiness in the same parish with Sveta Petka. Maybe if we took him up on his kind offer to come to the service on Thursday, the time-travelling adventure would have indeed happened. But we did not go to the church: instead, we spent the day getting lost in shady parts of Belgrade, looking for Tito's Museum, and finding it finally half an hour before closing, without any cash to buy tickets.

Kalemegdan

2012-01-21T06:58:00.000-08:00

Beograd

2012-01-16T12:02:00.000-08:00

I promised myself that I will blog about Serbia every day, and of course have not been doing it, partly paralysed by blogging block and the debilitating feeling of pointlessness of own blog when compared to others, more interesting and legitimate, partly distracted by life and traveling, by snow on Kalemegdan.

Selected elements of our trip, in chronological order:

- Absent-mindedly, fatefully, inexplicably, I pulled the emergency cord in the disabled person's restroom at London St Pancras at 3am, setting off the alarm.
- Belgrade, with the graffiti and peeling paint, is immediately beautiful the way my nineties Russian childhood was.
- We dined with Ana, Luka and David at a conceptual restaurant/store full of useless yet interesting Scandinavian-designed devices.
- We learned about the Pride parade in Belgrade in 2011, and how the tear gas used by the police filled the rooms of Luka's top-floor apartment, how you could only breathe in the bathroom, how the rioters broke store windows and tried on stolen shoes, looking for the right size.
- In a crowded bakery, we stood by the mirror and devoured burek with cheese, watching ourselves with amazement and horror.
- We explored the ruins of the Kalemegdan fortress in the sun and the snow: unspeakable beauty - "the diamond dust falling on our coats, jewels in our hair. the sky showering us with pearls" and so on and so on, following the badly translated lyrics of a very good song.

Must go to the train station now. We are going to Budapest. Will write more, in an unselfconscious way, even if it is pointless. And will maybe even post pictures: at least one of the fantastic piece of clothing that came my way today.

Meredith Monk's Book of Days

2012-01-11T14:40:00.000-08:00

I vow to remain alive, blooming and bleeding. Always have this at the centre of my heart.

Here's to celebrating the New Year Soviet style.

2011-12-29T13:15:00.000-08:00

A New Years classic, Five Minutes, from a film called The Carnival Night.

I miss Russia. Nowhere else have I experienced December 31 with the same hope and urgency. This year, I intend to take the matter in my own hands, be sparkly, giddy and nervous, eat clementines, and feel completely renewed and hope intensely for things unknown.

Bonnie and Clyde Festival at Gibsland, Revisited

2011-12-14T11:18:00.000-08:00

This is Dixie Lee Sedgwick as Bonnie Parker. The video is from the 2010 Bonnie and Clyde festival in Gibsland, Louisiana, which Erin, Jill and I managed to attend. I am writing an essay about it now, and it's a surreal experience on many levels.

Remembering warms my heart. There was a ten dollar dinner and the historical society meeting. And endlessly, endlessly: country songs dedicated to Bonnie and Clyde. Run away, run fast away... Reenactments of bank robberies, shootouts. Dashing to pick up bullet shells.

Then there was bingo, and Elvis, and toddlers dressed as the outlaw couple. Oh, and (the best thing of all!) I was even kidnapped by the Barrow gang. Right from the crowd. They picked me, they picked me! Obviously because I am foreign, but also - hopefully - because they saw how deeply I felt, how painful and real and important the whole thing was for me.

I want this to replace my identity as a student.

"Bonnie and Clyde: End of the Line", short film by Dixie Lee Sedgwick

Domovinka by Raznotravie

2011-12-09T12:40:00.001-08:00

This song is rather perfect, and is different from your present reality, and it will take you up and move you to another place. It is also folky, and everything folky scares me now as an expression of national identity. But you do not be scared! Give in.

If it worked for Palacký...

2011-12-07T08:22:00.001-08:00

"Palacký (19th century Czech historian) triumphedat a competition advertised in 1826 by the Royal Bohemian Society,inviting contestants to critically evaluate the attainments of Bohemianhistorians since ancient times. Although Palacký turned out to be thesole participant, this should not diminish the significance of the occasion."

Baár, Monika 2010.Institutionalization and Professionalization. - Historians and Nationalism:East-Central Europe in the Nineteenth Century. Oxford Historical Monographs.P. 80.

Only in Tartu

2011-12-06T02:42:00.001-08:00

could this have been possible.

Looking for a copy of Piatigorskiy's Philosophy of One Street for Dad's birthday, stopped by a Russian bookshop and was engaged in a conversation by the owner, an animated man with an uncommonly high, even by Tartu standards, enthusiasm for semiotics.

- Piatigorsky visited us ten years ago, you know. I took a photo with him. Uspensky also visited, just this past year... If you are interested in this sort of thing, you absolutely should get in touch with the departments of Semiotics and Slavistics. They are continuing the work in the same direction. Go listen to Peeter Torop.

- Funnily enough, I am just coming from his lecture, - I said.

- There's gonna be a Congress here in February. All kinds of people are coming up. Do leave your number, maybe we can invite you too when we all meet up...

Excited and confused, I put down my email address. Finally asked him:

- Have you also worked in semiotics?

- I did philology. I am doing political science now and history. History of Estonia. -

and hands me a book called "Estonia Before and After the Bronze Night", with his name on the cover.

One has to love this place, with its names and legends, its spirit of semiotics, its quaint, personable academic community.

Two From a Jewel Chest and Christmas Choir

2011-12-04T06:28:00.001-08:00

The Russian Consulate in Tartu is located at 1 Ülikooli Street. I walked down there this morning, before eleven, politically committed enough to wander the streets looking for a place to vote. So I walked in circles, peeked into windows, despaired. The building in question hosted a grocery store, a Seppälä branch, and a Russian ghetto club Maasikas.

Oh well. I went to the library, and came back to Ülikooli on the way back. This time, there were two men standing on the street corner. I came up to them and ask nervously, giggling, as I always do when speaking Estonian:

- Do you speak English or Russian?
- Yes, - the taller one said. - I speak Russian and English. He speaks English and Russian, - pointing to his companion (long-haired, with a kind face of a Soviet rock musician).

This is when I knew that they will prove to be my Helpers: entertaining, often comical, but well-meaning, noble, protective. Двое из ларца, одинаковых с лица. I told them about my troubles, and they pulled out their smartphones, started looking up websites, pulling up maps, calling numbers. I was pointing in the direction of Maasikas, making predictable jokes. They laughed. We laughed. They swept me up and hurried down the street, through a back alley, behind a building: bridal shop, unidentified shop, Consulate!

Thank you, thank you, you are my saviours! - never mind, bye! - and away they ran. Brave fellows, and kind. And smart, needless to say.

Voting was a bit anti-climatic, compared to this journey. But listen, on the way home I passed through Raekoja Platz, and happened upon a children's Christmas choir. Päkapikk, pikk, pikk, pikk, pikk - heads bobbing up and down, hands clapping, all of us there together! A feeling of kindness, connectedness, and general good will - like it should be: Christmas, and not tacky: maybe silly, funny, human -

it's somehow an honour to be human here together.

Two From a Jewel Chest, Faces Identical:

Päkapikk:

Extralucide (Vanessa Paradis and M - La Seine)

2011-11-24T09:35:00.001-08:00

This song holds me captive. Oh, in the midst of applications and adulthood, I long for something fleeting, delicate, romantic (even more nostalgic: for романтика). For this: Ma petite mendigotte, je sens ta menotte qui cherche ma main... For a momentary sadness, kindness, inloveness.

listen

This Day (Channel Natasha Rostova, Part Two)

2011-11-21T04:01:00.001-08:00

Open all doors with this sort of expectation and belief. Be clad in transparent dreaminess.

Blonde

2011-11-20T08:13:00.001-08:00

This is my blonde wig that I really like. It came from a charity shop in Camden. I paid three pounds for it.

Lemmit took these pictures at the Printing Museum.

Dance and Channel Natasha Rostova

2011-11-18T11:25:00.001-08:00

There is a famous scene in 'War and Peace' where the young countess Natasha Rostova dances to her uncle's guitar after a hunt in the country. She somehow gets it so right that everyone is left in speechless admiration, recognizing the inexpressible truth of this moment.

"Here was a young countess, educated by a French emigre governess. Where, when and how had she imbibed the spirit of that peasant dance along with the Russian air she breathed, and those movements which the French style should have squeezed out of her long ago? But her movements and the spirit of them were truly Russian, inimitable, unteachable."

You can watch this scene from Bondarchuk's 1965 version of 'War and Peace' here.

This song by Belaya Gvardiya is to me what Mitka's balalaika was to Natasha. Alone in my room, I dance and twirl and cry, and feel Russian, simple and true. Listen to the song here, but pay no attention to the visuals.

Below you can find the lyrics in Russian and my sorry translation.

Наизнанку

"Белая Гвардия"

Вывернули наизнанку 
Мою старую шапку-ушанку,
Начни, говорят, как новую,
Жизнь свою бестолковую,
   Подогнали к галошам валенки,
   Усадили меня на завалинке,
   Гармошку к рукам приставили,
   Да и ночь коротать оставили.

Только ночи у нас нынче вьюжные,
Только пальцы мои непослушные,
Только страшные тени подкралися,
Да ремни на гармошке порвалися.
   Только волки воют голодные
   Про житье свое беспородное,
   Только бабы по избам крестятся,
   Только волчьи глаза и светятся.

Точно в горле ком - колыбельная,
Да печаль моя беспредельная...
Что мне ночь темна, что мне страшен зверь,
Коли ты меня не услышишь теперь.

   Эх, подвешу над лесом подковою
   Удачу свою бестолковую...
   Только сосны под снегом качаются,
   Только музыка не кончается.

А гармошка такая ладная,
Да и песня была бы складная,
Только слов никак не придумаю,

Чтобы в небе зажечь звезду мою.



Inside Out 



(by Belaya Gvardiya/The White Guards)



They turned my old fur hat 


Inside out, 


Told me to start anew


My worthless life,


   Put felt boots and galoshes on my feet,


   Sat me down on the porch,


   Attached an accordion to my hands 


   And left me out there for the night.


Only nights are stormy now,


Only my fingers won't listen to me,


Only frightening shadows crawled closer,


And the accordion straps broke.


   Only hungry wolves are howling


   About their mongrel lives,


   Only women cross themselves in their houses,


   Only wolves' eyes are glowing.


This lullaby is like a lump in my throat,


And my sadness is infinite...


What is to me the dark night or the frightening beast 


If you don't hear me anymore.


   I will hang my worthless luck


   Like a horseshoe over the forest.


   Only the pine trees wave under the snow,


   Only the music never stops. 


And the accordion is so well-made,


And this song would have also made sense,


But I still cannot come up with the words


That would fetch my star from the sky.

Magic in the margins (or prophecy, rather)

2011-11-17T05:38:00.001-08:00

"How do I go about living out the stories that beckon me? Social sciences - now - and art, culture, the cultural community. Blog about it. Channel the devilish love for details in research now. Make it beautiful like a dance. Find balance, timing and pattern."

An aspiration expressed a year ago, seemingly impossible, but realized now in my everyday.

Transparent chiffon

2011-11-14T08:26:00.001-08:00

These remind me of my Mom: the flimsy dresses of her youth, the scraps of soft floral chiffon from her sewing projects. Such things are nice to contemplate on the fourteenth of November.

(Dolce and Gabbana Spring/Summer 2012, an online vintage shop and another one)

Kitten Named Gav

2011-11-13T12:05:00.001-08:00

Let's be afraid together!

Tell me this is not inspiring.

2011-11-11T12:22:00.001-08:00

Walter Rilla and Elizza la Porta in Die Spork'schen Jäger (1926)

Being brave (revelations at Nälg)

2011-11-08T04:04:00.000-08:00

Coming back to Tartu, I am surprised again by how dynamic the place is. There is a new cafe/bar/vintage store that just opened (Nälg), and we held a Social Media-themed salon there last night, and had a wonderful discussion about identity and being known by google, and whether identity is not by definition elusive, which would mean that no matter how much information google can gather about me, it will never own me.

Of course, you can argue the counterpoint (if identity is made up of practices, and google knows my behaviour and everything i do, then it surely knows me). But that is a view I choose to not believe.

serene, non-dynamic picture of nälg

I have tended to think often and dramatically about the society of control (not that I've read Deleuze, but thanks Ana) and the possibility of resistance or liberation. But throughout all the hitchhiking and venturing Into The Wild, my parents have been a barely seen presence with their markedly different attitude, which I have been calling Joyful Survival: living with enthusiasm and energy, being a fighter.

It's a really good notion, I think, or at any rate it's been finding its way into my thoughts and actions.

Being reflexive, yes, and looking at the world and thinking critically or creatively about it,

but most of all being ready to fight, to ensure your physical, emotional, intellectual survival (as my Dad likes to say), and try to be good to others along the way, and maybe glean some practical wisdom. This old notion of getting up if you fall and being brave and believing in yourself.

Another Eighties and New Trousers

2011-11-07T01:04:00.001-08:00

Trick or Trick

2011-11-05T04:20:00.000-07:00

Evgeny Chichvarkin in front of the Russian Embassy in London.

Professor Dowell's Testament (1984)

2011-11-02T13:18:00.000-07:00

is a movie I would never watch on my own if it wasn't a class assignment. This Soviet sci fi film is based on - or rather, inspired by - Belyaev's 1925 novel Professor Dowell's Head (which, incidentally, was also a class assignment, and would never have been read otherwise). The book is good, from what I remember - the film, however, is flat and amateurish, which you don't want to expect from Soviet sci fi. It is barely known to the anglophone internet world: Rotten Tomatoes knows it exists, but has nothing to say about it. There is an occasional unfavorable review, raising objections with which I agree. This is not a fun movie. It's predictable and communist and boring.

And yet I enjoyed it in spite of myself. It's kind of strange, partly because of the weakness of the plot and actor performances. I see it as a record of Sovietness and of corresponding naiveté and hope. It is set in the imagined West, which is both romanticized and criticized. The world of the movie is essentially Other, and should remain so, but should at the same time become Ours, since this is the setting where everything happens. Liberated from the (post)-Soviet obsession with the West, I find all this entertaining to look at.

The soundtrack is another strong feature. It's imaginative and eerie. Even some phrases are memorable and melodic. They create a soundscape that is deeper and truer than the story itself, suggesting that underneath this first level of shallowness and vapidity, there is the real thing, the real film, which is excellent and unusual and will tell you everything about yourself.

This other film is non-existent and could not exist - but is very much there, a promise of a fuller reality. You can never look at it directly, only catch glimpses of it, or have sudden jolts of recognition when you see something that has that sort of thin structure which marks it as coming from or related to this other film, this other world.

You can watch it for free online (unfortunately, no subtitles).

Why vampires should not be interviewed

2011-10-31T21:43:00.000-07:00

Interview With the Vampire: a Halloween treat that may rival Hocus Pocus in bad taste and resulting hilariousness. This is somewhat unexpected; the film is a sort of vampire classic, right? In any case, we failed to appreciate it properly, instead bursting into incredulous laughter every other minute. The dialogue is absurdly, unpalatably affected; everyone is so dramatic - it seems impossible that this would not be a parody, and yet it is all done in earnest.

Creeper.

"Look with your vampire eyes!"

And this is what vampires get to see: animated statues.

What happened here is this: I may be no longer prepared to take a story seriously unless it doesn't take itself seriously, unless it's intertextual and its characters are self-aware and ironic. Interview With the Vampire, then, was not postmodern enough, and therefore failed. Too bad.

It's Halloween, though, and I should like vampires. And I do, I really do, don't get me wrong (how unexciting, cold-hearted and presumptuous would I be if I dared not to love them?). Here is the twist: my favourite vampire story is not Let the Right One In, although it is, of course, unusual and all good things.

The perfect vampires are to be found in Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, a 1970 Jaromil Jires film based on a book by Vítězslav Nezval. It's an extraordinary film; not at all formulaic. You do not know what to do with it. Its magic you have not known, and therefore you are helpless against it, you become malleable and, inevitably, change.

This is what vampires should be about. The essence of the vampire is unknowable and unsayable. A pretentious attempt at an interview is therefore insulting.

pumpkin. england. winter palace photos.

2011-10-30T07:06:00.000-07:00

Today, we finished carving the Coraline pumpkin, made pumpkin spice lattes and roasted pumpkin seeds, and there is a pumpkin pie in the oven right now. Philip's parents came over in the morning, read the silly UCL students newspaper and talked about important things that are happening in the world: Zuccotti Park, St Paul.

There had also been a day in Oxford with Mie, and deer in the dusk in the Magdalen College park. Things to be grateful for.

And then I found Alla's photos of the Hermitage.

Сегодня мы довырезали Коралину в тыкве, приготовили тыквенные латте и тыквенные семечки, а тыквенный пирог сейчас печется в духовке. Родители Филипа зашли утром, читали глупенькую студенческую газету и говорили о серьезных вещах, происходящих в мире: парк Зуккотти, Собор Святого Павла.

Еще был день в Оксфорде с Мие, и олени в сумерках в парке Модлин Колледжа. А потом я нашла Аллины Эрмитажевские фотки.

Flow

2011-10-29T04:56:00.000-07:00

A recent discovery, thanks to Myrthel: a magazine called Flow. It's in Dutch and I can't read it, which makes it even more gorgeous and inspiring. It's not traditionally my aesthetic, but I like it and it makes me happy and so whatever.

Serge Gainsbourg - La Javanaise

2011-10-24T10:12:00.001-07:00

East Nashville 2009

2011-10-22T11:25:00.000-07:00

Philip's picture, from that summer in (East) Nashville, when we were all dreamy, in a daze, past- and futureless, surprised every minute and surrounded by wonders.

Фото Филипа, из того лета в (Восточном) Нэшвилле, когда мы были мечтательными, все время изумленными, без прошлого и будущего; когда вокруг были чудеса и неожиданности каждую минуту.

Gainsbourg

2011-10-20T08:24:00.000-07:00

probably works better as a graphic novel. The best moments are graphic novel-esque. Is playful and full of references I get (or think I get), which makes me feel cultured: films (au revoir les enfants, amelie even, maybe) and art (that painting of a lolita-esque girl, forgot the artist - featured in the episode with france gall). I liked it a lot, actually. Am even thinking about going as Bardot for halloween (I didn't get that blond wig for nothing!)

'Гейнсубрг', наверное, лучше воспринимается в форме графического романа. Лучшие моменты в фильме очень графическо-романные. Много отсылок и визуальных цитат, которые я замечаю, или думаю, что замечаю, и чувствую себя культурным человеком (фильмы: Au Revoir Les Enfants, Amelie даже, наверное; и исскуство: та картина с лолитовского типа девочкой, не помню автора - в эпизоде с Франс Галль). Понравился мне фильм. Даже думаю быть Бардо на Хэллоуин (не просто так же я купила тот блондинистый парик!)

Bow Wow Wow - Aphrodisiac

2011-10-19T06:52:00.000-07:00

For reasons that are not immediately obvious, this song is very important to me.

Our Dancing Daughters (1928)

2011-10-18T13:45:00.000-07:00

This film about flappers and their dramatic social interactions is marvelously entertaining, mostly because of Joan Crawford's Diana. She is wild, flirtatious, willful, and vulnerable. She surrounds herself with people and dances charleston on the table, and loves too much.

Here are some screenshots.

The Sandman (Rich Ragsdale)

2011-10-17T00:22:00.000-07:00

A short film based on Hoffmann's short story The Sandman, shared by Anna last night, which I am now offering to you to watch and adore. The film is made by Rich Ragsdale of KNR Productions.

Estonian Folk-inspired Fashion

2011-10-13T12:23:00.000-07:00

First of all, there is Liina Viira, whose patterned leggings and knitted dresses stole my heart, and will steal yours. This dress in particular seems to be just the thing. Lovely, isn't it? Joyful and warm, exactly what we will need this coming winter. Affordability is as yet uncertain.

Teele Koel is the creator of this linen and leather dress, inspired by the pattern on an old Estonian trousseau. She has a blog where you can see her latest collection, which is really awesome, somehow both subtle and dramatic.

Aldo Järvsoo is part of Embassy of Fashion, a group of fashion designers that put together interesting shows with names like Botanic Poetry. His folksy stuff can be seen here. The collection is called The Golden Needle (Kuldnõel), and includes some really cool headgear.

All this information (and this unexpected fascination) comes from Eesti Rahvarõivas ja Mood, a fantastic book by Piret Puppart, who is herself a designer. This is her stuff:

What's not to love? And here I was thinking that Finno-Ugric folk-inspired fashion is boring and silly. This stuff is awesome! Spent all day googling brands: what, where, how much?

Here is a crappy picture of a dream wedding dress by Külli-Kerttu Siplane. I've not been able to find a good picture online, but the dress needs to be shared, so we can all admire it and bond over it.

Let's conclude with a picture of me expressing my newly discovered Estonianness via the fisherman sweater purchased at St Mary's fair. Not quite as feminine as Viira's dresses, this sweater nevertheless serves my purposes well, establishing continuity and helping make sense of my being here.

what little girl would not like to whirl

2011-10-11T03:35:00.000-07:00

After last night's Exile and therefore Emigre Lit-centred salon, I am dreaming again of rereading Lolita.

The whole experience (reading lolita in -blank-) is so comforting, and has characteristics of a ritual, and begs to be done perfectly: read in the heat of summer, by the pool, with utter abandonment and self-forgetting. It needs to be read in this edition.

It needs to render negligible the past and the future and everything external to itself. It needs to spill out into the absolute everyday, into every inconsequential detail of it.

Heart-shaped glasses and pigtails and cutesy jumpsuits on my contemporaries seem to me somehow despicable, but who am I kidding? I have wanted all this myself; anything to keep Lolita mine, anything to be Lolita's!

Stephen Fry's 'Bright Young Things'

2011-10-09T09:19:00.000-07:00

Note Emily Mortimer's velvet maroon shirt with a bow and matching gloves and Michael Sheen's yellow vest. Most of all, note Fenella Wollgar's Agatha: every shot she's in is a joy to behold.

This autumn, I want to be like them: well put together and a bit outrageous.

Lya Mara (Ross Verlag postcard)

2011-10-08T08:56:00.000-07:00

Lya Mara. Born in Riga, started her career as a dancer, married director Frederic Zelnik, became a star in Germany: films, postcards, chocolate boxes. Then a double blow: car accident and the development of sound cinema. (thanks wikipedia)

This is all that IMDB has to say about her: "After her husband's death in 1950, she retired from film business. Her fate is unknown."

This is a Ross Verlag postcard bought at the Tartu market for one euro. It's excellent, isn't it?

recycling fake pearls from the twenties party

2011-10-07T07:18:00.000-07:00

(another outfit post: a slippery slope.)

Rescued Photos

2011-10-06T06:11:00.000-07:00

discovered in the rüütli bookshop

Eighties Red

2011-10-05T06:49:00.000-07:00

Yes, it is true. I got an eighties top. Moving away from the fairytale hippie ballerina look to become a power woman with a brilliant academic future.

(i just made apple cider!)

Exposure and Acceptance in Julia Leigh's "Sleeping Beauty"

2011-10-04T03:36:00.000-07:00

Despite what you might expect, I found this film very delicate: it seems to be consciously avoiding the usual cinematic tools of emotional manipulation. Conversation is sparse (apart from one notable exception), and there is almost no music: this quietness thus makes you aware both of the sounds within the film and outside of it - audience members breathing, swallowing, shifting in their seats. In the movie theater, a setting that usually allows us to forget ourselves, we become self-conscious. We are almost watching ourselves watching, like the audience in a film described in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, where people in the cinema are being filmed and watch themselves on the big screen.

In addition to engaging with voyeuristic desires on screen, Sleeping Beauty is successful in making the viewers aware of their own role in what is going on. Emily Browning, dreamlike and remote, is a perfect object of sexual desire and ready material for projection (and I must confess I engaged in the most violent kind of projection from the very start, looked for myself in her and wanted her to be my self).

Having said all that, the film is far from being judgmental of either the characters or the audience. Its critics have even suggested that it has no point: isolated scenes are meaningless, elements never form a congruous whole. I am more inclined to see it as laconic and cryptic in a purposeful but not fanciful way: the aim is not to confuse the viewers but to offer them interpretative freedom and make them aware of it. People do indeed seem to have strikingly different understanding of the story and its main ideas (the friend I saw it with might well have seen a different movie).

This dual attitude of exposing the viewers' engagement with the film and accepting their interpretations or desires seems to be reflected in the phrase often repeated by one of the characters: “You are safe. There is no shame here. No onecan see you.” But clearly, the speaker is in on the secret, and so is the audience.

Any thoughts on the subject? Suggested readings? If you have not yet seen Sleeping Beauty, go watch yourself watch it and tell me what you think.

be a fashion blogger

2011-10-03T05:55:00.000-07:00

colour blocking, eh?

Semiotics jokes. Oh yes.

2011-09-27T05:51:00.000-07:00

Some really nerdy jokes that emerged over coffee at the pancake cafe on Rüütli:

"- I might also take Semiotics of Art...

- Semiotics Safari?

- Of Art. Although Semiotics Safari sounds amazing.

- Yes! Day trips for semiotics students! Meet in the main square, walk around town and interpret every sign you see.

- We could actually make money off that! Organize tours. "Come to Tartu! The World's Only Semiotics Safari! Experience signs the way you never have before in a safe yet adventurous environment under the guidance of professional semioticians!"

"- You know they say there is a special Tartu spirit: the spirit of learning and knowledge...

- A spirit? Like the Ghost of Semiotics?

- He probably looks like Yuri Lotman. With the mustache and all.

- The Ghost of Semiotic Past! The Ghost of Semiotic Future!

(Everyone gets very excited).

- Imagine one day we're having a normal everyday conversation about semiotics, and all of a sudden someone gets hit with the Ghost of Semiotic Future...

- And start speaking in a future sign system! And we won't understand each other! It will be like Babel!"

Sphinxes

2011-09-26T09:17:00.001-07:00

Sphinxes talk to girls.

Once they see you, you have no choice but to love them.

Dave McKean's Sphinx in Mirrormask.

Sergio Bustamante

2011-09-26T09:16:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, walking through a shopping centre in St Petersburg, noticed and was confronted by this:

The designer, whom I presumptuously consider a kindred soul, is Sergio Bustamante. Mesmerizing.

Bright Young Things

2011-09-22T05:46:00.000-07:00

Watching a documentary about Bright Young Things. What a relief to be able to throw myself into another obsession!

This is Stephen Tennant, the golden boy

‎"By the mid nineteen twenties, the Bright Young People's scavenger hunts had given way to stunt parties. These events were elaborately themed fancy dress affairs that spun out of control and went on all night."

"The dressing up parties speak for themselves: you've got cowboy parties and circus parties, and Come As You Were Twenty Years Ago parties."

"You dress up as a famous character from history and there's a lot of, obviously, cross-dressing there."

"Men dressed as women, women dressed as men..."

"Men wore jewelry, they wore makeup..."

"There'd be Greek parties, there was an urban Dionysia."

"at that one party... they danced across the counters of Selfridges."

Found out that this is happening in London for Halloween. How appropriate, and how tempting.

Postcards

2011-09-22T05:03:00.000-07:00

I got five old postcards yesterday. Lots of fashion inspiration.

exist only as a conscious flower

2011-09-20T02:56:00.000-07:00

"From the first little boy in an Eton collar whose 'girl' she had been, down to the latest casual man whose eyes had grown alert and appreciative as they rested upon her, there was needed only that matchless candour she could throw into a look or clothe with an inconsequent clause - for she had talked always in broken clauses - to weave about her immeasurable illusions, immeasurable distances, immeasurable light. To create souls in men, to create fine happiness and fine despair she must remain deeply proud - proud to be inviolate, proud also to be melting, to be passionate and possessed."

Fitzgerald is destroying all my hopes, but molding me into a new form, a mode of being which is contingent upon hopelessness. I cannot help feeling like I am being poisoned, but am already too far in this and cannot go back, have to sit up night after night, reading.

Swinging (На огромных качелях качаюсь)

2011-09-17T06:11:00.000-07:00

I am again turning slightly bipolar – butwait, I have always been like this, it’s just that I am now seeing it as apeculiar characteristic of a whimsical young thing: a flapper. All experience immediately sorted into two modes of being: one is me and my parties and flirtations and nail polish (knowingwith certainty that the world wants me to be happy), the other is anxiety, panic, everything cold and aggressive.

Fear: irrational now, a thing of the past, and nevertheless still potent, growing in direct proportion with my happiness and thoughtlessness.

Quite possibly, I should be grateful for it. The fear has bared mynerves to the world, ensured that I stay tense, alert, and desperate – andopen, and always a bit out of balance. It is cleansing, of course, and humbling. And maybe not all that powerful - for I am now looking at it and blogging about it affectionately.

And will now go the store, to get some food that is not buckwheat. Past the botanical gardens and across the river.

admin dance

2011-09-14T07:07:00.000-07:00

Found

2011-09-12T12:45:00.000-07:00

It started to rain, and so I ran into a used bookstore on Rüütli street.

Russian fairytales in Estonian, Soviet editions. Physics textbooks. Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec. And then, thankfully, a pile of postcards and photographs. These orphaned black-and-white photos from family albums: summers long gone, men with guitars or in Soviet uniforms, mothers and children in the garden, making faces.

How creepy and highly romantic of me. We have all done this, haven't we? We are girls who decorate our rooms with lace and antique store photographs. Yes, yes, I couldn't resist, I bought five: they are both haunting and life-affirming.

And - a sure sign of some internal revival - I needed to talk about the photos then and there, and told the girl who worked there how moved and sad and joyful I was, and how I felt creepy and self-conscious, but that these were beautiful and seemed to be truthful in some important way.

This started a conversation: no polite discussion of surface things, but at once talking about what mattered: the freedom and the longing for freedom that we have (have had), and missing what she called 'the right to die' - the right to give yourself away completely (to run away and love and die and be free, free) - and have it not be a catastrophe for anyone.

She introduced me to a friend: an American who studies Mari and had just been to YO in July. He told stories and I laughed because I knew exactly the thing he was describing, every time.

How I missed this: friends that you meet spontaneously, effortlessly. Unexpected things happening. People looking at each other. And rain, and running!

Another thing - poems started to matter again. Old resurrected ones and new ones. They are returning and surrounding me as I walk through the city. This is why, I think, a lanky, long-haired young man chased me on the street today, asking for a hug. We hugged. Glorious, isn't it, this life?

Neva Neva Neva Nevazhno

2011-09-11T02:47:00.000-07:00

Last night V. and I went to Chocolats de Pierre and had dark, rich chocolate cheesecake and peppermint tea (since that is the only type of tea we are able to order - or rather, Verena is able to order - the most I can come up with is 'please, one tea'). Timo and his flatmate Pras joined us after sauna, and we chatted and joked (joked jokes) about Estonian classes and types of laptops. I like animated late-night conversations, and being all over the place, quick and alert and changeable and slightly schizophrenic, Zelda Fitzgerald-style -

and Zelda herself, by the way, is becoming faintly fascinating. I am far from obsessing or even learning anything about her, but already am not indifferent.

Another remarkable thing from last night: Russian youngsters playing 5'nizza, drinking, drunk, girls with heavy makeup. All of it so endearing. We danced and sang along.

What is this? I want to be young and drunk, vulnerable.

Awake

2011-09-08T13:16:00.000-07:00

Listening to Laura Marling's new album, and am facing my own aliveness, again, with a growing certainty. Studying is, of course, impossible now, nor sleeping.

Today masqueraded as a series of dead dull lectures and discussions, but in fact has been a joyous proclamation of theory as personal, emotional and creative.

Yes, yes, yes! I like everything so much!

Rose Garden for Philip

2011-09-07T07:19:00.000-07:00

Downstairs Neighbour

2011-09-07T00:01:00.000-07:00

Walking home from the dance studio (everywhere cobblestones and lanterns), I was happy all of a sudden, was content and felt so perfectly in my own body. And so I even danced a bit and twirled, like in the old days.

Sure enough, I met our downstairs neighbour, Mario, when we ran into each other by the front door, and we went to a wine bar and talked for three and a half hours. He is as interesting as people get: born in Uruguay, came to Tartu to study maths, quit uni when he was twenty, opened a bar, and stayed here. Unbelievable. Speaks every language imaginable, and perfectly. Seems to know everything, as well, and is well-read and knows things about aviation. His bar is called Zavood, and is really cool, Cafe Coco-ish.

I am having a rush of aliveness.

Eestis.

2011-09-03T14:00:00.000-07:00

You know, I moved to Estonia, and am learning to inhabit this new space, which is small, and slower, and full of cafes, interesting sculptures, subdued colours, conversations in a language I hardly understand.

Verena and I got an apartment in the town centre, in an old building that's right between Tartu University's art department and the botanical garden. Paradise, yes? Yes.

Today, we had wine at Cafe Werner, which dates back to 1895, and talked about a literary salon. So far there are five of us interested. This actually might happen. There is a very tangible promise of health and peace, and of a slowness of a private life.

How beautiful! how unexpected (and again feels undeserved - but is deserved, since it happened to me, right? And is from now on a part of me, and I a part of it).

Infinite

2011-06-27T09:28:00.000-07:00

Finally, it's hot and sunny, and the rules of normal life do not apply - so, university does not exist, never existed, I have no purpose and no fixed identity. There is a relaxed, aimless movement to and from parks, all vague and languid. I am packing, too, and reading Infinite Jest, which offers a reliable, heavy rhythm (no end in sight, therefore, no possibility of achieving and therefore formulating a goal).

This is a circularity I have wanted and needed, since I am approaching a threshold again, and joyously.

and found it very funny and entertaining.

2011-04-08T04:54:00.000-07:00

Fell asleep briefly during a Comparative Analysis lecture but kept typing:
Some local sjeep jab r gn elame.

Also once was looking up Ryan Air flights for the summer, instead of taking notes, and the computer suddenly started playing wild and joyous Brazilian music. In the middle of the lecture; so embarrassing, but also wonderful.

To what purpose, April

2011-04-01T06:47:00.000-07:00

The term is over. Liberated, finally! and the sun is shining sometimes these days, sometimes two days in a row! lovely! All this reminds me of grade school, April in Russia, walking home instead of taking the bus, writing poems about being young and female, hoping for something like Akhmatova's poetry, or Sex and the City, for a time-travelling adventure.

Some magical reversal.

The past is so lovable and harmless, most of the time. I love the past. Sometimes I think that I love nothing but the past: not people or things or ideas in themselves, but the memory of them. Like this: I'd rather paint medieval miniatures than enter into a dialog with the contemporary artistic community (hypothetical example, of course; I am not likely to do either). I'd rather repeat words in patterns that have been set before. I long to reproduce past events, past modes of being - always looking back, measuring my worth by the distance between the present self and the past self.

Sounds like a condition, no? Is this not a form of necrophilia? The past is dead and gone. Right? That's what I am deciding. What if I started to live into the future? Or better yet, in the now, like they always tell you to live?

I am trying to be faithful to this. to now.

Also moving

2011-01-20T02:19:00.000-08:00

Opened the window to get rid of last night's suffocating incense from the Indian Spice Shop. Winter is going, gone; there are things that I will do for sure, and already am doing. Like writing these essays, and proposals; will be going to conferences, will write well, be ambitious. Like a day out with Philip: Victoria and Albert (when we both sketched the things we liked, and later sat in a Lebanese restaurant, sharing how we have been moved by them); Natural History Museum (dinosaurs, right there, and us walking carefully, holding hands, our childhood selves recognizing each other); bookshops and shops, a vegetarian cookbook purchased, extravagant clothes tried on.

Seriously, though, my bookshelf is organized. I know what I am doing. And I am conscious, awake.

2011-01-11T10:49:00.000-08:00

willing.

2011-01-11T10:42:00.000-08:00

Listen, the simplest things are these: that you are alive, and therefore must have faith, must be strong, must determine what your dreams are and follow them, must love consciously.
Work passionately towards your goals. (not having goals is an easy strategy but is essentially an unwillingness to live). Be willing to live!

The best things in my life as of now:
the memory of cows, soft and kind things;
cards from Hannah and Kayla;
Crispian coming up from Cambridge, promising to make tempeh, and Sophie joining us tomorrow, so we can talk about Scott Pilgrim, she and I, and about our lives, make plans, make crafts, be girls together;
Skyping with Jill, and feeling so much more centered and real;
this tenderness that fills the house now;
everyday expressions of love.

quote

2010-12-19T15:21:00.001-08:00

Since communism was awful (as it indeed was), it will be normal to believe that the precommunist past, czarist Russia in particular, was an unceasing festival of hilarity.

Leszek Kolakowski

theory theory theory. Grrr.

2010-12-19T14:55:00.000-08:00

Academia hasn't eaten my soul,

although I am reading about social construction of reality, discourse theory and post-structuralism,

and by psychoanalysis I now mean Freud (have to mean Freud and Lacan and anyone but Jung),

although my muddled, incoherent thoughts lose even the faint artistic appeal they might have had, failing to gain semblance of critical thinking.

I am angered by what I read. Not disturbed by the idea of reality constructed, or the constructed self - never had a problem with the world being less real than it seems or not real at all. In this sense, my first encounter with Academia is satisfying: we come to the same conclusion from different starting points.

What bothers me, then, is that after all this explaining away of everything, I still perceive self-satisfaction and a conviction of self being right. After all, if we are all products of discourses and there's no reality outside language, why on earth bother? why research? why talk and talk and talk? why assume that subjective reality is still somehow inferior to the impossible, non-existent objective reality?

Just to clarify: I don't believe in a dichotomy between the dry, cerebral academic world and the lovely, brightly colored world of creative intuition. Not anymore. It would be a convenient way to resolve this conflict, but now that I reside within the enemy's camp, I see it's the same world exactly, it's the same me, no split into right or left brain. One brain one body.

This is such an unfamiliar place. All places are unfamiliar - but god, what is this, where am I going with this, what am I going to be, will there be an I?

In all this, also: how can I not deconstruct my love away? Mistrustful of romance, I have been doing everything to bring it down to earth. But I want to really live, really grow, not fall into this trap - some sort of trap -

Marginalia is a journal!

2010-12-13T12:33:00.000-08:00

Marginalia is a journal published at SSEES (School of Slavonic and East European Studies, my new home(town)). It's really good and unconventional. Check it out:

http://journalmarginalia.wordpress.com/

(there's a movie review philip and i wrote and a reworked blog post from me (cheating, cheating))

Ophelia.

2010-12-08T11:49:00.000-08:00

(here's to personal engagement with familiar, well-known, too often engaged with cultural elements)

Her clothes spread wide;

And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:

Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes;

As one incapable of her own distress,

Or like a creature native and indued

Unto that element.

Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 7

Well I fell into the water, and now I'm free.

Laura Marling, 'Captain and the Hourglass'

Ophelia went mad and drowned. Driven off the stage and out of the play, she entered the world of Western Culture, where she became anything but powerless. Ophelia is an integral part of our reality, yours and mine. She mostly stays on the periphery, but sometimes rises up and becomes central, even if for a second, when we read or see things that remind us of suicide, love and mental instability. The image is more than compelling, it is at this point internal.

Any production of Shakespeare is expected to offer changes and twists of the plot. In the production of Hamlet at The National Theater, characters smoke cigarettes, carry guns, and hide surveillance devices in Bibles. Ophelia doesn't drown. After her madness becomes obvious, sinister men in suits come into her room and take her away. At this moment, Ophelia is split in two: one is quietly removed from the scene by the ruling powers (what a familiar, boring, human way to go!) and the other drowns in the brook, mermaid-like, surrounded by fantastic garlands.

In this light, Gertrude's beautiful, heart-wrenching (and false) account of Ophelia's death takes on a completely new meaning. Still, even though the audience knows it's not true, the narrative is so tragic, so appealing, that one can't help believing, being dumbstruck, feeling the same despair, shock and pity as the characters.

Why is that? How does a story we know to be false still have power over us? Gertrude's constructed narrative within the play mirrors our experience in the external world. The audience is enchanted by a fictional narrative which is even fictional within the fictional world of the play. This small change in the plot illuminates this psychological process of enchantment, which could be defined as (self-)deception, or, to put it in academic terms, narrative construction.

The story of Ophelia is, of course, false, since it is constructed (by Shakespeare and Millais and Hytner and me and you). At the same time it is, of course, true, since it is constructed - maybe more true, or differently. I know that Ophelia has drowned, although not in the same way that I know that today I made pancakes and had a dissertation meeting. My knowledge of Ophelia's death may not be based on fact or direct sensory experience, but after all, having read Berger and Luckmann, aren't we faced with a world where facts and sensory experiences are constantly being constructed? We humans need believable narratives, so we arrange past, present and future into patterns and stories that we can handle, and confirm each other's stories, and call it reality.

What are we supposed to do, then? Deconstruct? Go on, deconstruct away, and write a dissertation and get funding and go to conferences. Find out the truth: that we are dealing with politics, not madness and drowning. But then what? Politics is even less solid than water, even less like reality.

I don't want to spend the rest of my life - no, any portion of my life! - simply deconstructing. It might be a sophisticated thing to do, but maybe not positive, but maybe not for me. I love narratives. I know narratives and can own them. In this life, since I have one, I want to be playful and creative. And yes, diving into the stories is what I have been doing all my life. It seems that now I am challenged to take it to a new level. I have the right terminology to distance myself from certain narratives from time to time, and that's all I need. Thank you, Academia, you've taught me to speak your language. I am fully yours; enriched, as always, by increased consciousness. Still, I choose to be surrounded by stories and images that are living, changing, powerful - and constructed.

Scrabble. Amazing Literary Joke

2010-11-14T12:13:00.000-08:00

Being an incompetent and viciously competitive Scrabble player, I make up words all the time.
- Frelpies. Pies made with frel filling.
- What is frel? - he asks.
- Fish! Obviously.
- Alright, then, - he says, adding five more letters to the board, to form something even more outrageous. - Frelpiesolita!
- Are you serious?
- The story takes place in a small seaside village. An old fisherman named Humbert McHumbert falls in love with a young girl...

I fall over laughing.

- She was Fro in slacks...

I am laughing so much that I can't breathe, tears streaming down my face.

- But in my arms, she was always... Frelpiesolita.

Chislehurst Caves and Finnish Folklore as Excuses for Talking About Self

2010-11-07T12:04:00.000-08:00

Today is personal enrichment Sunday. My friend Ewan and I took a train to Chislehurst for a tour of its enormous and labyrinthine caves.
The oldest part is supposedly made by the Druids, and that's where the walls are the smoothest and the echo incredible - especially near the main altar. The Druid entrance is at the top of a hill, the tunnel spirals down in a chillingly archetypal way. There's a trap, too, into which one is supposed to fall in and die.
The second part is the Roman part, which contains an amateurish mural of Roman soldiers being cruel to Anglo-Saxons. The third part is more modern - the Caves were turned into an underground village during the Blitz. There was a church and a hospital, there were shops and bunk beds along the sides. That part has its charm, but it's hard to beat the Druids -

Sandy Brown's carving, 1995

at least in my eyes. I think of Freya and her Brisingamen. Every night is a spiral, disappearing down below...
Our tour guide sat next to us on the train back and told us stories. "Sometimes I feel like the Caves are talking to me", he said. (Which sounds wacky when taken out of the context, but serves my purpose so I won't elaborate.)
If the Caves are talking to me, then what they are saying is what I read about in this gender and folklore essay last night. Is there a better place to come to terms with väki, the power charge that all women carry within themselves? I will escape the need to narrativize love away, I will sink slowly downwards, rolling down the steps, descend step by step, knees on the stairs clattering, fists scratching the steps, toes touching slightly on the bottom plank.

This will always be mine

2010-11-01T14:47:00.000-07:00

This beast that rends me in the sight of all,

This love, this longing, this oblivious thing,

That has me under as the last leaves fall,

Will glut, will sicken, will be gone by spring.

The wound will heal, the fever will abate,

The knotted hurt will slacken in the breast;

I shall forget before the flickers mate

Your look that is today my east and west.

Unscathed, however, from a claw so deep

Though I should love again I shall not go:

Along my body, waking while I sleep,

Sharp to the kiss, cold to the hand as snow,

The scar of this encounter like a sword

Will lie between me and my troubled lord.

Accidental Poem from Estonian Textbook.

2010-10-31T13:24:00.000-07:00

     (You [sing.]) Go into town, into the yard, into the woods, to the park, to help, to the new store, to the other place, into the warm bed, into a big state.
   Jump into the river, into the water, into the sea, into the little boat, into the deep hole.
   Step [go, get] into the white house, the big room, the old castle, the cold room, the black car.
   Put the pen into the long brown box, into the little gray cupboard.
   Put the flowers into the red vase.
   Throw the paper into the stove, into the fire.
   Put your hat on, suit-coat on, dress on, gloves on, shoes on, scarf on.

Ronnie and Clyde

2010-10-31T11:56:00.000-07:00

Unbelievable. Last night, for Halloween Saturday, we were Bonnie and Clyde, of course. (I used to think this was the perfect thing that only happens once). It was lovely and all that, and we are such old people, all we did is walk across Tower Bridge and back, have a drink at the pub where Veronique works, and watch the movie.

So... guess what? SNL came out with this: Ronnie and Clyde.

What on earth are the spirits of Bonnie and Clyde trying to tell me?!

Gretchen at the spinning wheel

2010-10-17T08:37:00.000-07:00

Gretchen's dream begins in her mother's house. Her golden hair is braided neatly, she gets up early with the sun and cooks and cleans and goes to church. Look at her tiny wrists, her white skirts. Gretchen La Pucelle, the image of purity, an image more than anything - and so simple, so wholesome! white, complete and round - like a small egg, like a child's prayer. Next to her, Valentin her brother, who will protect her from any outside threat, just as her innocence protects him from the dangers of sin and cruelty. Dear little girl, a chaste lily-flower!

Look further, or look again: she is called Marguerite. The night air smells of roses, let's blame it on the roses, Marguerite lost her mind. Look at the pink color creeping up the fabric of her dress. The bottom of her skirts is already turning crimson. Her neck is heavy with the Devil's jewels that she accepted, and she feels like falling, and feels like living. She who had been hiding takes a step forward, and makes a decision, consciously, to be seduced. This night, walk out into the garden and welcome Marguerite who Loves.

This is when the smell of roses, which has lingered for a while, starts to become oppressive. Falling into his arms, she fell into the abyss - knowingly, of course, and who could not sympathize with her, who doesn't want to be raped by a god? Fallen, fallen, and her stomach is turning, the floor is sticky and cold, and the dress doesn't fit properly. Greet now, with the same joy as before, this hellish martyrdom, the being spat upon: whore! murderess! guilty, guilty! When she rushes away from the square and the marketplace, she hears the awful truth in the silence of her empty house. Ah, Marguerite! This is your final freedom rising up, in such an unlikely way. Go, darling, be MAD, a madwoman, a wild woman you weren't allowed to be, didn't know you could be. Laugh, my darling, walk the forest paths, smother your newborn child - all in expectation of the beloved's return, the greatest madness of all.

And when he comes, kiss him and curse him, see him for who he is, see the Devil lurking in the shadows, and tell them both to get the hell out of here. Look, she is extending her arms, she is twisting on the ground, her hair a greasy mess: free at last! God keep the soul of your weak and humble servant girl, let her ascend to heaven, be crowned in Your glory as the perfect image of Holy Womanhood once again. Free at last!

Reader, now that you remember the story, tell me something reassuring. Tell me that liberation is at hand, that the time of barren innocence and passionate victimhood is gone, or will be gone, that the woman will soon ascend into Heaven, or, like another Margarita, will fly out of the window, laughing wildly, into the darkest night - which is really the same thing, of course.

READ THE BOOK
DIVE IN
SING ALONG

JOIN THE WALTZ
LOOK IN THE MIRROR
DANCE WITH THE DEVIL

London Salsa

2010-10-13T16:27:00.000-07:00

At four pm on Sunday, decided to go dancing. Abandoned the social psychology article and was up and away in thirty minutes. London salsa is not Nashville salsa, let me tell you. Everyone is insanely professional, so much more professional than me that an instructor felt compelled to tell me that I maybe should not attend the class. :) Very humbling and a good life lesson, but I wouldn't have been satisfied with Royal Hotel's Salsa on Sundays unless there was excitement and passion, Represent Cuba style. And there was, thankfully, in the end. I think I might try to learn salsa properly, which would require an actual effort. Sort of like learning Estonian (not as linguistically gifted as previously thought).

That was Sunday, and it's Wednesday now and I slept all day. Illness comes again as a blessing this fall, bringing me back to inhabit my own body.

Empty your heart of its mortal dream

2010-10-06T14:14:00.000-07:00

Really? That there was ever quietness? Of course, there have been bus rides, cafes, (finally!) interesting class discussions, and plans to see this film and this opera, and cooking healthy things, bridges, rain, the Tower on the left and Big Ben on the right. And Philip living downstairs, I mean, how amazing is that!

But still, so alive and raging and dying and rushing somewhere and folding into a tiny seed and rising as a wave, inevitably. That spills over, just a little bit, into my already ordinary days, and helps me remember that I am not a student and not a young woman. Oh heart that the winds have shaken!

Golden light

2010-10-03T11:17:00.000-07:00

and quietness.

Come between me and the deed of my hand

2010-09-27T15:27:00.000-07:00

Why do I insist on securing special connections with people who I know are not mine, nor I theirs? But it's easy to change one's direction when the moon is waning. The woman turns to her inner reality and inhabits it along with the outer world. Therefore, a 12:30 Eucharist today, and then walking off alone instead of finishing the lunch with marvelous and interesting fellow students.

What a pointless post, really. Oh, but Philip got back yesterday, and we made up a recipe for dinner, and the washer-dryer monsters gave us so much trouble. Oliver Twist just arrived in London, and his lodgings are considerably worse than mine, which reminds me to feel grateful.

I am reading Yeats, again, appropriately.

The host is riding from Knocknarea
And over the grave of Clooth-na-Bare;
Caoilte tossing his burning hair,
And Niamh calling Away, come away:
Empty your heart of its mortal dream.
The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round,
Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound,
Our breasts are heaving our eyes are agleam,
Our arms are waving our lips are apart;
And if any gaze on our rushing band,
We come between him and the deed of his hand,
We come between him and the hope of his heart.
The host is rushing 'twixt night and day,
And where is there hope or deed as fair?
Caoilte tossing his burning hair,
And Niamh calling Away, come away.

As light and free as any Jenny Wren

2010-09-21T15:41:00.000-07:00

Stressing the last syllables, as French speakers do, Amanda tells her story:

- When I moved here in July, I didn't expect to meet this guy, and now my plans have changed so much. But I'm not in love! God, no! I'll never fall in love!

- Seriously? - I asked. - You want to never fall in love?

- Maybe in ten years, but not now... Definitely not now. I want to be in total control of my feelings.

How familiar! Did I not say the same thing over and over again? Thank you for breaking my heart open!

I moved to London for love, and love finds me in rose gardens, in old churches and museums, in loud pubs and quiet pubs and grocery stores. Love walks up and down Great Dover Street with me every day. It has been here for every part of the journey. Even when I wake up in fear in the middle of the night and find my nightmares realized in the morning, love is there. Love did that.

Love, love, love! So meaningful, so - not pointless, not pretentious, I promise - this is all that I am, this the only thing my heart is saying. Yes! to this. Love, I will keep silent when needed and I will speak when needed. I will be simple and centered, and humble, always myself - in these crowded rooms, in this oppressively eventful city.

Body

2010-09-19T06:42:00.000-07:00

Look at this, Rineke Dijkstra at Tate Modern:

Tenderness. To love the body! And they have taught us to hate bodies, other people's and our own. But it's so good to just be as we are with each other. To love the everything of each other, bodies included, weirdnesses of all sorts included. Remember? That's how it's gonna be now. Even though there are pubs and dancing in pubs and men in pubs who are as silly and vulnerable here as they are anywhere else in the world. To forgive and accept that, and still love souls and bodies and even these masks that people wear.

Camden. And how it's not necessary.

2010-09-16T13:11:00.000-07:00

Camden is so loud, so colorful, very strange. I wanted to laugh the second I got out of the tube. It's both threatening and comforting, both like traveling abroad and like coming home. One is sure to find ethnic food or trendy clothing of any style. Very nice. Right? Right?

At the Stables Market, was addressed by a perfectly charming bookshop keeper. "Hello, lovely. What are you looking for? Shakespeare? I had a beautiful copy of The Tempest here somewhere..." I took the book out of his hands, opened it up and read this:

Awake, dear heart, awake! Thou hast slept well. Awake!

Still, it feels good not to be in Camden anymore. I wandered around dissatisfied until I finally realized: I have ceased to be a shopper. This cuts me off from so many people, all of a sudden, this not wanting new clothes, even if they are hippie clothes or white dresses made out of ephemeral lace.

So I went home and cooked. Listened to the classical radio station and danced in the dark, in our narrow kitchen. And thought of Katie and Anna Laura, again, how they have been living in places. It seems to me that they have known this for a long time. All we can do is be ourselves completely, so we can be seen for what we are.

The Word is very near, in your mouth and in your heart.

2010-09-15T12:51:00.000-07:00

Today I went to TESCO's and got necessary things. I made a Portuguese friend. I walked and walked until there was the London Bridge, all blue and childish, and I saw the Tower. During the Taize service at the All Hallows Church, a firebird flew out of my chest. On the way home, I found a little silver bell.
To think that finally, I am here because You called me!

Ay amor me duele tanto

2010-09-12T02:08:00.000-07:00

Went salsa dancing last night, alone and after months of not dancing. Didn't even expect to be asked to dance, so danced alone. There was a live band, and they played La Camisa Negra AND La Tortura. Ran into a) guy from Peter whom I met on the train two months ago b) old friend whom I have avoided along with most people but was happy to see c) old acquaintance visiting from Samara who explained the tube system in London to me. Most importantly, danced with a salsa god, who was young and slender, beautiful with a distinctly Hispanic beauty, although not Hispanic, of course.

Listen, it was for sure the Spirit of Salsa, and not a human being. I don't think I've ever danced like this, not even with Rawsam, not even (yes, I am saying it) with Nathan (although he will always be my bachata soulmate). Oh, how can I describe it? Violent. Incredibly intense. Passion itself, alternately murderous and gentle. One moment, an embrace that's almost desperate, and we are love and we are one, and the next moment, this overwhelming rage, and he might break my arm or neck, and I might stab him or rip his heart out -
divine!

Having danced like that, what can I be afraid of?

Yes! - England.

2010-09-10T21:36:00.000-07:00

I am going after all. Don't laugh at me. :) The two weeks of panic were meant to happen, I am going, but very differently. Definitely not to study - I will study, of course - but studying is not WHY I'm going.

That's the good part. Here's the complicated part:

Philip is in Ecuador. I don't know anybody or anything there. Does anyone have any friends in London at all? Can anyone explain anything in London to me?

(i love you, world! i trust that even this philiplessness of london is exactly what needs to happen)

Of course, this is it!

2010-09-05T09:58:00.001-07:00

to the law a relief

2010-09-05T05:27:00.000-07:00

Bare

2010-09-04T09:29:00.000-07:00

Resurrection disappointed me. It's different from War and Peace and Anna Karenina. How could Tolstoy, whom I had trusted completely, produce this pamphlet of a novel! Sad but true. Subjectively true, that is, I am never objective.

It's dull and annoying. The plot and the characters are secondary and rather lifeless. Tosltoy makes it very clear that his only aim is to criticize society and its constructions (court system, religion, moral degeneration of aristocracy). And he does it well, and maybe two years ago I would have loved the book... Here it is, this is the real reason: I am not American anymore, and I couldn't care less about all the horrible problems in the world. 2012, the environment, the evil system - who cares! I don't even care if people are vegetarian or not!

That's why I am annoyed with Tolstoy who will not stop talking about social problems and proposing solutions. Good grief!

I would honestly rather drink and scream and live and die, like Dmitry Karamazov. Let everything happen to you, beauty and terror... It's so easy for me to say this, now that I am terribly, wondrously alone, in no man's land. Not Western anymore, hardly human, futureless!

Who would guide me in this strange place? Oh please, come from somewhere, from anywhere; be an honest thing, a true thing, stay indefinable if you like but please, please come, I feel too alone in this!

What I wanted

2010-09-04T01:53:00.000-07:00

The more I dance - (and I took up dancing again, finally! So far: hip hop, wacking and yes, strip dance)

The more I dance, the less I want to be online.
I am smaller and quieter. Reality is slipping away. Look at these streets, these shadows, these ashberry trees, these people - this is all a dream, surely.

Toys from China. The happiness world of the child.

2010-09-02T00:26:00.000-07:00

They are to bring the spirit of the lucky amiability, beautiful fairy maiden, they are to help your good friend that you realizes your dream, collecting them!

Design for the children all are fangle and in the high quality welcome you use our procuts.

With different wodes, collect them all!

Elegant and grand wedding: vivid and great in style.

Get all of THE EXCITING fashion doll!

Design is not stand for original product.

Pretty GIRLS finery canfit TOGETHER. FREELY and for a lot OF fashion styles!

Kitchen playset: More funny to play! with different style. Collect them all!

Happily of household.

This is a beautiful and occult world!

Benign girl.

Look, how happy they are! Mermaid Princess owns so many nice things. See! Such as crowns, high-heel, shoes, purse, mirror, comb, necklace, finery and so on are all for her.

My family: Mon, Dad and Baby fashions

Mummy look I can swim! Funny to play with me. Best quality for your selection. Simulating the true styles and making carefully all styles are wonderful! My little baby kicks and moves her arms in water.

Apples. Wind.

2010-08-31T22:07:00.000-07:00

We worked in the garden yesterday, digging for potatoes, sorting onions, picking apples. Life is not bloggable! Blogging is such a contemporary, civilized thing to do. I hope I never go back to blogging easily. How have I been loving and whom? Kayla, I have been loving very few people. Everybody else has disappeared, which is for the better. I have been walking through fields and laying down on riverbanks, as close to the earth as possible, because it's warmer and less windy if you lay down.

Measurements of Success

2010-08-30T05:16:00.000-07:00

Here's one: that you have lived in different countries. Your education, career... Successful in your field, etc. Your plans are realized.

Or this: the unexpected happens and makes you feel that you are not forgotten. Your life is still a story. You are alive! There is no security, there is greater freedom.

Yes, yes this is obvious, but I am so happy right now to know that I am not safe! I don't NEED anything. We spend hours walking, we talk, we change, we play pretending. Magic! Reality! Living and breathing.

No England.

2010-08-24T01:47:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I applied for the visa and knew immediately that it will be denied. Stumbled out of the door and into the new reality: no Master's, no London adventures, no Philip, no Mighty Boosh characters, no English lord to fall in love with. And you know why? Because I wasn't smart enough to get the documents right. So confident in my wonderful future, and first of all - so selfish! I deserve this completely. It's a sort of pleasure, this deliberate destruction and denial of self. It's dramatic, and I love acting. So I played the part and hated myself for that. Bird's brain, heart of a cockroach!

The Novodevichiy Monastery was right there, so I went in and prayed, and even lit candles. Thought about putting a headscarf on and setting off down the road, like the old orthodox women in the tsarist Russia. Then the train station, and everything so dirty, so many people, an awful mess! And I, who always claimed to be different, have to live in this and be this. It's the Karamazov nature: if I can't have everything right, I will drown in the sea of filth!

Yes, I thought all these things quite seriously. But then I walked up to a book stand, and the first thing I saw was a sign. There they were, Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty, on the cover of a book called "Famous Bank Robberies". Maybe it's alright, then, if I still have my imaginary friends popping up randomly to make me feel better.

And today is my birthday, my parents and sisters are here, and we'll have lunch. I'll put on the Betsey Johnson dress. Forgive me! I hope I never get the visa, I hope I never get anything I want, since it's so awfully good for the soul.

Some magical reversal

2010-08-21T21:51:00.000-07:00

God speaks to us through random drunk men. I was running to the train station the other day and thought about becoming cynical once again. Love is an impermanent thing, I thought. There are only moments, and that's all there is. Might as well move in the world selfishly and freely.

The second I thought that, he appeared. He stood before me and exclaimed:

- I need to talk to you! Am I distracting you?

- Yes, - I said, - trying to look annoyed, because I had makeup on and was a busy city girl at the moment.

- Listen! I wish you good health, luck, prosperity - but most of all, true love. Promise me, you must promise me, that if you love, you'll love completely, whole-heartedly, till the day you die.

I knew by then it was God speaking and I promised, of course.
Every time I said I wanted the moment, I lied, I want a life and maybe an eternity, but not these moments any more!

Este cuerpecito mío que se ha convertío en río.

2010-08-17T13:24:00.000-07:00

I forgot, there's also this song:

Siempre me quedara - Bebe

It helps.

Siempre me quedará
la voz suave del mar,
volver a respirar la lluvia que caerá
sobre este cuerpo y mojará
la flor que crece en mi,
y volver a reír
y cada día un instante volver a pensar en ti.

This has to be a change

2010-08-17T12:20:00.000-07:00

Because I have to believe in a change. And of course, it is - Stasya and her man got into town today, and we went for a walk just now. They told me of their travels: hitchhiking from Odessa to Peter, peeing into the sea from a yacht (yes! I know!), swimming in the Black Sea and then the White Sea. I told them about my month in Yoshkar-Ola, Kate and our conversations, forgiving and being forgiven, romance - and most of all, finally, a horrid, neverending, deadening boredom. Over the course of these weeks, especially since Kate left, I have descended into darkness, and haven't even noticed how this happened. Only my thoughts turned poisonous, and I started missing Nashville, wanting to be there, expecting to be loved there! This time, Nashville will treat me well, Nashville will recognize me! Oh, but it has already treated me in many different ways, all of which I deserve. Why am I still thinking about it, begging Nashville to give me a definition?
Oh, I am ready even to accept myself and this foolishness as it is. Everything will be all right, now that she is here! She is here! After these weeks, to be able to hug her and kiss her hair, and dance with her, my beautiful little sister, my milk and honey sister!

Grandmother Tatiana

2010-08-14T08:33:00.000-07:00

"About that friend of yours, Stasya... I always told you: avoid being friends with girls who are much prettier than you. It didn't work out then, did it?"

My grandmother is a blunt woman. I sketched her on a piece of scrap paper yesterday. Oh, and actually, she does have arms. I just failed to draw them.

Dancing, typically. Or ARCHEtypically. How about that!

2010-08-11T23:28:00.000-07:00

STORY:

The hippies took me swimming with them. I met them on the Boulevard. There's Bob, the 18-year old Dylan wannabe, and Pupa, the friend of a friend, very red-haired. We went swimming, like I said, and on the way back they invited me to join them and their friends, the musicians. That's it, that's all I knew, and I went.

To tell you the truth, I expected it to be quite awful, as it usually is - but I thought: at least I'll get to play with the hippies. Oh, it was absolutely not awful, and in fact a miracle. They played medieval music, and I danced. People gathered round and gave us money. Children started dancing with me, and a tiny toddler wanted to be held, and I held him and kissed his head. It was so positive, so magical, I don't know how to explain it - only that it was a dream come true, of course, and that I thought the whole time: this is so right. I was born to do this.

A famous producer was walking by and loved us. He offered to work with the band and to take me home on his bike. So silly! Can't you see that I could fly home if I wanted to? People wanted to meet us. Even the grim underclass drunkards turned kind and respectful.

So there, I went home - or danced home, rather - and went to bed, and thought: how wonderful it is, that the moon is new, that I am free! alive!

ANALYSIS:

This is really a laughable episode. Posting it on my blog is even more laughable, and rather vain at that. Look at me, I am such a dancing nymph. A cartoon character, of course, ah, but that's what I do. I was born to dance, and so on and so on.

Yes, to dance, and to be caught up in the moment, but also to type and read and write and draw, to make coffee and breathe in smoke, to be embraced and to say goodbye, to be sad and confused, even, all this! Gosh, I am predictable. It's okay; I am also very forgetful, and I have to remind myself about these simple things.

But it's still good, the Analysis didn't help, I am still so happy that I want to laugh.