“Hey, poemless. Can you believe he had the balls to fire me like that?!!”
“Well, I mean, we are talking about Vladimir Putin …”
“You mentioned you had a position open. Talk to me. This modernisation gig is going to bore the living fuck out of me.”
“Yes, the position of love slave remains unfilled. Actually, there are many positions, but we can discuss them in detail later.”

Hey wasn’t this supposed to be a blog about Russia?!

Eh, well I got depressed and then dated this psychotic Russian cab driver and then got depressed again. Then someone got on my facebook and was all like, “Please post more interesting stuff re: the evolving dynamic in Russia.” And then my therapist was handwringing and probing about my not writing, which stresses me out even more, which is pretty fucking convenient for him, right? And then Putin went and fired the sexy Chechen.

And that, my dear friends, is where my writer’s block, or rather, writer’s too depressed to give a shit, draws the line!

What follows is neither propaganda (unless I get a check from Slava, which I could totally use, and I’m willing to change my blog name to “SurkovskayaPropaganda” for one) nor much insight re: the evolving dynamic in Russia. You know, those protests and such. No, I have no idea what it all means. But that won’t stop me from pontificating! And I hope to be marginally more effective than Surkov. Oh, it’s too tragic…

N.B. If you’re some hipster who has recently joined my audience and are wondering what the hell I am talking about: Vladislav Surkov. (Former as of yesterday) Presidential Advisor and so-called chief ideologue/propagandist/ Grey Cardinal of the Kremlin. Also the ruling party’s campaign guy. Also a goth band lyricist, Tupac fan, novelist, drama school dropout and sexiest man alive – except his hands are kinda like Mr. Burns’. Someone recently accused a Russian TV station of being “surkovskaya propaganda,” and it became an Internet meme. Whatever that is. Ask the kids. Anyway. Brilliant flipping hipster politico who just got a mad demotion is what the hell I am talking about.

If you’re some hipster who has recently joined my audience, here is the Cliff’s Notes your dog will understand version of what’s going down. If you are one of those pissy Russia watcher types, well Christ, thanks for sticking around my blog! Seriously!!! I’m like the prodigal freaking son around here…

The Stage is Set

Russia held some legislative elections. Because it’s a democratic country like that. Russia has sep., direct elections for President, unlike the US (electoral college) or some European countries where the majority party in the parliament gets the Executive branch de facto. The elections were as free as can be expected in any Western democracy. Which is to say, if you could gather enough support you could get on the ballot, and if you could get off your ass you could vote, except in those annoying instances when you couldn’t. Fair? There have been countless reports of mischief: ballot stuffing, votes disappearing, people voting numerous times, and pressure to cast one’s vote for a certain party (which is rather subjective and ultimately not the same as election rigging. Democracy requires balls, folks.) Observations of vote-rigging were concentrated in Moscow, where the liberal (free-market) opposition is strongest, and the Caucasus, where, at least in Chechnya, they’ve basically made a Faustian deal with Moscow in which they can have their own little kingdom in exchange for giving the Russian government no problems. That includes turning out the vote. GOTV! Any of this sound familiar to all y’all in Chicago? Yeah, so like that. How much fraud? Depends whom you ask. I’m in the, “Oh, I have no idea, so like 7%ish” camp.

ACT I.

I don’t know why, but the Russian people actually voted with some expectation that the election would be fair. That their vote would count. Specifically, their vote against the ruling party. From my woefully under informed but magnificently intelligent perspective, I’d say that this issue of expectations does in fact mark a true paradigm shift in Russian politics. (<–Pay attention, that is important.) This shift has occurred particularly among the younger, urban generation, who experienced firsthand neither the farce of elections under Soviet Rule, nor the chaos and suffering brought by the social upheavals of the 1990′s, nor the political malaise and cynicism brought on by the ideological pissing match that defined late 20th century geopolitics. They’ve known “stability” most of their lives, and now they want more. Idealism is back. And the kids think it’s cool. Celebrate. Or read Russian history. Your choice.

Slava Surkov provides commentary on the elections:

(You’re going to have to wait for Act II.)

ACT II.

After the ballots are counted, even when we presume the results are rigged, United Russia, the ruling party (which Putin himself won’t even be a card-carrying member of) does incredibly poorly! Their showing is still better than everyone else’s, overall, but quite short of their own modest goals. In previous elections, conventional wisdom has held that while machinations (i.e. “managed democracy”) were used to ensure an overwhelming majority, had elections been perfectly fair (a concept I’ve yet to see defined, btw), the ruling party would still have won a safe majority. Here we have a situation where the party has not only failed to win a fair fight, but has failed to win by cheating. They are guilty of both unpopularity and incompetence. (N.B. Conventional wisdom also dictates that support for the party is not synonymous with support for Putin, whose popularity remains marginally stronger than that of the party of Crooks and Thieves, as United Russia has been dubbed, and a characterization which Putin has in the past not exactly argued with.) Meanwhile the Commies and Just Russia (who are either social democrats or Kremlin stooges, depending on your preferred conspiracy theory, though it is theoretically possible to be both) did nicely. So did the wackadoodle nationalists. Free-market ideologues didn’t make the cut. I haven’t seen anything to suggest that had the elections been squeaky clean that pro-business liberals would have garnered enough votes to have any impact on policy making. In sum, the election results, whether you look at the official tally or the exit polls, do not, in fact, suggest a widespread desire for radical change, or a Russian Spring, if you will. Just for more checks and balances and accountability. As one protest slogan goes, “I didn’t vote for those bastards. I voted for the other bastards.”

Slava Surkov provides commentary on the elections:

”The system is working,” Mr. Surkov told Sergei Minayev.

“United Russia has maintained its dominance with much more modest popularity figures,” he noted. “Attempts to shake up the situation and interpret it in a negative and provocative key are doomed,” he said. “Everything is under control.”

United Russia’s commanding majority in the last parliament – which will be replaced by just over half the seats in the new one – was “abnormal,” Mr. Surkov said. United Russia got 49.7% of the vote Sunday, down from 65% in the last elections in 2007.

“For a party that turned out to be in power during a deep global economic crisis, this is a good result,” he said. “Add to that the painful but necessary reforms of the (Interior Ministry) and army, plus the forced increase in taxes on business needed to preserve social benefits, then one can say this is a very good result.”

“And if we don’t forget about how much (President Dmitry) Medvedev and United Russia did to develop democracy and political competition….opportunities for manipulation were decisively cut off – I repeat, this is an outstanding result,” he said.

Monday, Western election observers condemned the election as not fair or free and rife with manipulations. Mr. Surkov dismissed allegations as “disrespectful” of the voters. “Violations happen but they don’t have any impact on the results because there simply aren’t many of them.”

Mr. Surkov said two things are still missing in the Russian political system.

First, “a mass liberal party, or more precisely, a party for the annoyed urban communities.” He said those voters are already incorporated into the system, though they may not want to admit it – “through opposition media that belong, strange as it may seem, to the state or structures affiliated with it, the staffs or audiences of which they are a part.”

“That’s of course not enough…they should be given parliamentary representation,” he said.

Second, he said, “Among Russian politicians, there aren’t enough people who respect the second law of thermodynamics….In vulgar terms, it says that in closed systems, disorder grows,” he said.

“The (power) vertical responds to breakdowns even more vertically, simply, more primitively. That’s a mistaken method. It leads to a more closed system and thus to more chaos.”

“As a result, for the system to preserve itself and develop, it needs to be opened up. New players need to be allowed in,” he said.

“We can’t allow ourselves to wind up in the situation of ‘solus rex’ – the lonely king,” he said.

“The period of cleaning up and nursing the damaged political system of the 90s is over,” he said. “So the modernization of the political system started in recent years by Medvedev and Putin should be continued.”

From: WSJ: “Kremlin’s Ideologist Weighs In on Elections, Thermodynamics” by Gregory L. White.

ACT III.

Thousands of Russians take to the streets in mass protests. A most peculiar development, if one compares the level of dissatisfaction with the results with the fact that the ruling party arguably has lost their monopoly on the system. Why are people protesting so?

Well, for one, it’s fun. Unlike the coups in the Middle East or the riots in Europe, these are impressively peaceful and free demonstrations. Hipsters, overpriveledged types, scary fringe nationalists, youths – a good cross section of society. Have you ever gone to a demonstration? Good times. Rightly or not, they give one a feeling of empowerment and ignite a little flame in one’s gut, feeding a belief that dialogue between leaders and proles is truly possible. You get on tv and the authorities get scared. It’s a real egotrip! And how cathartic to go into a public square and just fucking vent. If you did it alone, people would call you a lunatic. But when you do it with hundreds and thousands of others, suddenly the media wants to know what you have to say. Suddenly you matter. Suddenly they can’t ignore you anymore. I quite like a good protest. It’s the most enjoyable part of democracy. It also requires the least amount of effort, sacrifice and responsibility, after voting. And when else can hipsters revel in the validation of thousands of others agreeing with them without losing their cred? I’ve never understood why more people don’t do it, frankly.

On a more serious note, Russians who are protesting are protesting an electoral process which they have deemed to be unfair. There are numerous accusations and observations of fraud and various demands of the protesters, ranging from the sensible (like investigations) to the barking mad (like eliminating the ballot threshold.) Some Americans have asked if the protests in Russia are similar to the OWS protests. Yes and no. Yes, in that people feel that those in power have rigged the system for their personal gain, and in that it’s incredibly adhoc and disorganized as a “movement.” So in the most basic way, yes. No, in that many, many of the protesters are pro-privatization and free-market liberals, and in that it’s more about the political system than the economic system. In the most significant way, no. Some have asked if they are like the Arab Spring. I don’t think so. I also don’t underestimate mob mentality, that it would benefit some unsavory but powerful types, or have any indication that this is what the protesters desire. Time stamped 2:13 pm, December 28, 2012.

Slava Surkov provides commentary on the protests:

The system has already changed. This is a fait accompli. Look at the results of the elections to the Duma, the protest on Bolotnaya, the discussion on the internet, Putin’s public forum on the 15th, the president’s address.. all that remains is to formalize these changes judicially (implementing a law on the direct elections of governors and about simplifying the registration of parties) and technically (supplying polling stations with web cameras, electronic voting machines, etc.)

I think that with a few of these decisions some influential people will try to slow the process, but they won’t stop it altogether. The fundamental structures of society have shifted, the social fabric has acquired a new character. We’re already in the future. And this future is restless. But one shouldn’t be scared. The turbulence, although strong, nonetheless is not catastrophic but a form of stability. Everything will be fine.

[...]

There are those who want to concert the protest into a colored revolution – this is correct. They are acting literally according to Sharpe’s books* and the newest revolutionary methods. So literally, in fact, that it’s already boring. I’d like to advise these people that they should deviate just a little from these instructions, to dream a little bit.
But these swindlers** don’t have anything to do with it. The fact is that the protests are completely real and natural. The best part of our society, or, rather, the most productive part demands respect.

People are saying that we exist, we have meaning, we are the people. One cannot arrogantly dismiss their opinions. And it is correct that these opinions are taken into account, that the authorities have had a benevolent reaction. It proposed that direct elections of governors will resume, and that party registration will be practically untrammeled…to yield to the reasonable remands of the active part of society – this is not a reluctant maneuver on the part of the authorities, it is their obligation and constitutional duty.

Of course it is possible to say that those who have gone out on the streets are only a minority. If this is the case, what a minority! And if you examine the ruling majority – in reality this is also a minority, only a somewhat larger. Our current democracy in the conditions of a complicated and fragmented society – this is in general a democracy of minorities. If you think strategically, listening to the minorities you will find among them tomorrows leaders.

And, of course, a crowd can advance unreasonable demands and can sometimes be lead by provocateurs. But as concerns the provocateurs – there is the law, there is the obligation of the state to defend the bases of the constitutional order.

And there then arises a question: what are we defending? Who wants to wants to preserve corruption and injustice? Who wants to defend a system that has become deaf, dumb, and blind? No one! Even those, who appear part of this system don’t want to. Because they don’t feel justified.

The moral standing, which the state possessed until recently, must be, even if only partially, returned. And all those plans, proposed by the president, in this vein are correct. Political institutions that are modern, open, honest, intelligible to people, that will fight for them, preserve them, and defend them.

The most important thing now is to realize all of these intentions. And it may be that at the next meeting there will be fewer people, that the chatter over the internet will cool down, and that it will seem to someone that nothing needs to be done, that everyone got worked up over nothing. That, once again, everything magically disappeared. And once again they will drag out, slow down, and set aside reforms until a better time, as has already happened, or simply dilute them. But we’ll hope for the best – God willing, the streets will calm down and the reforms will take place.

* Gene Sharp is the author of, among other books, “From Dictatorship to Democracy”

** Surkov here (deliberately) uses the exact same word that Navalny used in describing United Russia

From: Izvestia via Forbes: Vladislav Surkov on the Post-Election Protests: “The System has Already Changed” (Translation by Mark Adomanis.)

“As a professional political operative who just took a blow at his own ‘managed’ polls, and as someone who started out with Khodorkovsky and became the Kremlin’s right hand man, it’s neither surprising nor entirely stupid that he’s showing more flexibility here.” (<–What I said right before he was axed.)

ACT IV.

Putin axed Surkov, widely seen to be the “architect” of his political system. Or reassigned him. Normally this type of rearranging the furniture is looked upon with boredom and, except by the most eggheaded Kremlinologists, as a real bone toss. But this is no “I think that chair would look better by the window” rearranging. Putin put the fucking oven in the spare bathroom. Only history will tell if it was a genius or insane move. My immediate reactions:

~ Oh, Merry fucking Christmas to Michael McFaul.

~ Many articles have described Surkov’s move from Presidential Advisor to deputy Prime Minister overseeing Modernization (wtf?) as “leaving politics and entering government.” Leaving politics to enter government. In what universe is Russia actually located anyway? That doesn’t even make sense. I mean, not in the universe I inhabit. Is this a quantum physics thing? Though, if anyone could manage, ahem, that kind of maneuvering, Surkov could. Hell, it sounds like just the kind of thing he’d say, doesn’t it. Snake. Hot snake.

~ Look, I am really only shocked it did not happen sooner. I expected that shoe to drop the day after the elections. Not because of the protests. No. Putin’s not scared of the hipsters. Because the ruling party flopped and the current system is being vocally questioned. As its “architect,” Surkov has to answer for that. Putin’s never made sentimental decisions, and Surkov knows damn well politics is business. That said, Putin also values loyalty, and the move to Vice Deputy PM of Modernization or whatever the fuck he’ll being doing leaves a door open for recognizing Surkov’s loyalty should he prove it and should it not be political suicide for Putin to do so. (<– Saying shit like that earned me the blogger cred I squandered this year.)

~ Surkov never should have made that "Solus Rex" remark. You don't want to get on your boss's bad side. Especially if your boss is Vladimir Putin. And you just lost some elections.

~ Vova's done a lot of fearless stunts, but this is his most impressive to date. You don't want to get on the devil's bad side. Especially if he's your strategy man. And thousands are protesting outside your office.

~ Wait, I am soooo confused. Medvedev is still President for the moment, technically, and Putin is still technically PM, and Slava's been moved to Putin's sphere, oh, I give up…

~ I guess this frees him up to be my love slave.

Slava Surkov provides commentary on his demotion:

Asked by a journalist from Interfax on Tuesday why he was leaving, Mr. Surkov first answered, “Stabilization devours its own children.”

Then he laughed, and said he had overstayed the job and had requested a reassignment. Asked whether he would take a role in settling down the protests, Mr. Surkov said no.

“I am too odious for this brave new world,” he said. He then summed up his achievements at the reporter’s request.

“I was among the people who helped President Yeltsin realize a peaceful transfer of power,” he said. “I was among those who helped President Putin stabilize the political system. I was among those who helped President Medvedev liberalize it.” He added, “I hope I did not undermine my employers and my colleagues.”

From: NYT: “Architect of Russia’s Political System Under Putin Is Reassigned” by Ellen Barry.

Many are calling this an end of the Power Vertical (unfortunately I believe they are referring to the Kremlin’s strategy and not the wretched website.) It saddens me. One day people will wake up and realize they are all bastards, and if one must have bastards, bastards with intelligence, actual knowledge of and interest in political science and a healthy dose of sass and courage are the kinds of bastards you want. The truth is all democracies are managed. The hipsters just want their turn at managing it. Fair enough. Seriously, just do not even pick up that Russian history book! Pretend it doesn’t exist! … No, to be honest, it’s one thing I do truly love and admire about Russia. It is a politically fearless and resilient country. And there is no stopping today’s sons from becoming tomorrow’s fathers.

CODA.

Whoa! If you think that was heavy handed, I present to you Guy Faulconbridge’s write up, in full, just because I like the guy so much!

Reuters: “Putin ejects Kremlin ‘puppet master’ after protests” by Guy Faulconbridge.

MOSCOW Dec 27 (Reuters) – The architect of Vladimir Putin’s tightly controlled political system became one of its most senior victims on Tuesday when he was shunted out of the Kremlin in the wake of the biggest opposition protests of Putin’s 12-year rule.

The sacrifice of Vladislav Surkov, branded the Kremlin’s ‘puppet master’ by enemies and friends alike, is also a rare admission of failure for Russia’s ‘alpha dog’ leader: Surkov’s system was Putin’s system.

With irony worthy of Surkov’s cynical novels, the Kremlin’s 47-year-old political mastermind was shown grinning on state television when told by President Dmitry Medvedev that he would oversee modernisation as a deputy prime minister.

When asked why he was leaving the Kremlin, Surkov deliberately misquoted a slogan from the French Revolution, saying: “Stabilisation is eating up its children.”

Almost in passing, Surkov told Interfax news agency he would not be running domestic politics after nearly 13 years doing exactly that from the corridors of the Kremlin.

Why? “I am too notorious for the brave new world.”

His post will be taken by Putin’s chief of staff and Surkov’s arch enemy, Vyacheslav Volodin, a wealthy former lawyer who hails from Putin’s ruling United Russia party. Anton Vaino, a 39-year-old former diplomat, becomes Putin’s chief of staff.

By ejecting Surkov from the Kremlin just two months before the presidential election, Putin is betting that he can neutralise some of the anger against his rule by projecting the impression of a brave new world of political reform.

“What happened today is nothing more than shuffling people from one office into another,” Mikhail Prokhorov, Russia’s third richest man who demanded Surkov be sacked in September, said through a spokesman. “Little will change from these shifts.”

Though Surkov’s exit may not usher in a vast political change, it is the end of an era for one of Putin’s most powerful aides. And at Putin’s court, personalities count for everything.

PUTIN’S ARTIST

Described as Russia’s answer to France’s Cardinal Richelieu or a modern-day Machiavelli, Surkov was one of the creators of the system Putin crafted since he rose to power in 1999.

To admirers, “Slava” Surkov is the most flamboyant mind in Putin’s court: a writer of fiction who recited poets such as Allen Ginsberg but also strong enough to hold his own against the KGB spies and oligarchs in the infighting of the Kremlin.

To enemies, Surkov is a dangerous artist who used his brains to expand Putin’s power and whose intellectual snobbery made Russian citizens beads in a grand political experiment called “Vladimir Putin.”

Fond of black ties and sometimes unshaven, Surkov survived many turf wars but he could not survive the biggest protests of Putin’s rule or Putin’s need to find someone to blame for them.

As the manager of United Russia, the Kremlin’s point man on elections and ultimately the day-to-day manager of Putin’s political system, Surkov bore direct responsibility for the protests which have pitted Russia’s urban youth against Putin.

He did not answer requests for comment.

Brought into the Kremlin under Boris Yeltsin in 1999 to serve as an aide to then chief of staff Alexander Voloshin, Surkov helped ease the handover of power to Putin.

He then worked with Putin and then President Medvedev to consolidate power, repeatedly using the spectre of the chaotic 1990s to warn against swift change.

PUTIN’S SYSTEM

In practise, Surkov’s rule meant centralising power in Putin’s hands: Surkov moved regional decision-making to the Kremlin, struck down any attempt at autonomy and directed party politics.

Such was his power that Russia’s top party officials, journalists and cultural leaders would visit him in the Kremlin for ‘direction’ on how to present events to the public.

“He is considered one of the architects of the system,” Putin’s former finance minister, Alexei Kudrin, told Kommersant FM radio.

“Now this system is being revised. New organisers are needed with different views on the political system,” said Kudrin, who has offered to lead dialogue between the opposition and the authorities.

Signs of trouble for Surkov appeared in May when Volodin -the man who eventually took his job – helped Putin create a new movement, or popular front, that would compete with the United Russia party for Putin’s patronage.

Volodin, a dollar millionaire fond of ducking reporters questions with irony or personal needling, presented the popular front to Putin as a way to revive the ruling party.

Volodin’s stock rose after securing 65 percent of the vote for Putin’s party in Saratov, a region where he was born.

Then in September, the main scriptwriter of Russian politics became the focus of an intriguing unscripted conflict with Prokhorov – the whizz kid of Russian finance – over the fate of a minor opposition party which was crippled by the Kremlin.

“There is a puppet master in this country who long ago privatised the political system and has for a long time misinformed the leadership of the country,” Prokhorov, whose fortune Forbes put at $18 billion, said at the time.

“His name is Vladislav Yuryevich Surkov,” said Prokhorov, who demanded Putin sack Surkov. Putin had to personally calm down the two sides in the row, two sources said.

But after mass protests in major Russian cities against the parliamentary election and against Putin himself, Surkov’s analysis differed to that of his boss.

Putin has dismissed the protesters as chattering monkeys or a motley crew of leaderless opponents bent on sowing chaos, but Surkov gave a more refined view: he said they were among the best people in Russian society.

“You cannot simply swipe away their opinions in an arrogant way,” said Surkov, who will now have to move his portrait of Argentine-born revolutionary Che Guevara from his Kremlin office.

All you lousy journalists can write your silly Surkov hagiographies. I was doing that years ago, before it was even cool!

Maybe I should join that hipster revolution.

I am not happy.

Now and then I used to experience a low, nagging feeling that I was stuck in a second-rate job in a second-rate flat in a second-rate town. We all feel this now and then. That we are not measuring up. I always did my best to ignore it. There is no perfect; there is only now. But now has changed.

When I was sick and broke and depressed at the beginning of this year, I maintained a vision of how I wanted to live my life. It was a faerie tale story but mostly I pulled it off. I managed to be a single fearless girl in the big city, having fun and changing the world, and having more fun in case the whole changing the world thing did not pan out. Days and nights were filled with political meetings, art museums, jazz clubs, dive bars, plays, coffee shops, boys, writing, agitating, schmoozing, drinking, making love, making revolution. A few nervous breakdowns & sinus infections. I’d do anything and I’d pay for it. Never enough sleep or hydration. Never enough money. It was all very beautiful, let me tell ya. It wasn’t perfect, but it was now. But now has changed.

Now I feel like a fallen leaf in a curbside puddle, the force of gravity slowly pulling me along toward the sewer drain while I secretly hope a large vehicle drives right up and crushes me before I reach the abyss.

It’s not very beautiful, let me tell ya. There is no beauty in shame. The shame of failure. The shame of being incapable of taking care of oneself. The shame of being ill. The shame of being deceived. The shame of being afraid. The shame of being dependent. And the shame of the thoughts I have that I do not want, that will not be quiet. The ugliest types of thoughts. The most unbeautiful thoughts. My doctor explained to me that allergies create a warm and moist environment in my nasal passages ideal for viruses and bacteria looking to settle down and raise a family. It is as if my mind, with its own irrational sensitivities, has created a warm and moist environment ideal for the cultivation of mental germs. It’s disgusting and contagious and stubborn as hell. And after you read the following you will agree that it’s driven me perfectly insane.

I want to move to the country.

I have allergies, my blood is like crack cocaine for insects, I have photophobia and until today have been certain that I could only survive in an urban environment, like cockroaches and punk rockers. I suppose what’s changed is I’m not surviving terribly well. That’s an intellectual explanation. I’ve no real explanation for the excruciating urge I now have to leave Chicago as soon as possible and go far far away. To the country. Or at least to some quaint spot with antique shops and big old homes. Maybe I watch too much tv (I don’t really watch much tv) or am a daydreamer. I grew up in a small town and loathed it beyond anything. I still loathe it. But I could go to the kind of town where my father does not live, where there is a small community theater and a general store. Where it is quiet and simple and peaceful. I could work in a coffee shop or bookstore or antique store where I would actually interact with other human beings, do odd jobs and manual labor because ten years behind a desk is truly all I can take I swear to god. I’d farm. I don’t care. At least it would be real. All of the beauty in the city… it is sublime, but impersonal. It doesn’t need you to exist. It might be nice to feel an important part of something. I want to shovel snow and sit on porches and chop wood or something. Live and work some place where strangers come over and say hi. Just because. I want to learn to sew, to make pies and soups I can actually share with other people, to plant stuff that I can watch grow, to not come home to an empty room every single night. Oscar is sick of looking out of the same window every single day. I want family. I mean, I don’t want to start a family. I want to see the one I already have. I never want to hear another damned argument about mustard v. ketchup or Cubs v. Sox or Northside v. Southside or deep dish v. thin crust or reformers v. Machine. I cannot, and no one can, possibly have anything left to say on these matters. I would even learn to drive if I had to. That’s how much I want out of this town right now.

I want to go far away. For a little while at least. Maybe I will come back. Maybe I will not. Maybe I will not even leave. Maybe it will not cure my sinuses or financial woes or depression. Maybe I will hate it and realize how great I have it here. Maybe it is a faerie tale but maybe I can pull it off. I need to leave, before I reach that sewer drain, before that car arrives.

Today my brother phoned. “There are a lot of people down here who care about you, you know. I know you’d be far away from home, from Chicago and your friends … but Abbie thinks it might be better if you were close to family for a while.”

When I was sick and broke and depressed at the beginning of this year I would have killed myself before moving home. Now, it sounds very beautiful, let me tell you.

It was a quiet, grey Tuesday afternoon in October. I exited the Jarvis el stop, lit a cigarette and held my head up high. I was there to meet a friend, a friend who had always been there for me like he was there for me today, whom my former lover had informed me only kept my acquaintance because he wanted to get into my pants. I didn’t have the luxury of debating if men and women could ever really be friends at this point though and resented that I was going to have to explain why I’d been ignoring his texts. I saw him waiting for me. Chin up. He gave me a hug, and I burst into sobs. Sobs I’d been holding back for days. In silence we walked down the sidewalk, tears streamed down my cheeks. We sat on a wooden bench overlooking the beach at the end of the street, I offered him a cigarette, told him everything, every dark and confused thought, every fear, every way I had fucked up, every regret. I sat looking straight ahead, across the horizon, eyes scanning the small hill of grey stones, the smooth sand, the dark, turbulent waters, the overcast sky, the lilac clouds in the distance giving way to those promising rain. An icy wind scalded our cheeks and threatened our cigarettes and snapped me out of it. After a half hour of crying and confessing with abandon, I gathered my composure and dug about in my bag for something to wipe the mascara and mucus from my face while he doled out advice and shared stories of his own screw ups and struggles. “I care about you, as a friend. Do you understand? I have no ulterior motives.” “I want to believe you, but it’ll be a while before I can trust a man again. Or myself.” “I know.” The wind kicked up, assaulting us with sand, water, leaves and bark, and we headed inside. We warmed ourselves with black coffee at the dining table and chatted about work, vacations, life while two cats vied for our attention. The sky grew dark, and a small lamp in the corner cast everything in chestnut tones. “You seem better now.” “I feel better now.”

By the following evening, all hell was breaking loose. Outside, pedestrians were losing battles with umbrellas. Inside, I sat in a booth drinking a “pumpkin spice latte” and picking at a whole wheat “bagel” with “hazelnut cream cheese.” I had no appetite, but needed to get the manufactured, cloyingly sweet taste of pumpkin goo off my palate, and I had to keep drinking the coffee to stay awake. The evening was not going well. I’d just been given a lecture on how my lack of interest in marriage and a family, along with my penchant for sleeping with bad boy artists, must mean I enjoy being miserable and unstable. As if people with spouses and children have inoculated themselves against misery and instability. As if my ambivalence to the institution were not a consequence of my own miserable and unstable family. As if I had ever dated a bad boy artist before. As if I’d plans to do it again. As if I thought it were helpful to speak of people in stereotypes. I’d left the office shaken. What the fuck was wrong with people? I hadn’t even gone there to discuss relationships. I needed paperwork signed. Psychiatrists should really stick to doing what they know, like paperwork, and not try to analyze people they see for 5 minutes every 2 months. In the coffee shop I tried to read. Well, his wife is dying. I should not take that marriage stuff personally. Still… Jesus, this latte is disgusting. I was supposed to be meeting someone for coffee. I texted, called, nothing. Well, traffic was a mess, and I was in no hurry to venture out into the gale. I wrote a bit, tried to read. I’d been in a boring normal appropriate relationship for 8 years, and that made me miserable. What the hell did he know? I thought if I took another sip of my seasonal concoction I’d puke. Still no texts. Things were getting chaotic out there in way that encouraged me to leave sooner rather than later. “Hey, L-, it’s T-. Not sure where you are but I’ve been waiting for you forever and I am not waiting any longer. I mean, I hope you’re not trapped under a fallen branch or something.” I left, wrapped my trenchcoat tight around me, gave up on the umbrella, tugged my beret down over my head, found a doorway where I eventually was able to light a smoke. The night out there was wet and black and slick and wild and everyone was either running or holding on for their lives. People enjoy being miserable and unstable my ass.

Days passed. Storms departed, leaving warm orange days in their wake. Friends poured wine. Family phoned. Ex-therapist e-mailed. Cat stopped behaving upsettingly (except when I caught him watching the slasher flick Dressed to Kill, his eyes dilated and bulging from their sockets, all cartoon-like.) I cooked, slept, did yoga, wrote, paid visits, read a bit about Buddhism, read a bit about Fascism. I picked up a Reader and put it back down. Fuck all, he’s probably sick of himself at this rate… I gathered myself. I watched a documentary on Catholicism. God is love. But what the hell is love?

It was an October Sunday afternoon, almost 70 degrees and blinding rays of sun thrashed at everything violently, as if in the throes of death before being locked up in the morgue of our long Chicago winters. I’d read something in the paper about a tour of Graceland Cemetery and thought that might get me into the holiday spirit. Not to take the tour, of course. I am allergic to tours. I actually learned the world obyazatelno while trying to squirm out of ekskursii tours. I’d capitulate to the demands of my exchange program overlords but go on my own excursions through dacha dotted wastelands once off the bus and accounted for. Fucking tours. Also, why pay for a tour of a cemetery I can just, you know, walk around in for free? The general offices and visitors center were closed, but the gates were open. “Here for the tour?” a man asked. “No,” I responded defensively, already disoriented still only a few steps past the gates. I tried to look like I wasn’t there precisely to get lost, which I was.

Under my over-sized wool turtleneck sweater sweat gathered in the small of my back. I spent the first half of the walk propelling myself toward mirages of shade. So many trees, so many crypts, so many obelisks, yet no reprieve from the sun. Many of the graves were early 20th Century and unimpressive. I grew up in a graveyard and am a hard sell. (My aunt & uncle owned, ran and lived on the grounds of a cemetery.) Well, it was a beautiful day, a beautiful walk. I finally stumbled upon a cool, dark area, looked down and thought, now who is this lucky fellow, resting eternally in the shade? “Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.” I began to pay attention as I strolled around the lagoon lined with a little wooden bridge, white marble columns and weeping willows swaying lightly in the faint suggestion of a breeze. Burnham. Field. Harrison. McCormick. Palmer. Sullivan. Wacker. Medill. Names so ubiquitous with my town, I’d never fully appreciated that they were real dead people. I contemplated the chalk white arched little headstones wedged into corners next to ostentatious monuments, their names erased with time and bad weather, and wondered who they were. I was glad for their modesty and grace and Halloweenishness. I peeked into ornately decorated crypts with beautiful stained glass windows opposite their doors, the harsh sun transforming colorful scenes into dramatic three-dimensional visions, the kind converts see in the movies. I came upon an imposing black wall against which a larger than life shrouded figure in lurid patina stood, forearm across his face. I looked upwards dizzyingly to the stone angels perched high in the air. I hummed, “I dreaded sunny days, so let’s go and I’ll meet you at the cemetery gates, Keats and Yeats are on your side… Wilde is on mine…”

I showered away my graveyard stickiness, applied copious amounts of eye makeup, slipped on some sexy boots and was headed toward the Western bus. “Poise and grace. Poise and grace,” I repeated under my breath. Earlier I’d texted a girlfriend, “Hey, I kinda know this guy playing music at this performance thing at the Viaduct tonight at 9, wanna come? It’s only 5 bucks.” There was a slight chance the painter cabbie would be there. Then my chef friend phoned from the ER to inform me she’d chopped her finger off, “They can reattach it, but don’t know if it will take.” I eagerly offered to come to the hospital to keep her company, interpreting her misfortune as a message from god to cancel my plans. “You’re too sweet. No, I’m fine. Vicodin. Go out and have fun for me!” I interpreted this as a message from god to stick to my plans. Upon confessing that I was anxious about the possibility of running into my ex at the show, a nice fellow, mutual friend, offered to take me. I thanked him but declined, the horrid assertion that men were only kind to me because they wanted to fuck me still lodged in my memory. Not that a good fuck would be the worst thing in the world. A few weeks ago I’d gone to the Rainbo for cheap stiff drinks and a chat with a date. And a good fuck. I sat under the painting which had been promised me for my birthday, had a wonderful time, he was a wonderful guy, but his advances confirmed my suspicion that I was indeed emotionally unavailable and a good fuck would do no more to kill my pain than cheap drinks. I was too hung up on love. The painting at the Rainbo was shortly thereafter given to another woman. Motherfucker. “Poise and grace. Poise and grace.”

The performance began. The guy I kind of knew played fantastically hypnotizing guitar while a guy I’m very glad I do not know read various monologues featuring porn shoots, satanism, stds, depression and killing homeless people. I sat wavering between horror and boredom. The monologuist was sweating profusely and asking us why we were so silent, as if we were meant to stand up and cheer when the coke dealers set the streetperson on fire. The writing was clearly very angry but very unclear about what, intended to shock but void of imagination, cynical without enough maturity to make it believable. While the performer laughed nervously, dropping his printouts, demanding a towel, my mind wandered: perhaps not the best material to be exposing my fragile self to…, what if I walked out in the middle of the performance?, those large goth girls giggling in the row in front of me, it is nervous laughter?, what is the point of this? My girlfriend leaned over, “Uhm, what’s the point of this?” He continued on about facebook, erections, drinking binges. Were those his parents in the back row? They appear well-shod. I zoned out to the intoxicating sounds coming from the suitcase guitar thing, and the second the show ended I bolted out for a cigarette and reflection. “I feel much better about myself now,” I smiled widely. My girlfriend and I talked about what makes people make bad art, what makes people do bad things. I surprised myself by how grateful I was for the experience in sum, for my curiosity and courage, for being taken out of my own shit for a while, for perspective, even if acquired so harshly. I suddenly felt like a million dollars. At least I am not setting homeless people on fire or writing an homage to people who set homeless people on fire or laughing at homeless people being set on fire. It’s a low bar, I admit, but I felt positively angelic.

It was midnight when I stepped off the bus still high on my own moral foundation and good taste. Lightning flashed in the distance and crisp leaves whipped themselves into small cyclones along my path. Jack-O-Lanterns and cotton cobwebs decorated porches where lazy plastic skeletons sat eyeing passersby. Muffled thunderclaps far off and an angry wind interrupted the silence of a late Sunday night in a working class town. Something wicked this way was headed. The winds erratically shifted direction, carrying the leaves up into the sky where they danced madly around the sulfur street lights, trees shook like the possessed, lightning bolts cracked a few streets north, thunder let out a deep groan of warning. I made it to the door as fat drops of rain began to dot the sidewalk. Safe inside my apartment, I scooped up the cat and folded myself into the merengue of the fluffy down blankets piled upon the bed, listening to the rain tap gently against the roof next door, the wind whistle softly through the window. Finally, I thought, peace and quiet.

From one, currently working on her PhD at Oxford, though apparently reading my facebook or blog when procrastinating:

“I really enjoy Michiko Kakutani’s reviews. This one [of Jeffrey Eugenides' novel, “The Marriage Plot”] at made me think of you, and this paragraph, particularly:

Leonard, needless to say, breaks all these rules, and Madeleine soon realizes she’s deeply, madly in love — or at least very smitten: “It was as if, before she’d met him, her blood had circulated grayly around her body, and now it was all oxygenated and red.” For someone so used to being in control, it’s a thrilling, disorienting and frightening experience, heightened further when Madeleine realizes that Leonard’s depression is not a passing mood but a serious and chronic condition that could well sabotage their relationship.”

I must say, it is a comfort to know that my own personal drama is enough of a universal human condition that whole novels and plays and films and tome after tome of poetry have been devoted to it. And it provides perspective: at least I won’t be tossing my spent self in front of an oncoming Metra anytime soon. Those lines she sent – and this is all she sent, you must know – resonated deeply, eerily. But I was not embarrassed or upset. I laughed at how she knew me and at myself. I used to tell people, do not try to be a character in a novel; write your own novel! I was 18 and it was all very profound. But there is no infinite supply of plots, it seems.

I received the following essay from another, who is a student of traditional Odissi dance in India. The piece was published in the New Indian Express “Devi” Magazine in Bhubaneswar. It’s as beautiful as anything.

From Autumn to Aswin

Each October in my home town, the groves of slender aspens in the Rocky Mountains would be turning a bright yellow and raining down golden showers of coin-like leaves blown about by autumn’s brisk breeze. We would wait for the first snow on the mountain peaks, eagerly conjecturing about the conditions of the coming winter skiing season. The first white flutters in town always seemed to come around Halloween, the holiday when all the kids wear costumes and visit the neighboring houses at night collecting chocolates. How many tussles erupted between concerned moms and excited children who didn’t want a heavy coat and muffler to obscure the well-planned effect of their Spiderman or Snow White outfit.

For the last five years, this season has taken on an utterly new significance for me. The month is marked as Asvin, not October, and the season is known as “rainy” and not autumn. Still, in an entirely different way, it remains one of my favorite times of the year.

During Durga Puja, I love to feel the charged atmosphere. The rhythmic gong of cymbals, the melodic tinkling of bells and the low drone of prayers create a powerful vibration which elevates my mind to a state of peace. Smoke scented with the sweet aroma of ghee and agarbati cleanses the air of impurities. Sense-impressions acquire an other-worldly clarity as the atoms of nature hum with a divine energy. The soft, warm brightness of the sun’s rays is accentuated as it shines in the drops of new rain. Bright green sprouts, bursting with life-force, grow as the days and nights pass, the moon changing its shape, the sun changing its place. I tune to the cycles of the planet as we invoke the powerful goddess through the elements of nature.

Worship of Devi is absolutely universal, as her energy and presence pervade every molecule of the universe and are felt in the hearts of every human being. Personally, I relate to Her in many ways. As a woman, I relate to Her as a symbol of empowerment and strength. As a spiritual aspirant, I relate to Her as the destroyer of ego and bringer of ultimate liberation. As a student of Odissi dance, I relate to the godess Durga through her mythology, as a protector, the slayer of inner and outer demons and the ultimate manifestation of bliss-giving beauty. I recently had the opportunity to learn the choreography “Durga” by the late Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra. In this choreography both her softness and grace and her intense power are portrayed. As a human being, I relate to the goddess Durga as a manifestation of the force of nature or prakriti. She is the universal mother, who, like this earth who births and sustains all creatures, both gives and takes life. I feel that she is very intimate, our very own near and dear and also an awesome and awe-inspiring force before which we are reduced to mere ants.

Wherever we are on the planet, whether in the Rocky Mountains of the United States or in the red-earth Malis of Orissa, the Goddess is manifested in the pure and unpolluted beauty of nature. I pray to the Goddess that on this Durga Puja, all of us, her children, are reminded of how perfect and beautiful she is in her form as Mother Earth. I pray that all of us should make a commitment to protecting the very special earth that is Orissa. I pray that we can work to protect and empower the women in the communities across Orissa. Ultimately I pray that her great peace will prevail in all of our hearts-that we will feel perfectly at peace within, that there will be peace between us and that peace will pervade the earth.

How beautiful is that? I am no hippie. And religions, well, I won’t be joining one soon. But reading this, from her, I am reminded of her infinite supply of energy and curiosity and fearlessness and wonderment, and how pleasantly contagious it all is. I can see her performing this piece, being fierce, animated, charismatic and then her falling on the floor giggling from the catharsis and totally over-the-top poetry of of all. The timing is certainly coincidental, yet this more than anything is exactly what I needed in my email inbox at this moment. This is exactly what I needed from a friend. A shift of focus, a reminder of what is important, a swift yank out of my worldly stew. And that bit about the goddess Durga as a protector, the slayer of inner and outer demons and the ultimate manifestation of bliss-giving beauty rocked too…

It seems so criminally easy for us to lose our humility, our perspective, our people.

Read a silly novel and know you are of that same silly species as its characters.

Go for a long walk and observe the forces of nature at work all around you.

Write a friend a passionate love letter.

Remain in touch.

I began to write another essay, a judgemental and hateful screed against the double standards against which society judges women who under eat v. those who over eat. Honestly, you know lying on the couch with a bag of Oreos isn’t any less criminal than skipping meals, right?

I began to write yet another essay, an admission that I genuinely don’t like how negative I’ve become in the past week or two, or three, or four, or more. Negativity is contagious, insidious. Honestly, we all have our annoyances, peeves and impossibly high standards, but let me tell you mister, it’s a real bore when that’s your primary mode of conversation. I would like to think that if every last lame ass person, place or thing in the world were to vanish tomorrow leaving me with nothing against which to exist, my identity and self-worth would remain largely in tact.

Well that didn’t make me feel better either. Also, that last one mysteriously disappeared into the ether after a failed attempt at multitasking. Karma.

So here are some things that I do like! Shallow enough to charm, indulgent enough to gratify, interesting enough to distract, a few odds and ends that I unapologetically adore at the moment.

I. Marlene Dietrich’s Temperamental Screen Test for The Blue Angel (1929)

I have always thought Marlene Dietrich absolutely divine, and I just can’t get enough of this. Her little transformation is particularly appealing to me.

From Open Culture (which you should all have bookmarked):

In 1929, Josef von Sternberg began assembling the cast for the first major German sound film – Der blaue Engel, otherwise known as The Blue Angel. (Watch the English version online here.) A classic of Weimar cinema, the film featured Marlene Dietrich playing Lola-Lola, a seductive singer in the local cabaret. Lola-Lola was, it has been said, a “liberated woman of the world who chose her men, earned her own living and viewed sex as a challenge.” The persona captivated audiences, and it made Dietrich an international star.

Dietrich’s screentest for “The Blue Angel.”

II. Catalogue of the Musee du Montparnasse exhibtion “Les Artistes Russes hors Frontière.”

One of the delights my work gives me in lieu of a proper salary is perusing through art catalogues. The vast majority are modern art, which … well, there’s that negativity again… Anyway, this one recently appeared on my desk and transported me to heaven.

From ArtInfo: “Russian Artists in Paris in the Roaring Twenties”:

PARIS— In connection with the designation of 2010 as “France-Russia Year,” the Montparnasse Museum is hosting a important exhibition of Russian artists who once converged on this storied Parisian neighborhood. Over 70 artists are represented, covering the period from 1915 to the early 1960s, with special focus on the 1920s. At that time, many Russian painters and sculptors left their country in order to freely express their artistic ambitions and to seek out new trends in art.

The museum itself is part of this history: in its building, the painter Marie Vassilieff had her famous studio — a gathering place for Matisse, Satie, and other seminal cultural figures — and her equally-famous canteen, which provided dirt-cheap meals during World War I to those who were literally starving artists.

Beginning during the political upheavals of the early 20th century, many Russian artists decide to move abroad, and many chose to settle in France. While some artists had supported Lenin and taken part in the revolution’s early stages, most became disillusioned when Stalin took power, preferring to leave rather than to accept ethical and artistic servitude. At the time, Social Realism greatly limited the range of painterly subjects. Still, important artists did remain in Russia, such as Rotchenko, who followed Constructivist principles by applying artistic creation to daily life and mass production. But many other influential talents chose refuge in Paris, the world’s artistic capital at the time.[...]

Drawing on their interest in figurative representation, the Russians developed a freely sensual style of painting. The show includes Serebriakova’s series of languid female nudes, where the artist uses a warm palette to bathe her models in a natural erotic glow. In similar fashion, Marie Vassilieff celebrates the female body with Cubist renderings that maintain bodily proportions and extreme colors that bring Italian Futurism to mind. In general, Russian artists depicted physical beauty without stylizing it. This emphasis on the body also found playful expression in Montparnasse nightlife. During the Union des Artistes Russes’s charity balls, guests freely stripped off their clothes or dressed in drag.

The Russian artists who chose to live in France stayed there, whether by preference or necessity. Erased from Soviet art history, many were forgotten until the end of their lives. It took years before significant pieces of this exiled cultural heritage were rediscovered — many of them in flea-markets. The works shown here all come from the same collection: Georges Khatsenkov gathered 300 paintings over 30 years of tireless pursuit. Since Perestroika, the Russians have rediscovered their legacy, and today these artists are featured in Moscow’s Russian Museum.

From the exhibition: Georges Annenkov’s “Nu Allongé”

Swoon…

III. Ken Burns’ “Prohibition.”
Booze! Chicago! Roaring 20′s! I’d been eagerly anticipating the airing of this PBS documentary all summer, and let’s say I wasn’t drawn to it for its educational appeal. The fact that I learned anything new from it was icing on the cake, or a garnish on the glass, as it were. Did you know that there used to be no federal income tax, that women not only led the fight for but also against Prohibition, that men discovered the clitoris in the 1920′s or that elephants can do the Charleston? Neither did I. Did you evah hear of Lois Long? Neither had I. Now that I have, I am in love.

From “Prohibition”:

Twenty-three-year-old, Vassar-educated daughter of a Congregational minister, Lois Long was assigned to cover the city’s nightlife for the New Yorker. She wrote about the speakeasy lifestyle with a liberated woman’s perspective under the pen name Lipstick. Long was the epitome of a flapper and chronicles of her nightly escapades of drinking and dancing in her column enchanted her readers.

“Lois Long’s columns were laced with a wicked sort of sexual sense of humor. She openly flouted sexual and social conventions. She was a favorite of Harold Ross who was the original editor of The New Yorker and who couldn’t have been more different from Long if he had tried. He was a staid and proper Midwesterner, and she was absolutely a wild woman. She would come into the office at four in the morning, usually inebriated, still in an evening dress and she would, having forgotten the key to her cubicle, she would normally prop herself up on a chair and try to, you know, in stocking feet, jump over the cubicle usually in a dress that was too immodest for Harold Ross’ liking. She was in every sense of the word, both in public and private, the embodiment of the 1920s flapper. And her readers really loved her. “

From Wikipedia:

Lois Long (also known under the pseudonym Lipstick) was a popular writer for The New Yorker during the 1920s and the epitome of a flapper.

She was born to a Congregationalist minister in Stamford, Connecticut and graduated from Vassar. Long had worked at Vogue and Vanity Fair before finding fame at The New Yorker. Harold Ross hired her to write a column on New York nightlife. Under the name of Lipstick, Lois Long chronicled her nightly escapades of drinking, dining, and dancing. She wrote of decadence of the decade with an air of aplomb, wit and satire, becoming quite a celebrity. Because her readers did not know who she was, Long often jested in her columns about being a “short squat maiden of forty” or a “kindly, old, bearded gentleman.” However, in her marriage announcement to The New Yorker cartoonist Peter Arno, she revealed her true identity.

To summarize her lifestyle in her own words: “Tomorrow we may die, so let’s get drunk and make love.”

She remained with The New Yorker as a columnist until 1968. She died in 1974 [1]

I don’t really believe in reincarnation or any of that nonsense. But it’s a little eerie, don’t you think? A toast to Lois Long!

IV. Salon: Why American novelists don’t deserve the Nobel Prize.

This article ignited the absolutely most tedious discussion on my facebook page, but I still like it, and after you read it, I will happily explain why.

An American hasn’t won in 20 years. The Academy finds our writers insular and self-involved — and they’re right
America wants a Nobel Prize in literature. America demands it! America doesn’t understand why those superannuated Swedes haven’t given one to an American since Toni Morrison in 1993. America wonders what they’re waiting for with Philip Roth and Thomas Pynchon. America wonders how you say “clueless” in Swedish.

OK, enough. But the literature Nobel will be announced this Thursday and if an American doesn’t win yet again, there will be the usual entitled whining — the sound of which has been especially piercing since 2008, when Nobel Academy permanent secretary Horace Engdahl deemed American fiction “too isolated, too insular” and declared Europe “the centre of the literary world.”[...]

Four years after Morrison won the Nobel, David Foster Wallace predicted the current rut in which our literature finds itself in a New York Observer evisceration of John Updike’s “Toward the End of Time.” Though he took particular issue with Updike’s autumnal output, Wallace parceled blame to all of the Great Male Narcissists, with their hermetic concerns and insular little fictions. The following is Wallace’s estimation of Updike, but it could just as easily be said about anyone else in the postwar American pantheon: “The very world around them, as beautifully as they see and describe it, seems to exist for them only insofar as it evokes impressions and associations and emotions inside the self.”

Our great writers choose this self-enforced isolation. Worse yet, they have inculcated younger generations of American novelists with the write-what-you-know mantra through their direct and indirect influence on creative programs. Go small, writing students are urged, and stay interior. Avoid inhabiting the lives of those unlike you — never dream of doing what William Styron did in “The Confessions of Nat Turner,” putting himself inside the impregnable skin of a Southern slave. Avoid, too, making the kinds of vatic pronouncements about Truth and Beauty that enticed all those 19th-century blowhards.

As Bret Anthony Johnson, the director of the creative writing program at Harvard, noted in a recent Atlantic essay, our focus on the self will be our literary downfall, depriving literature of the oxygen on which it thrives: “Fiction brings with it an obligation to rise past the base level, to transcend the limitations of fact and history, and proceed skyward.” This sentiment is a sibling to Wallace’s anger — and both have a predecessor in T.S. Eliot’s 1919 essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” where he called art “a continual extinction of personality.”

The rising generation of writers behind Oates, Roth and DeLillo are dominated by Great Male Narcissists — even the writers who aren’t male (or white). Jhumpa Lahiri is a Great Male Narcissist whose characters tend to be upper-middle-class Indian-Americans living in the comfortable precincts of Boston or New York. Swap the identity to Chinese-American, move the story a couple of generations back on the immigrant’s well-trod saga, and you have Amy Tan. Colson Whitehead started promisingly with “The Intuitionist” and “John Henry Days” but his last novel, “Sag Harbor,” was little more than the bourgeoisie life made gently problematic by the issue of race. Jonathan Safran Foer is a narcissist disguised as a humanist. To his credit, Jonathan Franzen doesn’t even pretend.

That makes for a small literature, indeed. The following are words from citations for recent winners and runners-up of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, inarguably our most prominent commendation for a novelist: tender, warmth, heartbreaking, celebration, polished and sensuous. It’s all small-bore stuff, lack of imagination disguised as artistic humility.

Just look back to 2008, when the slight “Olive Kitteridge” won the Pulitzer, but the Irish-Turkish writer Joseph O’Neill told the story of America in “Netherland” with far more eloquence, insight and humor than an American writer had in more than a decade.

That’s not to say our literature is barren. Dave Eggers has written a novel about the Lost Boys of Sudan, “What Is the What,” and a fine “nonfiction novel” about Hurricane Katrina, “Zeitoun.” Best of all, his 826 reading centers have been a wholly selfless bid to get poor children reading and writing in eight cities. Then there is Aleksandar Hemon, son of Chicago and Sarajevo, who writes the kind of fiction that still seeks to span worlds. Johnston quotes him in the Atlantic: “I reserve the right to get engaged with any aspect of human experience, and so that means that I can — indeed I must — go beyond my experience to engage. That’s non-negotiable.”

Maybe it’s the same story as in politics and industry: America, once great, has been laid low. The difference is that great art needs no tariffs, no financial stimuli, no elections or military campaigns. It only requires courage — though a courage of a special kind — to see beyond oneself, to speak across both space and time via what Ralph Ellison once called “the lower frequencies.”

Indeed, compare the Pulitzer-winning descriptions with these words pulled from the citations of recent Nobel Prize-winners: Revolt, visionary, clash, oppression, subjugating, outsider, barbaric, suppressed. And lastly, the one word that seems most elusive to our writers today, so much so that I fear we’ve become afraid of it: universal.

Alexander Nazaryan, a member of the editorial board of the N.Y. Daily News, has written about culture for the New York Times, the New Republic and the Village Voice, among other publications.

Alexander Nazaryan is a writer and teacher living in Brooklyn. He is writing a novel about Russian immigrants in New York.

Are you done giggling at the irony of that last little bit? I could not possibly care who wins what award for what. Anecdotal evidence and recent experience hints that such attention is often reward for a successful combination of kissing ass, having the “right” worldview, exemplifying cultural trends and, we pray, talent. Everyone who leaves home is talented in this postmodern world so I suppose all those other matters are the only way to weed out the worthy from those who must continue to suffer for their art.

Moreover, while I do think that there is a navel-gazing movement in American writing, my grief with the state of contemporary American lit is that it often strikes me as nihilism wrapped in a big bow of preciousness. I would even go so far as to extend this description to most of contemporary culture. However, none of the above would necessarily prevent one from writing well or exploring the human condition in one’s writing.

I appreciated the article because I do find American literature to be shamefully insular, and because I could once more recommend “Against Eternal Provincialism: An Interview with Aleksandar Hemon.”

V. Some music I like. Deal.

Several friends have advised that I, during such times of sadness and heartache as these, seek comfort in music.

I’m a bit burnt on music, having spent the past several months being told I know nothing about it. I’m no expert, it’s true, but my god I have spent the last 37 years listening to the stuff. What a perfectly ridiculous claim! Fortunately whatever breakup-induced illness had befallen me making me never ever want to listen to another song ever again was short lived, and the other night I found myself dancing around my apartment like a hysterical chorus girl to this:

Katherine Whalen singing “After you’ve gone.”

I’ll close with Ella singing Cole Porter. I may not know anything about music, but those two sure as hell did.

“Just one of those things.”

Should it be that these odds and ends do nothing much for you, it’s no deal-breaker. I’ll not interpret it as rejection and look for a corner in which to mope. I’ll celebrate your uniqueness and thank you, as always, for stopping by.

…and then I’ll begin another essay about how YOU ARE ALL WRONG!

]]> http://poemless.wordpress.com/2011/10/06/odds-ends-tomorrow-we-may-die-so-lets-get-drunk-and-make-love-edition/feed/ 12 poemless 00003412 http://poemless.wordpress.com/2011/10/06/lqd-why-the-pessimism-over-putin%e2%80%99s-return/ http://poemless.wordpress.com/2011/10/06/lqd-why-the-pessimism-over-putin%e2%80%99s-return/#comments Thu, 06 Oct 2011 15:11:42 +0000 poemless http://poemless.wordpress.com/?p=1556 ]]> Fear not – I’m still paying attention to our Vova. While I’ve been making a pathetic effort to compose a response to the recent 2012 Russian election developments, those smart kids Katrina and Stephen have gone and written pretty much what I’ve been thinking, saving me much time and effort. As always, if anyone has a problem with my publishing this in total, they can get in touch. I’m erring on the side of widest distribution. Go buy a Wa Po after you read this or something.

Washington Post: “Why the pessimism over Putin’s return?” By Katrina vanden Heuvel and Stephen F. Cohen

We make no brief for Vladimir Putin as a democrat, but much of the U.S. commentary following the announcement that he will return to the Kremlin as president in 2012 is simplistic morality posing as political analysis.

A Sept. 28 New York Times editorial, for example, insisted that Putin, who “has made clear his disdain for democratic rights,” is casting out the “more liberal and Western-oriented” Dmitry Medvedev. According to a Sept. 26 Post editorial, “Vladimir Putin decided that he would like to be president again, and so he will be.”

But the complexities of Russian politics cannot be reduced to the whims of one man — however powerful he may be. As was clear from polemics in Russian newspapers before the Sept. 24 announcement, Putin’s return to the Kremlin is prompted in part by the preferences of Russia’s ruling class — top officials and the financial elite known as the oligarchy. As the leading pro-Medvedev advocate, Igor Yurgens, acknowledged, “influence groups” favoring Putin “turned out to be ­stronger.” In their eyes, and probably in Putin’s, the ever-tweeting Medvedev was never able to shed his image as an ineffectual political figure. In effect, Medvedev failed his four-year audition for a second term.

The Russian elite, including the Putin and Medvedev camps, seems to understand that the country’s economy urgently requires diversification away from its heavy dependence on oil and gas exports. The state must find other sources of revenue for its growing budget. As Putin warned recently, such reforms will require “bitter medicine,” including higher taxes on the business class, which has prospered grandly under a 13 percent flat tax while many Russians have fallen into poverty. The governing class, eyeing its own interests, wants the tougher and popular Putin to preside over these changes.

It may turn out, as some U.S. commentators have asserted, that Putin’s return is “bad news for the Russian people.” But opinion polls show that, after more than a decade of Putin’s leadership, a majority of Russians still do not associate him with the country’s “bad news.” The reason is clear to anyone who has followed Russia since the end of the Soviet Union: It was Putin who restored pensions, lifted wages and elevated living standards after the traumatic 1990s, when Boris Yeltsin’s policies impoverished the country.

And what about President Obama’s highly touted “reset”? The Russian expert at the Center for American Progress asserts that “Putin’s return next year will reverse all of these positive trends” and “is no good for the United States.” This may be so in the limited sense that the Obama administration unwisely based its reset primarily on Medvedev — while directing gratuitous insults at Putin, such as when Vice President Biden told groups of Russians during his visit to Moscow this year that Putin should not return to the presidency. But the larger assumption that Putin’s return will mean a further diminishing of Russia’s democratic prospects is based on the false premise that Yeltsin, like Medvedev today, was a liberal democrat.

But it was the U.S.-backed Yeltsin who used tanks in 1993 to destroy an elected parliament, thereby reversing the democratization of Russia that began under Mikhail Gorbachev, a reversal accelerated under Putin. And while Medvedev has spoken often in the idioms of Western-style liberalism, it was Medvedev who took personal credit for using military force against Georgia in 2008 and then increasing military spending so sharply that his widely admired finance minister, Alexei Kudrin, resigned last month. Moreover, if Putin is determined to pursue retrograde policies, why would he promise to appoint the “more liberal” Medvedev as prime minister — an office Putin empowered during the past four years?

Indeed, given the real alternatives, and not those that Americans might prefer, why the assumption that Putin’s return to the Kremlin will be bad for Western interests? For example, the New York Times reported Sept. 28 that Western bankers and corporations welcomed the announcement as “a net positive for foreign investors.” It’s also noteworthy that from 2000 to 2008, when Putin was president, he made more important concessions to Washington than Medvedev has during the past four years — giving the Bush administration critical support in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks; bowing to a new round of NATO expansion; swallowing the U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty; and agreeing to an expansion of Russian supply routes for U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Those days of a yielding Putin, however, may be behind us. He said as early as 2002 that “the era of Russian geopolitical concessions [is] coming to an end.” What’s clear is that Putin’s future cooperation with Washington will depend on his understanding of Russia’s national interests and equally on Washington’s cooperation with Moscow, which, despite Obama’s heralded “reset,” has not yet involved any tangible American concessions.

Katrina vanden Heuvel is editor and publisher of the Nation and writes a weekly online column for The Post. Stephen F. Cohen is a professor of Russian studies at New York University and the author, most recently, of “Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives.”

What they said.

]]> http://poemless.wordpress.com/2011/10/06/lqd-why-the-pessimism-over-putin%e2%80%99s-return/feed/ 1 poemless http://poemless.wordpress.com/2011/09/19/ghost-stories/ http://poemless.wordpress.com/2011/09/19/ghost-stories/#comments Mon, 19 Sep 2011 22:33:59 +0000 poemless http://poemless.wordpress.com/?p=1536 ]]> “Toscha, I think we have a child ghost,” my brother confided in me after a recent move to St. Charles, MO. I have the kind of family that has ghosts…

I’m not trying to convince anyone that ghosts do or do not exist. I don’t believe in God. Or angels. Or monsters. I do believe in ghosts. I was raised by a crazy Irish woman. My belief in ghosts may inspire accusations of idiocy, but I think there is enough evidence to the contrary. My belief in ghosts may inspire accusations of an overactive imagination and romanticism, but you don’t need a ghost story to know that about me. It seems a pretty harmless belief to have. No ideological agenda. No evangelizing, no political lobbying. Ghosts neither confirm nor undermine my worldview, no more than bunny rabbits or paintings hung on a wall. They are part of the deal. Bad teeth and ghosts.

Of course it is natural for you to want to challenge such beliefs and offer up alternative explanations for the events I am about to recount. In general I support the scientific method and rational, objective attempts to understand the world around us. But the following stories need not be true or untrue. The point is, I have them. Largely against my will.

The Intersection

Growing up, my mother and brother were quite fond of recounting stories of ghosts, esp, etc. and felt a combination of annoyance at my rigid intellect and pity that it limited my repertoire of experiences. Whole other worlds I was cut off from, out of sheer stubbornness. Apparently part of their special “gift” included the “knowledge” that I was secretly like them, just less self-aware. I was dragged to psychic readers who nodded in agreement. Oh I had it. It. I was just too busy hating the world and sticking my nose in books. This was all discussed in the way old women might sit around a bridge table mewing on about how Pearl’s granddaughter who works at the soup kitchen could be a real catch if she just put some effort into her looks. Full of unrealized potential, but too myopic to realize it. Well, I pitied them in my own way too. I spent my childhood agnostic and became a professed atheist at the age of 9. And they were still praying. As if that is how things got done. Pathetic.

One night, dark, a bit wet, I sat in the front seat of my father’s truck as he drove me home from a friend’s house. We came to a stoplight and sat chatting. It wasn’t a rural road. It wasn’t the city. It was one of those depressing arteries that run through what we might now call the exurbs, lined sometimes by undeveloped land, sometimes by fast food joints, the occasional mall or church. Not enough traffic to create lively atmosphere, but enough so that if a person walked out into the middle of the highway someone would notice. I turned my eyes away from our discussion and back to the intersection to find a man standing right in front of the truck. The moment I realized someone was standing in the street, looking me in the eyes, the light turned green, and before I could scream for my father to stop, he hit the gas and … we didn’t hit anyone. My father continued talking while I sat there in shock. What had just happened? Traffic had moved normally, no thud, no horns, no screams, no sirens. Maybe I’d imagined it. Obviously I’d imagined it! No one dresses like that nowadays. A floppy wide-brimmed hat. Overalls? Maybe it was just the traffic lights and rain playing tricks with my eyes. No. This was not a figure, not a a shape. I can still see the expression on his face, feel our eye contact. Soon my father noticed I’d stopped talking. “What’s wrong? Hey, you look like you’ve just seen a ghost. [For real he said that.] What’s going on?” I began to cry inconsolably but couldn’t form any words. We got home and walked in the door. “Toscha’s upset about something and won’t talk to me about it. Maybe you can find out what’s going on with her. Cried the whole way home…” my father pronounced to my mother. For hours I could not speak. I could barely breathe. I could only nod “no” during the following interrogation. No, nothing happened at my friend’s. No, no one had done anything to me. No, it wasn’t school. No, it wasn’t a boy. Eventually I gathered myself. “But it’s stupid. … There was a man in the intersection. … And we drove through him. … I mean, you know, through him.” I sat on the ottoman opposite my mother’s chair, collapsed into her lap and resumed sobbing.

“Well, these things happen,” my mother consoled me.

Try as I might, I was unable get the image of the mysterious man out of my head. I believe the word “haunted” is appropriate here. So this professed atheist began to pray – to whom or what I cannot say. For him. Whoever, whatever he was, he’d seemed sad and scared and imploring. I prayed for peace for his soul. Again and again.

What else was there to do?

The Farmhouse Fire

My father’s German ancestors had come to America in the 19th Century and set up shop on some land outside of St. Louis. I wasn’t too close to his family. An aunt and uncle lived about 30 minutes away on this ancestral land, but we visited them maybe 7 times in 18 years. The farm was still operational and, I suspect, still a significant source of income, despite the occasional flooding from the Mississippi River. In fact, several of those 7 trips involved all night sandbagging operations. To this day I remember my aunt and uncle as incredibly charming, polite, educated and cosmopolitan – uncommon traits in his family. They lived in a tasteful modern home. Not much of what you’d think of when you think of farms, apart from the surrounding swaths of soybeans and corn, and my great grandmother Hildegard’s house.

My great grandmother lived on the farm, within view of my aunt and uncle’s home, and we would walk over to see her during our visits. I never knew her well as she’d become senile even before I was born. She must have been nearly 100, and everything in the farmhouse seemed to out date even her. Both she and the house were tiny, so with the decor, it was like a doll house. A musty dollhouse. A musty dark dollhouse. There was electricity, but I never saw it used. Between the claustrophobia-inducing scale, the heavy fabrics laden with a century of smells and the struggle to converse with someone who has no concept of what decade it is, our visits sucked the air out of me, making me lightheaded and gasping for oxygen when we left. I never understood how anyone could live there. The tasteful modern home of my aunt and uncle was only a few yards away, and I secretly imagined my great grandmother normally lived there, with them, and just sat in this dollhouse-farmhouse when we visited. Like for historical reenactment. But I knew that wasn’t true.

After my great grandmother died, my uncle, who ran the volunteer fire department, offered up her house to trainees. I guess I wasn’t the only one unnerved by the place. We came over that day to ooh and awe, but also I suspect for moral support. We were after all, destroying a bit of family history. I don’t know if it was the German immigrants who built the tiny farmhouse, but if not, it had to have been their children.

It was an overcast autumn day and the orange flames against the steel sky were captivating and somber. The women sat in my aunt and uncle’s kitchen watching the blaze across the way and drinking coffee while the men supervised outside. The volunteer firefighters seemed not terribly concerned about putting out the fire in a swift manner and the dollhouse-farmhouse was quickly engulfed. My uncle took Polaroids and came inside and handed them to us. We politely thumbed through them. Dollhouse-farmhouse being prepped for fire. Dollhouse-farmhouse set on fire. Dollhouse-farmhouse on fire. Young woman in a turn of the century dress coming out of the front door of the burning dollhouse-farmhouse. Dollhouse-farmhouse burnt down… Wait. What? “Hey, hand me back that picture,” my mother requested. Apparently she had been the only one looking at them with interest, not just politely shuffling them and passing them on. “Who is that?” she asked my aunt. “What?” I demanded. She handed me the photo and cocked her head in that, “Can you believe that shit?” way she always did.

A young woman, maybe 20, stood in the frame of the front door of the burning house. She was transparent and her face was a blur, but otherwise, it was clearly a fucking woman on the fucking porch where no women were, let alone a woman with a mass of curly hair and a full length, high neck dress cinched at the waist. There was a collective gulp, a shooting about of looks, a raising of eyebrows. And then, as if the person in the picture were, you know, a normal person, not a “person who can’t be seen with the naked eye and has probably been dead for a century while this here photo was taken an hour ago” person, a discussion commenced in which attempts were made to identify this beautiful creature who may have occupied the house we just destroyed. If anyone questioned the idea that it was a ghost, they kept the fact to themselves. Perhaps they were too polite. Perhaps you’d need to be mad to look at a photograph of a woman and declare it to be anything otherwise. We poured more coffee. The charred remains of the dollhouse-farmhouse stood ominous in the cold autumn evening.

They gave my mother the Polaroid. At some point I got it, after she died, probably, when I went through her belongings. My brother recently asked me for it. I don’t know where it is and I am sure as hell not going to look for it. I can go the rest of my life never seeing a photo of a god damned (possibly literally) ghost again. I don’t even want it in my home. I may have destroyed it. How awful. Imagine, you are just sitting at home, already existentially cut off from the world by death, and then someone sets fire to your home. No one you know is alive. You have nowhere to go now.

Where did she go?

The Seated Woman

“How did you like it?”
“I really prefer Moscow. I could never live in St. Petersburg.”
“Moscow is a city of the living. Petersburg is a mausoleum.”
“You have no idea.”

St. Petersburg, Russia. Halloween. We’d raided the Maly Theatre’s costume shop and went gallivanting around nightclubs dressed like Pushkin characters.

For our excursion, we’d been set up in a hotel/dormitory steps from a magical little bridge guarded by golden griffins. Late one night I left my chaperon-approved lodging and skittered through the dark, winding snow-filled side-streets, passing countless cats lurking in door- and alleyways and the occasional drunk falling out of a dimly lit cafe, to my friend’s apartment by the Fontanka. I felt like a Dickens character. The city, cleaner, safer, more civilized and attractive than Moscow by miles, gave me the creeps. I’d wanted to leave from the moment I arrived. I was thankful to at least have someone to stay with. A home with a family and a heavily occupied kitchen table. Because I had to get out of that hotel.

My first night in town, during a fitful sleep, I sensed someone enter our room of the hotel/dormitory. Having had my share of experiences fending off the thieves who preyed upon American travelers in Russian dormitories, I sat up ready to pummel my unwelcome guest with the first object I could grab. There was no one there to pummel when I opened my eyes. I returned to a not-quite sleep/not-quite awake state. I thought my roommate opened the door, left, and came back in. She did this several times throughout the night. She wasn’t having much luck sleeping either, judging by the frequency with which the door opened and closed, each time letting in a blade of the light from the hall … though each time I’d look, she was back in bed. Trying to combat disorientation and exhaustion, I closed my eyes tightly and begged sleep to come. Each time I did this I saw the same image: a woman was sitting on the chair by the dressing table at the foot of our beds. What horrible dreams now, I muttered, pulled the covers over my head and waited for the long night to end. Dawn could not come soon enough. 4am. 5am. 6am. … 7am. … 8am … That’s when I truly began to appreciate how far north of the equator we were.

Sometime around 9am we both sat up and discussed the possibility of just getting on with our day. The sun had not come up, per se, but the sky had lightened to a dreary overcast grey.

“You had trouble sleeping too?” I grumbled.
“Yeah, I finally gave up trying,” my roommate lamented.
“Where were you going all night? The lounge? Anything exciting happen?”
“I didn’t go anywhere.”
“Oh? I must have dreamt it…”
“Yeah…”
We both looked at that chair by the dresser at the foot of our beds, and back at each other.
“Look. Can we get that fucking chair out of here?” she said. We couldn’t haul it into the hallway fast enough, even knowing we’d risk the wrath of the stern, potoatoesque woman whose singular purpose in life was to make certain all house rules were obeyed at all times. We got a lecture.

The following day the chair reappeared in the room

The following night I began my trek to the apartment on the Fontanka.

The House on State Street

Many of the residents of my hometown of Alton, Illinois will tell you that they live in the most haunted small town in America. Even as a believer in ghosts, I find this difficult to digest. What about, oh, all of New England? Still, more often than not, you can find an out-of-towner trolling our streets in search of paranormal activity. Underground railroad, Civil War cemetery, birthplace of assassins and jazzmen … we’ve had our share of difficult history. Throw in the Victorian mansions, steep cobblestone streets, antique shops and riverboats and if ghosts didn’t exist, we’d have to invent them.

When my mother remarried, she moved into a large old brick house on State Street, one of the main avenues in the historical district which begins up near the old orphanage, winds its way down the bluffs past Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church and ends at the Mississippi River. I came to stay with them for a bit during a hiatus from college. For some reason, I was given a room on the first floor, despite a number of unoccupied bedrooms on the second floor, as well as a converted attic. “So is this place haunted?” I flippantly asked my mother as I unpacked. Seemed to fit the bill. “Nope.” I was kind of bummed. Living in the most haunted place in America and I never get a ghost? I felt reassured though. The idea of a ghost was exciting, but the possibility of having a whole floor to myself at night with undead roaming about was not.

That night I awoke several times to the sound of someone moving up and down the back stairwell which led from the attic to the basement. (The front stairs led from the foyer to the upstairs rooms.) The head of my bed abutted the stairwell wall, and the rhythmic creaking was impossible to ignore. I waited for a glimpse of kitchen light to appear under my bedroom door, for the sound of running water, for the tv in the living room to come softly on. And waited. Maybe it was the dog or one of the cats. Maybe it was just the house settling. Maybe it wasn’t. The procession up and down the stairs continued like clockwork every night. Too slow, heavy and deliberate to be a pet. Too pointless to be human. “Mom, are you sure this house isn’t haunted.” “These old houses make noises, Toscha.”

I’d been there a few weeks before my wide-eyed and mischievous step-sister pounced. “So have you heard her yet?! You know this place has ghosts? Oh yeah, we went to the historical society and did the research and everything. It’s a Judge, he’s the mean one, and his sister, who never married. She’s harmless. Surprised you haven’t noticed them yet. She’s in the attic and walks down the back stairs at night. He’s in the front stairway. It’s why no one uses the front one.”

“You lied.”
“I didn’t want to unnecessarily upset you.”

Unlike my previous experiences, I never actually saw our supernatural housemates on State Street. The front staircase was the type you wanted to run up or down without looking behind you. As for the spinster, once I accepted her presence as a fact, life went on as normal. A door would open and you’d say, “Please close the door,” and the door would close. Same with the lights. It was quite something. Often, when standing at the kitchen sink, a window in front of me and the stairwell behind me, I’d sense someone at my back. I could not look up for fear of seeing a second party in the window’s reflection. ” Please go,” I’d whisper, and the feeling would pass. The attic noises were difficult to ignore, even for my step-father, who vehemently does not believe in ghosts. He would routinely awake to the sounds above him, get his shotgun (yes, shotgun) and take it up to the attic, ready to assail a thuggish intruder. “Get ‘em?” we’d tease. “Shut up.”

On holiday break one year, a group of us students piled into a car and drove home from Northwestern. According to the plan, I was the first to be dropped off, and the others would stay with me for the night before continuing their cross-country trek back to their respective parents. With five visitors in the house, someone had to sleep in the attic. “There’s a whole bedroom up there, you’ll have the space to yourself,” my mother assured a young man travelling with us. “Or you can sleep on the couch if you want,” I said, flashing a look at my mom. The young man opted for the attic. The next morning we all wandered bleary-eyed into the kitchen for coffee and home-made breakfast. “Sleep well?” I asked, nervously, doing my best fake nonchalance act. The responses ranged from exuberant exclamations of gratitude to the polite nods of people unable to converse before coffee. The young man remained silent. “You don’t look like you slept well…” I fished. His voice cracked, “No.” He was a solid shade paler than the previous night and visibly shaken. I sat up and proclaimed, “The attic’s haunted! Oh yes, there’s a ghost and…” As I eagerly explained the whole story to my captive breakfast audience, the young man shot me a harsh accusatory look, as if to suggest he’d been subjected to an evil experiment against his will. I apologized. Sincerely. I never asked what happened to him that night. The look on his face alone was enough to sate my curiosity.

Years later the old house was sold. It became unreasonable to maintain a 6 bedroom home with ancient wiring and incurable drafts once all the children had grown and left. On moving day, the last thing to be removed from the home were the pets, who’d gone missing. We called, we searched, we offered treats and made threats. I knew the one place I hadn’t looked yet. I gathered all my nerve, and walked up the back stairs all the way to the attic to find the most remarkable of scenes: The pets, gathered round in a semi-circle, sitting at attention, eyes fixated on the same point in space. They looked at me, and then back at … well … It broke my heart. “I’m sorry. They can’t stay. They have to go now. A new family is going to move in, with children, and pets. You will not be alone. Say goodbye, you guys, we have to go.” I scooped up the cats. One made a break for it and headed back up the stairs, as if some force were drawing them to that room. I went back for her. Pets in tow, everyone waved goodbye to the old house on State Street as we all drove away for the last time.

Well. Not everyone.

Who knows if ghosts are real or not. Like love and inspiration and art and dreams, they fall into a category of phenomena that need not be explained to send our hearts racing and heads spinning, to make us reassess the nature and limitations of our own existence, to encourage humility and wonderment and courage. Which is pretty cool. For all my intellectual rigidity and stubbornness, I can get behind all that.

All that and a good story.

]]> http://poemless.wordpress.com/2011/09/19/ghost-stories/feed/ 3 poemless http://poemless.wordpress.com/2011/09/02/the-seasons-of-september/ http://poemless.wordpress.com/2011/09/02/the-seasons-of-september/#comments Fri, 02 Sep 2011 22:47:48 +0000 poemless http://poemless.wordpress.com/?p=1528 ]]> As a young girl, I was a shy and awkward and only capable of approximating happiness when left alone in my room with my books open and my door locked. For some inexplicable reason, or most likely lack of reason, my parents never sent me to camp or distant relatives’ homes during the summer. So I spent three months each year alone in my room, books open and door locked. I was not so much anti-social as anti-sports, -hot weather, -playing in the dirt, -bugs, -lack of structure and -the other kids in my neighborhood. I had friends. But they mostly read too. I grew up in a nowhere Midwestern town that provided limited opportunities for non-outdoorsy summer recreation. I’d spend three months agitatedly waiting for September to arrive on my doorstep, proclaiming the end of my miserable summer. I’d sense her approach in advance, like that of an aging diva who replaces lost bone density with equal quantities of expensive perfume. Spring arrives like an unexpected gift, summer’s arrival is only appreciated once it begins to annoy and winter appears in a single magical event. Autumn arrives like the guest of honor whose presence in the room is felt long before an official introduction. The the dry, crisp earthy aromas of autumn would come crashing into the pungent odors of overripe late summer gardens, making me delirious. Leaves began the dance that would eventually tear them from their limbs. Life reemerged from its summer stupor. Almanacs be damned, September signified for me renewal.

September. A new school year, new teachers, new books, new friends, new dramas, new clothes. A return to the routine of the intellectual stimulation, direction and structure provided by education. I could thrive again after three months of forced stagnation.

September. The Expo, the local town carnival. I fucking LOVE carnivals. I know… what’s a classy girl like me see in such low-brow dreck? I could go off making references to David Lynch or Fellini at this point, but the truth is, as a kid, I just thought they were mad fun. Oh sure, I was still a disaffected kid who judged everyone else having a fine time, their cliques, their cheep thrills, their mirrored Def Leopard pictures. But put me on fast ride and I no longer worried about the exploitation of goldfishes or the ethics of shooting toys for sport. Smart girls need stupid fun too.

September. Most and least importantly, my birthday. This was usually celebrated at the local Italian joint across the street from the fair. I was never fond of being the center of attention. Yet I was pleased to have one day each year when people were expected be nice to me and give me cake. So that my birthday was listed comfortably on a larger menu of events anticipated by the general public suited me perfectly. I wasn’t passed over like those born around the winter holidays, but neither was I a spectacle of my own. Ideal.

As I grew up, carnival rides were replaced by strolls down leafy city streets, the thrill of shopping for the newest fashions was replaced by that of unpacking favorite old sweaters and boots, textbooks were replaced by the fall issue of Vogue. Birthdays came to have less import. Maybe a friend or lover takes you to dinner. Maybe a family member sends a card. With age, there is far less pressure for everyone to pay you attention, and it is perfectly acceptable to be miserable even when they do. As an adult far from home, I used to stress out about if I should even tell people about my birthday, and how to do that. But facebook has solved that problem for us all. Like a good wine, both September and I improved with age. Until the age of 25.

In the wee morning hours of September 7th, 2000, I awoke to a phone call from my father. My mother had been in and out of the hospital with cancer for months, so when the phone rang at 4 am I knew to answer it. So when I was told I needed to come home now, my bags were already packed. “She isn’t going to make it,” my step-father struggled to get the words out of his throat. “Give her the goddamned phone, Paul. Hold it to her ear, understand?” … “Mom, I am on my way right now, going to the airport right now, I will be there by 8. And you WILL BE ALIVE when I get there. You will wait for me, understand? You are not allowed to die before 8am!!! Do you understand?!” “I love you,” a shallow whisper responded. As the setting for September tragedies are want to be, the morning sky in St. Louis that day was a perfect blue accented with fluffy white clouds and gossamer sunshine, as if heaven had agreed to meet its new resident halfway along her trip… My step-brother drove me from the airport to Barnes Jewish Hospital. She’d moved. No longer in the patients’ hall but the dying people’s hall on the other side of the ward. She was still alive and communicative. I promised her we’d be ok. Last rights were given. It was noon and no one had eaten since yesterday. The boys went down to the cafeteria. My sister and I sat chatting. When no one was looking my mother took her last breath.

My brother and I were whisked into the office of a staff social worker. “How are you doing?” she asked. My jaw dropped, and my brother screamed at her, “My fucking mother just died how do you think I am doing bitch!”

My brother and I went to the Expo after my mom died. Just the two of us. Now adults. In grief, in shock, in hell. We rode the fast rides. And rode them again. And again. We were singing at the top of our voices and laughing hysterically as we spun around and tilted about and were jerked to and fro at violent speeds. The carnie must have thought we were high. I’ve done enough drugs and can tell you nothing in the universe ever felt better or more right than riding those carnival rides with my brother that day. I’ve always appreciated the cathartic effect of a good carnival ride. But it was more this time. It had always, always been the three of us: My mom, me, my brother. Like the Three Musketeers. Like the Holy Trinity. It would never be the three of us again. Only the two of us were on this scary ride of life now. Holding on for dear life. Scared girls need stupid fun too.

A few days later, during one of the endlessly repeated conversations that take place when someone dies, leaving behind their stuff and their people, I got up the nerve to eek out, “…um. today’s my birthday. i’m so sorry…” For the next 10 years, I went through every September 12th feeling exactly as I did that day. “…um. today’s my birthday. i’m so sorry…” It was enough guilt to expect someone to bake me a cake just because I had made the journey out of the womb through no effort or ambition of my own. It was more than enough guilt to expect someone to bake me a cake while they were in the midst of a personal tragedy. To expect someone to bake me a cake in the midst of a national tragedy… Best to pretend birthdays don’t exist. Such a contrived and ridiculous rite cannot compete with the reality and gravity of Tragic Death.

And that’s what this month came to signify for me. Death. My old dependable friend September had turned on me like a dog. The last weeks of August had me bracing for emotional disaster, and when it came time to turn the page of the calendar I was nauseous with dread. Two weeks. Get through these two weeks and you are home free. Until Christmas. Or Thanksgiving. For a while. The worst will be over anyway. For a while. I was given and I took every form of advice about how to deal with my annual grief. But no plan of attack for acknowledging or not acknowledging these anniversaries made a bit of difference. There was absolutely no avoiding the pain and misery I felt for the first two weeks of September. Even a bad tooth can be pulled. There is no remedy for grief. There is no way to opt out of a month. I just had to sit and take it. Suffering. Loss. Resentment. At my mother. At my country’s foreign policy. At being born. At September.

…

On September 1st 2011, I awoke with a massive headache and a nosebleed but conspicuously little resentment or existential suffering.

When the year began I was contemplating offing myself because of circumstances largely out of my control. Nine months later, I am content, centered and enjoying life because of circumstances I’ve created myself. I did what I knew had to do to pull myself out of melancholia, even if it meant resorting to unorthodox measures. I made new and dear friends. I took scary risks, knowing I’d survive and have no regrets regardless their outcome. I’ve even begun to entertain the possibility of good outcomes. I’ve been wounded and I’ve learned how to treat my wounds. I do yoga every fucking day. I look in the mirror and quite like this smart vulnerable beautiful fucked up raw wise courageous curious charming person I see. I had promised my mother I would be ok. The only thing I resent right now is that she can’t see that I am. I miss her with a pain that is unearthly. But I don’t dread the pain, fight the pain, resent the pain. It just is. I don’t dread, fight or resent being born. I just was. No one deserves a cake just because they made the journey out of the womb, and no one deserves remembering just because they’ve long since taken their last breath. But damn it all I do deserve one after what I accomplished this year. And so does my mother. She must have done something quite right after all.

If I have learned anything from my Septembers, it is that nothing lasts forever. The day will come when I am not feeling so fearless and fabulous. When I hate my mother again. When a birthday will be another reminder of everything I have yet to do. The past, the future, birth, death… This time I am more interested in the present, in living life, in the cultivating and gathering of ideas and relationships and experiences, in the fruits of my labor, in the feast of gratitude. Harvesting the bounty. I’m 37 years late to the party, but the almanac and I are finally in sync.

So, who wants to go to the carnival? Grown up girls need stupid fun too.

]]> http://poemless.wordpress.com/2011/09/02/the-seasons-of-september/feed/ 1 poemless http://poemless.wordpress.com/2011/08/15/the-soviet-arts-experience-in-chicago/ http://poemless.wordpress.com/2011/08/15/the-soviet-arts-experience-in-chicago/#comments Mon, 15 Aug 2011 18:30:13 +0000 poemless http://poemless.wordpress.com/?p=1507 ]]> If you have the misfortune to be following me on neither Twitter (because you know a time-suck when you see one) nor Facebook (because I’ve unfriended you), you will have missed my recent proclamation:

I am not Russian.

I’ll give you a moment to digest the news and gather yourselves.

…

Ready? OK.

As some of you may know, our fine city of Chicago is currently playing host to a 16-month long festival of Soviet arts. I was born in neither Russia nor Chicago, but harbor a deep appreciation for both places and devote much of this blog to their various charms and neuroses, some charms and neuroses which have over time become my own. So I would be remiss if I were not to acknowledge a Soviet arts festival being held in Chicago. Being held at my place of employment even. I had planned to actually, you know, see some of the current or upcoming exhibits before writing about them, because anyone can google and you’re all here seeking my infinite wisdom. Unfortunately my wisdom is rather finite in the realm of time-management; I am a chronic procrastinator and may very well not even make it to an Art Institute show until its last day. Or at all. Not much help writing a review of anything after the fact is there? Well, one can’t exactly have an informed opinion about something one’s not even seen (and that goes for having an informed opinion about Midnight in Paris if you walked out after the first few minutes, ahem…) So no wisdom, no reviews. Just some good ol’ пиар.

THE SOVIET ARTS EXPERIENCE

“An unprecedented collaboration showcasing works by artists of the Soviet Union
In one of the largest collaborative artistic efforts across Chicago, twenty-six of the city’s prominent arts institutions will join together in 2010, 2011 and 2012 to present The Soviet Arts Experience, a 16-month-long showcase of works by artists who created under (and in response to) the Politburo of the Soviet Union.

From the poignant string quartets and symphonies of Dmitri Shostakovich to stunning, hand-painted WWII propaganda posters, and from the grand orchestral and ballet music of Sergei Prokofiev to the political satire of Evgeny Shvarts, The Soviet Arts Experience will take patrons behind the Iron Curtain to explore its essence through the creative work of its visual artists, choreographers, composers, and dramatists.

The Soviet Arts Experience is spearheaded by the University of Chicago Presents (UCP), the University’s professional presenting organization. The Soviet Arts Experience sponsors include The University of Chicago, The University of Chicago Arts Council, National Endowment for the Arts, Illinois Arts Council, and The Women’s Board of the University of Chicago.”

Yes, druz’ia, the institution that gave the world Milton Friedman is now celebrating Soviet propaganda. In case you were on the look out for that fourth horseman. Anyway, here’s a short list of some of the current goings on:

I. UofC SCRC: “Adventures in the Soviet Imaginary: Children’s books and graphic art.”

Image from Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

“Two of the most striking manifestations of Soviet image culture were the children’s book and the poster. Both of these media testify to the alliance between experimental aesthetics and radical socialist ideology that held tenuously from the 1917 revolutions to the mid-1930s and defined the look of Soviet civilization. The children’s books and posters featured in “Adventures in the Soviet Imaginary” allow us to relate this new image culture to the formation of new social and cultural identities under the watchful eye of a powerful and oppressive state. They cover a crucial period, from the beginning of Stalin’s Great Breakthrough in 1928 to the re-construction and re-grouping that followed the Great Patriotic War, as the Soviets called World War II. As these works show vividly, there was no ideologically neutral space in the rich and vibrant world of the Soviet imagination. By the same token, though, there was no zone of Soviet life free of the image.

“Adventures in the Soviet Imaginary” is drawn entirely from the collections of the University of Chicago Library. The Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) at the University of Chicago houses a large collection of over 400 Soviet children’s books published between 1927 and 1948, with the majority dated 1930-1935. This collection, the provenance of which is not known, is supplemented by a small but fascinating group of Soviet children’s books from 1930-1931 acquired by the Library as part of the R. R. Donnelley & Sons Company Training Department Library, where they were used in the company’s distinguished apprentice program for printers.”

That’s right. Bit of a matter that, not knowing the provenance… Never mind, it is a collection which, if not exactly rare in subject, is certainly so in volume and context. Do take a bit of time to click through the web exhibit. It’s terribly informative and downright overwhelming in its sheer number of visual materials scanned for your perusal. Some have asked, and no, I did not have a direct role in organizing this exhibit. Most of the pieces were acquired well before my arrival. And to be honest, it is not a particularly engaging topic for me. I did not even enjoy American children’s books as an American child. Not to mention that repetition is an asset when it comes to brainwashing little children, but not so much when it comes to what you have to look at for 8 hours a day. I do get a kick of the outright propagandist and defiantly optimistic style of early Soviet aesthetics, as well as the historical creepiness factor. But as a Russian professor of mine once noted, when it comes to theory based art, the theory is usually more interesting than the art. Last night as I sat looking through a friend’s collection of old Melodiia children’s records from the 1970′s I was, though enamoured both of their artifactual value and of this person’s existence in my life, not moved to listen to them or anything. … But I did learn of Russian Pinnochio, Buratino.

If you are in the area, you can check out the exhibit of Soviet Children’s books in our super snazzy new exhibition space! from August 22 – December 30, 2011 at the Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

If you are on campus to check out the Soviet children’s books exhibit, the Smart Museum of Art will also be presenting several exhibits as part of the Soviet Arts Experience showcase:

II. Smart Museum: “Process and Artistry in the Soviet Vanguard.”

“This intimate exhibition offers a rare glimpse at the experimental creative processes that generated iconic Soviet propaganda in the 1920s and 1930s. Featuring works by Gustav Klucis and Valentina Kulagina, it traces classic compositions from preparatory drawings and collage studies to approved designs to posters and other mass-produced print material.”

III. Smart Mueum: “Vision and Communism.”

Viktor Koretsky. Ne Boltai Collection. Image from Smart Museum of Art.

“In captivating images of survival and suffering, the postwar artist and designer Viktor Koretsky (1909–1998) articulated a Communist vision of the world utterly unlike that of conventional propaganda.

Designed to create an emotional connection between Soviet citizens and others around the globe, Koretsky’s posters heralded the multiculturalism of Benetton and MTV, while offering a dynamic alternative to the West’s sleek consumerism. Vision and Communism offers a striking new interpretation of visual communication in the U.S.S.R. and beyond.”

You know me, I am all about offering a dynamic alternative to the West’s sleek consumerism… I do recommend these shows simply because they are at a small, free, intimate, unpretentious little museum that doubles as a nice place for coffee or lunch while on campus. I believe “accessible” is the word.

The shows run respectively from August 30, 2011 – January 22, 2012 and September 29, 2011 – January 22, 2012 at the Smart Museum of Art.

Smart Museum of Art.

Perhaps the most anticipated exhibition of the Soviet Arts Experience is now taking place at the Art Institute of Chicago. On the one hand, you’ll not have to hike all the way down to Hyde freaking Park to see it. On the other hand, you will have to pay to do so (with a few exceptions but I’m so not going into the convoluted admissions policies and passes of the Art Institute here.) On the other, it’s probably worth it. And you should have that third hand looked at…

IV. Art Institute: “Windows on the War: Soviet TASS Posters at Home and Abroad, 1941–1945.”

A. Rachevskii. Ne boltai! Collection. Image from Art Institute of Chicago.

“Seventy years ago, in the immediate aftermath of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, a group of artists and writers in Moscow joined forces under the auspices of the TASS News Agency to help reassure and rouse the Soviet citizenry by producing large-scale posters—TASS Windows. Despite the brutal regime of Joseph Stalin, creativity flourished among these diverse artists and writers as they attempted to find purpose while working in and for a totalitarian state. Producing a poster design for nearly every day of the war with a labor-intensive technical virtuosity previously unheard of in poster production, these artists committed themselves to the defense of the motherland. In collaboration with the Ne boltai! Collection of 20th-century propaganda, Windows on the War marks the first time these enormous handmade posters have been displayed in the United States since World War II, bringing to the fore many Soviet artists little known in this country.”

Oh, it gets better:

“In 1997, 26 tightly wrapped brown paper parcels were discovered deep in a storage area for the Department of Prints and Drawings. Their presence was a mystery, their contents a puzzle. [Whew - SCRC wasn't alone...] As conservators and curators carefully worked to open the envelopes, they were surprised and intrigued to find that they contained 50-year-old monumental posters created by TASS, the Soviet Union’s news agency. The idea for a major exhibition began to take shape.

Impressively large—between five and ten feet tall—and striking in the vibrancy and texture of the stencil medium—some demanded 60 to 70 different stencils and color divisions—these posters were originally sent abroad, including to the Art Institute, to serve as international cultural “ambassadors” and to rally allied and neutral nations to the endeavors of the Soviet Union, a partner of the United States and Great Britain in the fight against Nazi Germany. In Windows on the War, the posters will be presented both as unique historical objects and as works of art that demonstrate how the preeminent artists of the day used unconventional technical and aesthetic means to contribute to the fight against the Nazis, marking a major chapter in the history of design and propaganda.

For most of the 20th century, relations between the United States and the Soviet Union hovered between uneasy alliance and outright hostility. The period addressed by this exhibition—the years 1941–45—represents a fleeting moment when the nations were joined in a purposeful bond, a coalition attested to repeatedly in the posters of the TASS studio. This spirit of cooperation was short-lived, however; as early as 1945, an “iron curtain” began to descend between East and West, the seeds of which had been stealthily germinating throughout the war years. By the end of 1946, it was clear that the wartime alliance against Fascism would be supplanted by old allegiances and enemies in a budding “cold” war. Likewise, images of camaraderie from the World War II era were quickly buried, and iconographies of fear and suspicion, with their roots in the prewar decades, reemerged.

While the focus of Windows on the War is primarily on the 157 posters on display, viewers will also find their rich historical and cultural context revealed through photographs and documentary material illuminating the visual culture of US–USSR relations before and during the war.”

Some examples:

Artist Unknown. Private collection. Image from Art Institute of Chicago.

Vladimir Ivanovich Ladiagin, Osip Iakovlevich Kolychev. Gift of the USSR Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries. Image from Art Institute of Chicago.

After the Kukryniksy. Ne boltai! Collection. Image from Art Institute of Chicago.

In fact, of the many themes featured in this exhibit, the most immediately compelling for me, who is not so very into war paraphernalia, are the illustrated reminders, as simplistic and hyperbolic as Cold War or current propaganda, of the common goal of the US and Russia during World War II. Never one threatened by romanticism or naivete, the cynical, complicated and pragmatic relationship between our countries for that brief period was at least an admission of interdependence. Our two “evil empires” have indeed shown the ability to support one another despite our mutual tendencies to be arrogant, stubborn and prisoners of our own ideology. I know my crusade to make these two nations understand and appreciate one another makes some people positively nauseous. That it takes something like Nazis to force us to try makes me positively nauseous…

Windows on the War: Themes.
Windows on the War: Artists.
Windows on the War: Writers.

The exhibition of Soviet TASS Posters runs from July 31–October 23, 2011 at the Art Institute of Chicago.

The Art Institute of Chicago.

If you are in or near Chicago and enjoy reading this blog, I do recommend checking out at least one of these events. And do not not go out of spite because you felt you were deliberately mislead into believing I am Russian and therefore you bought me drinks or said something nice to me but it turns out I am just Irish and French and Cherokee and god knows what else (just between us, I think there may be some Chukchi in there) so fuck you, poemless. Don’t be like that. Go see some bad art and great propaganda and get a history lesson and support our local cultural institutions and give a shit about something before you die.

If you are in Russia, you must think I am just thoroughly incomprehensible and obsessive. Can’t imagine why anyone would mistake me for, you know…

Peace out, friends.

Let’s not wait for Nazis next time, ok?

Artist Unknown. Cellini Collection. Image from Art Institute of Chicago.

]]> http://poemless.wordpress.com/2011/08/15/the-soviet-arts-experience-in-chicago/feed/ 10 poemless http://poemless.wordpress.com/2011/08/05/the-cab-ride/ http://poemless.wordpress.com/2011/08/05/the-cab-ride/#comments Fri, 05 Aug 2011 20:14:18 +0000 poemless http://poemless.wordpress.com/?p=1498 ]]>

I don’t take cabs.

I can perhaps count on both hands how many times I have taken a cab in the decade plus I have lived in Chicago. Sprained ankle. Nice dinner with his parents visiting from out of town. Running very late in a brutal downpour. Waiting for the bus for a half hour in dangerous sub-zero temperatures. Sleep-deprived splurges on the last leg home of long journeys elsewhere…

When I was little I would watch movies set in Manhattan and dream of growing up and hailing cabs that would whisk me through bustling city canyons, without me thinking twice about budgets or traffic. These fierce yellow birds would swerve off their courses, swoop by, pick me up, take me to the very important place I was headed, drop me off, and continue on their crazed yet intensely purposeful mission to pick up and drop off the beautiful and remarkable people of the world. Like worker bees buzzing about currying human nectar. Without the nature and country crap.

I don’t even know how to hail a cab with any grace.

I own a CTA pass. I walk. I walk a lot. Even if I had all the money in the universe, I’d walk. I live in a city where I’ll never see everything anyway and there is so much to see. A person can’t properly look at anything from the backseat of a car. Looking takes time. And I’m surrounded by people and places and things demanding that I look. That I stop. That I feel and smell and hear and experience. In a cab, one looks at the meter, the time, the light that isn’t turning green; one feels their thighs stick to the grimy vinyl seat; one hears cryptic orders barked over a radio or a driver’s depressing cellphone conversation with his wife; one smells exhaust – both of the car an that of its driver’s existence. If memory is so closely linked to scent, how can you have any good memories from the back of a smelly cab? Frankly it all seems too stressful and hardly worth it. Getting into cab is an admission of defeat in my universe. Not only have I failed to find a more aesthetically gratifying way to get from point A to point B in a timely manner, I’ve also given someone else the responsibility for my safe arrival. And paid handsomely.

I do take public transport. “Aesthetically gratifying” it is not. But the routes are never a surprise, I pay a flat fee in advance and know precisely what to expect, even if that means knowing to expect the bus to be 20 minutes late. Once on a train or bus, I can read leisurely, sleep, change my mind mid-route about where I’d like to go, exit of my own volition. I’m prone to claustrophobia and especially appreciative of that last part. And even trains and buses must be walked to. There is no calling them to come and get you. You actually have to make some effort, which forces you to assess your priorities. There is a certain resourcefulness and independence about it all that is appealing and comfortable; it builds confidence, is democratic and reliable, this lifestyle I have. I am rather fond of it. I could go the rest of my life and never get in another car… We do things for so long, create a narrative of who we are and who we are not. They are beautiful stories. Like those Manhattan movies. And often about as realistic.

One day a cab pulled up in front of my apartment.

I had not rang for a cab. I had nowhere to go. And wherever I might need to be in the future I could get there on my own thank you very much. But when the cab swerved a few lanes over in my direction and opened the door, I got in. Maybe I was rather fond of the man behind the wheel too. Maybe I’d hailed it like a mythical siren. Maybe I’d heard too many Irish faerie tales of the cóiste bodhar and Russian anecdotes about black Volgas and I was in the mood for a little danger, or maybe just the kind of fun you can always find a way to justify on long hot summer nights. Maybe it was nice to have a person drive you around for awhile. After all, it would probably be just a quick cruise around the block. Neither of us had packed for a road trip.

I’m venturing to guess that most people know where they’re going when they slide into the back seat of a cab. They may not be able to give directions, they may know a name but not an address, they may have never before been to where they are going, but if absolutely no other information is imparted upon embarking upon a cab ride, a destination is. It’s practically a requirement, a prerequisite before one can enroll in “How to take a cab 101.” Cabs are not for joy rides or road trips or sight-seeing. Cabs are for people who actually have some expectation of where they’d like to go and how long it will take to get there. I slid into a cab having no destination, no expectation of where I’d like to go or how long it would take to get there. But then, I’d slid into the front seat…

I let the cabbie do all the driving.

Aside from the small matter of having no clue where the hell I wanted to go, and uhm, he being the cabdriver, I also don’t drive. I can’t drive. I am a terrible driver. My track record is not encouraging. I failed my driver’s test on the first try. I could handle cruise control on a freeway, sure, but any complicated maneuvering, like backing out of a driveway or parking or turning corners inevitably produced in me a full blown panic attack, and it’s a damn miracle no lives were lost as a result of my sheer incompetence. The world is safer without me on the road, I’ll tell you that. The last thing I want is to hurt anyone. I can’t drive. I should not drive. So I don’t. … We do things for so long, create a narrative of who we are and who we are not. What we can and cannot do. The truth is I am afraid to drive; I am terrified of being behind the wheel. It all began with those traumatic horror movies they show you at an impressionable age with scenes of mangled corpses draped across the dashboard and hood of a sedan, flesh coated in the glass that used to be the windshield, of young lovers who went to prom with the rest of their lives ahead of them and came home in body bags, of their weeping inconsolable parents, of the gore and pain and suffering. That is just WAY TOO much responsibility. I can barely take care of myself. I can’t sign up for that. I mean, technically I can drive. I have good eyes, the capacity for learning new skills, a modicum of coordination … legs. There are people without legs even who drive. I have a driver’s license too. The fact is nothing stops me from operating a motor vehicle except overwhelming fear. And an equally intense loathing of American car culture. But that doesn’t really contribute to this story I’m telling, so forget I mentioned it.

Two people with no destination and no agenda are in the same cab, going in the same direction, together. The ride is scarier, more potentially dangerous and lasts longer than I anticipated. We go over the speed limit and down streets not on maps and across bumpy terrain. “And feeling good was easy, Lord, when he sang the blues. You know feeling good was good enough for me…” If freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose, I began to relax my grip on freedom. But maybe it’s good now and then to have something left to lose. Like your sense of adventure. Like happiness. Like somebody who makes you forget you hate everything or cab rides. No matter where this road takes us, I am having a grand time getting there…

Cabs are not for joy rides or road trips or sight-seeing. Cabs are for people who actually have some expectation of where they’d like to go and how long it will take to get there. Cab rides require a modicum of trust between the driver and the passenger, yes, but you’re not in that car to make friends. Cab rides are awkward and intimate and sometimes intense but beyond an agreement to hold up one’s end of the bargain and not harm the other party, there are no obligations. Cab rides are transactional and finite by nature. Eventually everyone has to pay and get out. People only ride around blissfully forever together in fairy tales, and on ridiculous ponies, not in Checker Cabs. So as inexplicably as the cab driver had pulled up to my curb and opened its door, inviting me in, it slammed on the brakes, opened its door and told me I needed to get out. And I paid. More handsomely than I would have liked to, reinforcing every foul opinion I ever had of cab rides.

The next morning I got up and went for a walk.

…

We do things for so long, create a narrative of who we are and who we are not. They are beautiful stories. Like this one, with its tidy ending. But stories are for writing and life is for living, and reality is a hell of a lot more interesting than beautiful stories.

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