"People and Time"

23.June

Have you ever had an idea that you believed, for just a flicker of time, to be a brilliant new discovery?  For instance, have you ever thought, “I should try putting some of this peanut butter on one of those marshmallows and then eat it.”  After which, you try this “new” concoction and think, “damn, that was pretty tasty! Why hasn’t someone else come up with this?”  Then, almost instantaneously, you realize that not only has someone else perceived this idea, but they have gone even further and created a paste out of marshmallows in order to make the creation of a “peanut butter and fluff” sandwich even simpler.  Perhaps this hasn’t happened to you, but just now, as I was searching through my collection of food ingredients from America, this exact scenario occurred.   

Why exactly I wanted to eat anything in the first place is quite strange.  Just moments before this “discovery,” I was sitting at the dinner table with my Russian mom telling her I couldn’t eat anymore because I have a “маленький живот (small stomach).”  To which she responded, “у тебя есть животок, даже не живот (you have a “small stomach/diminutive form of stomach” not even a stomach.” I adore the incessant use of diminutives in this culture. 

Today while walking around Vladimir with Masha I told her that I don’t like the sun because it makes me sneeze.  She said that I should move to Peter.  I said I couldn’t move to Peter because I also don’t like the wind.  Then, while we were standing in Pushkin park, chatting about film, literature and the educational systems in America and Russia, some women came up to us and asked, “девушки, на что мы смотрем (girls, what are we looking at,” and referenced the vast land in front of us.  Then we discovered that they didn’t know because they were here on a trip from Peter.  After they left, Masha told me that is how she knows Russia is a small country - when you talk about a city and then people appear who live in that city.  Or, when you meet a person from Irkutsk on a train, who knows someone in Samara with whom you’ve already become acquainted even though you live in Vladimir (and no, the train was not on the way to Irkutsk or Samara). 

24.June

Momentarily, I was removed from my current life situation.  While talking on the phone with my mom, about her life and my impending return to the states, I felt quite overwhelmed.  I started to realize that, in many ways, the time I’ve spent living in Russia, has been a sort of hiatus from real life.  Certainly it hasn’t always been easy, but my only real responsibilities have been getting my work done and showing up for class and excursions.  There have been no lasting relationships I’ve had to work to maintain, practically no household chores (aside from laundry and dishes), no genuine money worries (as upon coming here I decided to plunge myself further into debt via student loans and credit cards) and thus no need to say no to any opportunity that sounds even remotely appealing. However, in August, I’m faced with a move to Virginia (which will be very pricey), enrollment in a program in which I’m actually working towards a degree (a PhD for that matter), and the prospect of living alone in a town I’m unfamiliar with.   Perhaps none of it matters.  It’s all my life.  I can honestly say I have never felt like I’ve “lived” more than I have during my time in Vladimir.

When I walked out of my room, where I’d been speaking English on the phone and pondering life in America, several familiar sites greeted me and the sounds of Russian voices and working hands pulled me away from the future and dropped me directly on my ass into the present.  My brother-in-law was sawing some wood (completing the “ремонт” that the actual carpenters failed to properly finish), mom was in the kitchen cooking, my sister was on the balcony sorting through various herbs, and my niece was playing a game of “lock mom on the balcony,” which morphed into “make faces at aunt through the window.”  Then sister and mother started arguing over taking niece on a walk, and brother-in-law, covered in sweat and shirtless, requested that someone go buy him more cigarettes.  Whether I was running away from a past life or not, this is my current reality, and I can honestly say, that in many ways, I prefer it to any life I’ve lived before.  

25.June

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRETT!