is this thing cool or what ?..

summer

Brick-o-brak, time travels

I love antique shops. Not for the grand opulence of Persian rugs, grandfather clocks or flowery still lives in gilded frames. I love brick-o-brack. Chrystal ink pots, salt-n-pepper shakers, milk glass and kitchy jewelry. I am a comfort craving nostalgia shop junkie convinced somewhere in there is a lost treasure with my name on it. Pathetic.Weird cook books, travel guides, odd art work and anything else with a character -- I can't pass up. And I'm as likely to buy an old menorah as an unusual  challis and proudly display both on one shelf. Stillness and beauty of old personal things is very intriguing, and intimately inviting. I grew up surrounded by countless antiques, most of which are on permanent display in Pushkin Museum now as my mom couldn't get them out of the country, yet didn't feel right selling them. 16th century Maison china, Faberge figurines, emerald green silver-adorned wine goblets and elaborate petal-like tea services..How surreal was that to have these layers of time and wealth and history within one room in a communal apartment with a shared bathroom and one stove to serve 3 families..That china cabinet to me was a sunken ship full of treasures, in between times like my whole life in that room.  I'd dig it out and dust daily -- grandma made me..They were priceless and intimidating and cold. But the kitchy things I could really play with weren't. The sugar bowl of etched metal -- I saw one recently at a friend's house and felt like we are related. Certain books, coffee pots, old photos. Universal time capsules for those unfortunate lost souls thinking they can somehow capture magic in an old oil lamp, and it will take them to a happy place back in time. I have a rather distorted sense of time and place since I left Russia,  but I'm very aware of these signs that time itself leaves regardless of where I'd be. I racked through a totally foreign (Wisconsin !) antique store today only to discover it full of my own memories..I can't help it, I love my illusions, I love old, I love things, I love old things. I'd say this means I'm getting old, but I loved them since I was 5..Layers of time all around, magnetism of many such things enclosed in one space, out of sync with the outside world, like my old room..I feel home there.

stuff

I'm not at all a minimalist when it comes to architecture, home, clutter..Though I hate mess, I will constantly cultivate meaningful clutter. I GROW things around myself, I form collections out of random objects that spoke to me at one point or another. Never mind the fact that I have kept every hand-written note/letter sent to me in last 25 years AND BROUGHT IT HERE -- years, miles, oceans later. The oldest is a postcard sent to me by dad deployed in Germany when I was 2, he drew and wrote on it with a glitter pen. His works now cover  my walls,  and I can no longer imagine living without -- he gave me back the city I so love and miss..I got a pink medal "born in Leningrad" with a typo on it..Got countless love letters, hate letters, travel itineraries and sketches..You will never see a glass clown or a  fake plant here, but I am a proud owner of multiple time capsules -- a dry branch I picked up on a long walk -- it inspired many paintings once..dry leaves and pine cones and piles of pebbles my daughter brought in over last 2-3 years..I own a photo collage made by an absolutely brilliant and troubled punk An'ka who ended up in some tragic mess in NY. I got shells and nuts and weird bean pods from some exotic bush in Jamaica, got a piece of marble that chipped of a stature in Champs-Elysee's and fell right to my feet. A also have a pocket guide to Paris from 1950 from a woman who died in a nursing home, deeply demented and non-verbal, and no one claimed her things..the photo of her in her 30s was inside. Have an old black-n-white shot of my mom, young, pretty, coy, with a "beehive", pouring a glass of wine to a guy at a party..and  another one of her fiercely  piercing a shoe with a rapier while standing on a chair ON A ROOF. I can go on and on...I am a hopeless pack rat and this clutter will one day become my crypt. I only hope my daughter will save a faded picture of her loopy mom with an Angela Davis Afro at a tender age of 16 or something equally disturbing..

random city angel, this one from Prague

Sade

This Woman is one of the biggest crushes of my life. Her voice somehow became a talisman of my own luck and literally a premonition of good things to come, of hope. Sade. This country most under-rated performer. No one, no countless pounds of mass-produced auto-tuned lady gagas compare to One Diva.  Nothing is an act, nothing staged..This voice of hers, this image. So much power in a little restraint. Its so..honest. Can't categorize her, the woman is above any cliches invented for women on stage. Above and beyond. Like a breath of fresh air, like a favorite novel re-read just in time, sad, delicate, ethereal, Sade.

Nika  says this most every nite before bed, facing her pink rosarie on a giant Justin Bieber poster (her stepsister's) over her bed:
Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum.
Benedicta tu in mulieribus,
et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus.
Sancta Maria, Mater Dei,
ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc,
et in hora mortis nostrae.
Amen.
She says she prays for me.

terms

I am acutely aware of a balance shift going on within me..amazed and amused by it. I never did have a strong sense of self, utterly dissolved in someone fascinating de jour -- they always just magically descended upon me, and I tend to go with the flow..The biggest choices I ever had to make were choices to leave. Leave a man, leave a country, leave nothing in your wake. The way to go was a way to grow..A child changed a lot of that. A hazel-eyed guardian angel carefully watching my every move -- suddenly I'm too cautions, guarded, afraid of heights. She protects me from myself. I take little steps back, every day, I'm giving up something no longer of value..Big chunks of personal freedom, vanity, drama. All that might come back and get the best of me someday, but for now I have neither energy nor desire to "be all that I can be"..to fit in, to keep up..Keep up with what ?..What does society as it is have to offer to someone like me ?..A place in a bar ?..Death by chocolate ?..Please. If it wasn't for motherhood, I'd be completely lost by now.

Veronika

granted..

Wide awake past midnight, love it.. hate it.. . Too many romantic novels on paper and screen polluting my brain lately..Makes me want to write a will. And eat it.  I want to slow down to a point of complete standstill, to a halt. Want to log off and go sit next to Byron playing harmonica mid-day. To go to the beach and lay face down, play dead. Then dig a hole in the sand and lazily watch an ant scrambling for his life. Bury the ant, with a pebble tombstone. Play God, get bored, grant Life, keep the pebble..sleep. Sleep outside, an afternoon siesta. On a luscious lawn, gleaming with pesticides and dew. Kill two hours just contemplating. Look, see. Bounce a ball off the wall with legs kicked up. Three hours till both brain and butt go numb. Easy. Done that before..why not now ?..Now is good. Just too fast . And then there's traffic. And a bored sleepy God playing games with you -- go fast...now slow...now stop..now go..balmy 98F in the shade..hot enough for ya ?..Movement and stillness of objects, time. Taken out  of context, life is fascinating again, 100 times a day, snap shots. Blessed is a random storm that grants you power outage that grants you power to walk away from your day.. 

Bride Flight

This is a hell of a film to see..Life --beautiful, brutal, subtitled. In a age driven by lower expectations and pursuit of happiness this is humbling and inspiring..Post-war Holland, three young women on a plane to New Zealand to start a new life, a young guy falls in love with one of them..another one has his son, and a third one will raise him as her own..A chance encounter will define all 4 lives and no, no happy ending, maybe some closure when they meet at his funeral years later..I life time of love, anguish, doubts, sacrifices. We don't do this anymore, its too easy to bail out of almost anything, there's no restrain..We don't ever grow up -- infantile till we're senile.. I saw myself in these three women, all three, their secret and sacred bond, I took it to heart. Say it now or forever hold your peace. Only there's no peace in denial..

Crush, big time :))))

Garden

Perhaps I'm less urban than I fancy myself..I have recurrent visions of a garden, planting one, hiding out in one, in a shade, quiet, serene -- a live, growing garden. I park a few blocks from work and walk through back alleys -- the only time I really am aware of nature, of summer around me. The scents, the sounds of a garden behind a  fence are so intriguing.. I like to think of plants and trees I'd have in mine.  A Taurus, after all, I should be all about earth and earthly pleasures..I'm missing out on something big then. A true escapist's delight, a secret garden..I have a collective memory of what I loved in the gardens I've seen --Dogrose bushes, sweet and buzzing with bees,  fragrant currants, bright yellow marigolds.. A screened porch facing in, all draped in vine. An odd  angel, or two..A swing, maybe. No lawn, nothing posh about my garden, it would grow wild with dandelions and tall grass and all sorts of life banned from a formal landscape. Mole holes, burrows, butterfly cocoons. And a dreamy young gardener to keep it this way and make me wreaths of wild clover and daisies.. and roll giant dubies while I sunbathe naked :)..  I do digress, a garden is a dream. A dream I'll plant here for now, along with my dream house, my vast imaginary sea-scapes and terraces of white marble and everything else I don't even know yet I can't live without..

Mid-day dream, part 2

Люди

Интересный человечек живет в нашем доме скорби..Не старый (59) и еще красивый мужик с туманными диагнозами алкогольно-индуцированной депрессии и хронической отрыжки..коренной американец, воспитанный, тихий. В прошлом -- инспектор домов, разведен, из контактов в карточке -- мама, брат и друг. Полчаса назад столкнулась с ним в местной библиотеке где кошу иногда работу с хорошей и разной книжкой..Ромэн Гари, кто нибудь ?..:) Всегда чисто одет и гладко выбрит, высокий, спортивный -- он много гуляет, читает, берет в рент какие-то киношки.. Никогда ни на что не жалуется, и наверное пишет роман века в своей крошечной комнатке с митьковского вида спидником-соседом. До него с ним жил пожилой черный джентельмен, лежачий, со страшными, гниющими  ранами..Когда запах трупного яда стал почти невыносим, руководство предложило моему мистеру другую комнату, но тот отказался, заявив что он единственный кто говорит с этим человеком, и это его друг, и пусть все будет как есть..через пару недель тот тихо умер. Мистер Ф ходит в супермаркет напротив, в кафе, или просто покурить на верандy. Его часто видят возвращающимся вечером под шафе -- через дорогу ликерный магазин..Вполне себе Хэмингуэй в изгнании. Никто не приходит к нему. Никто с ним не общается после смерти старого соседа. И по-моему, он счастлив. Спокоен так уж точно. Какая такая драма выгнала его из полноценного общества -- неизвестно, но мне почему-то очень близок и понятен его выбор. Отстранившись, выбрав предельно простой и скромный образ жизни, но не став при этом отшельником, он нашел себя вне отведенного ему социумом места для статистически таких же "разведенных инспекторов", вне стресса и суеты, вне потребительства и вещизма и страха за завтрашний день присущих здесь почти всем до глубокой старости. Браво, Мистер Ф..И все-таки..кого же вы убили и съели в пьяном бреду и от кого вы так долго здесь прячетесь ?..:)

Mid-day dream

Я хочу проснуться от рокота моря, выйти на белую залитую солнцем терассу и сидеть на теплых мраморных ступеньках, на ветру, в легкой белой рубашке и ждать пока пожилой батлер принесет на подносе кофе и апельсин..

Tea time forever

A day in a life

I've been walking around Wilmette at lunch and peeking in windows..I'm fascinated with apparent emptiness of mansions and stillness of this posh suburban life mid-summer day. No one is home, it seems. To my urban brain this is surreal. How could it be ?..The silence is deafening..where's the bustle, the honking, the profanities ?..Its too quiet, too clean,  a gingerbread village. I get an urge to break a log-cabin mailbox and pee on a bed of pansies. Too perfect ! I could live here as a stray cat perhaps, in another life, but they'd exterminate me next day for sure..For now I imagine myself lost and looking for clues to guide me home. Only it isn't terrifying, rather intriguing and exciting.  Manicured lawns aside, the exteriors look very much inhabited, some sophisticated, others dated, but all cozy and inviting. It must be the architecture, no house is alike, though all are tall, light, airy, with large windows and high ceilings, resembling the descendants of Nordic worriers (or Nazi runaways..) that inhabit them..Very blond blue eyed houses. I caught the news the other day of a "Goldilocks robber" in London -- he is eating the food and taking naps in places he brakes into..I understand !!  And I wouldn't even need to steal. Just sneak in and explore..Be somebody else for an hour, sit in their chair, taste their porridge, fall asleep in their bed. I've done that, sort of..with some men I've been with, when they left for work and I stayed behind pretending to still be asleep..I would put on their shirts and briefs, use their cologne, smoke their cigarettes, etc..Oh, the skeletons I found..No man will ever admit to owning a "stay hard" potion even if there's 5 tubes of it in his sock drawer. I'm horrible. From divorce decrees to weapons to sex toys..My lover's music collection, scribbles of math equations, algorithms and random notes -- I still keep one..My second husband's math books, pages and pages of thesis that took 20 years to write.. My last husband's art on every inch of wall space, from a huge crucifix to tiny prints -- I fell in love with the art first..rubbed a tiny Buddah's belly on a way out wishing he'd fall for me. How careless.  I'd also clean each place spotless, the dishes, the floors, the works -- out of guilt for invading their privacy, I guess..A man that spent a night next to me became an extension of myself not so much through sex but through this intimate bond I'd form with his personal things, his scents, traces of character felt in how he lives, how he takes his tea, the mess left on his desk..or a lack of mess..or a lack of desk. In this one encounter with a man's home I would find out everything I'd want to know about him, and see it all fall in place over time. These casual obsessions ultimately became my own prison, I'd get too involved, too close, because nothing less would do, and you can't stop after a while, can't go back to not knowing, not being a part of someone, at least I can't..but that's a whole different story........

Belated

I'm in meetings all day, mindless tasks keeping me busy and my brain goes numb by 3 pm..while the only place I really want to be at is Gayle's funeral, few blocks away. Gayle. White haired, ethereal, almost translucent being with a smile too big for her, too big for this whole house of pain.. A curious child trapped in an old lady's body. Gayle was 97 but I never thought of her as old. Old women don't glow, don't smile like that, don't have hopes and dreams in their eyes..Not like her. She was an old Girl. I barely spoke to her other than a nod in passing..how I wish I did now, looking at an old foto -- petite brunette, this beaming delicate flower in a ruffled dress, perched atop a stone bench, the card reads -- 1954. Galapagos Islands. Gayle had no one, no one survived her, yet her funeral was said to be packed. She lived in Central America most her life, I imagine her traveling, praying, day-dreaming..she must have had quite a life. One of the original founders of local Baha'i Temple, an honored knight of Baha'ullah, say all you want about them but its a beautiful concept -- she was a vision of harmony and dignity and peace -- exactly what one feels inside a Baha'i temple. She was it. She slowly withered away over a few months, first time ever I saw her sad, lost, solemn..Nobody came to visit..Nobody really talked to her, too busy with their work. She always sat in the same spot, and she's been here forever..Now that she's gone, it feels like someone turned off the lights. Its empty and cold and abandoned. I miss her terribly. Miss the love she projected so effortlessly, so willingly, just by being her, being free..Gayle was free. Of guilt, regret, resentment that so plaque the old age..I think I know why. An angel lived next to me for 2 years and I barely noticed..my eyes are open now, but now she's gone. Amen.

Craziest thing in my closet. don't know what to do with it..

Вот ЭТО висит у меня в шкафу уже год. Ни носить не решусь ни выкинуть. Подарок из байкерского бутика, 200 баксов как никак..На спине надпись "In God We Trust", погоны, подковы, лампасы, и мой инициал "U". В этой штуке я себя ощущаю не то Джеком Воробьем не то Стивеном Тайлером не то Иван Федорычем Крузенштерном -- человеком и пароходом..За порог в нем не выйду но и снимать не хочу если надела. И курить в нем очень хочется. И стрелять по воронам. И пить шампанское. Короче в меня в этом бушлате вселяется дух какого-то цыганского барона..требует кутить и лезть в душу окружающим. Страшная вещь, лучше наверное сжечь :)