... the moment a literary journal replies to your submission, and your heart stops, and you can't open it right away because at that moment everything is a real-life Schrödinger's cat, and when you finally gather the courage and find yet another rejection

... and you manage, somehow, a weak it's ok, there will be others

The Russian in me trembles when I hear it... this cadence.. this tone.. each word like fallen raindrops..

Virginia Woolf and Vladimir Vysotsky, unlikely twin spirits, were born on the same day, 56 years apart

the length of a life between them
and the simmering fury of one
and the quiet grief of the other

Of all the bus rides

A screaming homeless woman; a screaming child; a woman next to the woman with the screaming child muttering (fairly audible) profanities; a man playing unusual music (Nirvana, Red Hot Chili Peppers) aloud for his quiet toddler--a toddler who, occasionally, reaches across the aisle with outstretched hands to scream in unison with his compatriot; a terrible bus driver; an impatient, pushy crowd.

The end.

But the skylight is like skin for a drum I'll never mend
And all the rain falls down amen
On the works 
of last year's 
man

for the first time it wasn't a wolf or a bear. it was a lion, and my heart was a tight ball in my throat. but as it came toward me it bowed its head and circled gently around my legs and accepted my outstretched hand in friendship.

we walked together a long time in the dark and darkening forest.

as we approached the cement, the streetlights, the curious onlookers, i panicked. you can't come with me here, i thought, it's not safe. and as it turned back, slowly, reluctantly, my heart was a million fragments of relief and loneliness and terror.

During a reading of The New Yorker's "Shouts & Murmurs":

F: "I don’t want to worry you, since I know you are having a hard time with weevils..." Darling, what are "weevils"?
Me: Hmm, I don't remember. Maybe a kind of illness?
F: No, "...in your garden."

terror, last night, as i was stalked around my own home by the masked creature from the Scream movies. my alarm woke me as i hid in the shadows, waiting for it to turn around..

Suzanne takes you down...

...to her place near the river
You can hear the boats go by
You can spend the night beside her

among the irritating crowds, the streetcar announcements

And you know that she's half crazy
But that's why you want to be there

the racket, the rocking, the shaking, the jostling

And she feeds you tea and oranges
That come all the way from China
And just when you mean to tell her
That you have no love to give her
Then she gets you on her wavelength
And she lets the river answer
That you've always been her lover

the multitude of voices, frustrations, annoyances

And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know that she will trust you
For you've touched her perfect body with your mind

Cohen.

even if, even if i'd actually interrupted your meeting with a totally trivial matter (and it most certainly wasn't), would that face have been necessary?

jesus. christ. as if someone had insulted your entire family while burning your $2M car...

This was not supposed to be an emotional trip, but there it was. There it was: unexpected heartache, nostalgia, loss.

***

Everything began and ended in Vienna with a constant flurry of activity, crowds of tourists, stunning (and perfectly maintained) historic architecture on (literally) every corner, wonderfully engaging Mozart at the Musikverein Concert Hall, and Klimt (KLIMT!) at the Belvedere Museum. This is a city where you need not wait to be seated (they just know, like magic); a city that takes its dessert seriously, as it should; a city where I discovered that I’ve rarely encountered anything as vulgar as a selfie stick held up in a church. A city that gave us, also, the gorgeous Danube River tour to the Abbey of Melk, where we stood in the presence of hundreds of thousands of ancient books, where all within us dipped and fluttered at the thought of following in Umberto Ecco's quiet footsteps... where we fondly remembered our readings and rereadings of The Name of the Rose and its cleverness and its beauty.

Where our twin hearts leafed through every page again in tenderness and admiration.

***

The first of countless surreal moments flitting through this journey fell upon me on the train ride to the airport, where I looked up from the quiet delirium of Cormac McCarthy's Depression-era Mexico to face the Viennese dawn through a thick fog, a darkened tunnel, my own reflection; when, for a moment, I couldn't remember where I was or where I was going...

Outside in the abandoned village the profoundest silence.
(McCarthy, The Crossing)

***

This continued on the flight to Vilnius, with the passengers behind me--one of them possibly Mexican--discussing Roman Catholic religious practices as I read of a dispirited priest in the desolate Mexican town of Caborca and his Mennonite roots and his undefined selfhood.

This continued as I walked through the Old Town with my mother's difficult childhood in mind and stumbled on the Museum of Genocide Victims before all else. As I witnessed everywhere a country slowly coming to terms with its (extensive) role in the Holocaust. Felt everywhere a large and wholly absent population: plaques commemorating prominent Jews like Jascha Heifetz and Theodor Herzl; plaques commemorating prominent Lithuanians who saved many from certain death; plaques commemorating the Big and Little Jewish ghettos where, in what felt to me like the final insult, a now-trendy/gentrified area still bears the street name Žydų ("Jewish").

This continued when the hardest thing, the hardest thing happened as I panicked: How is it that I haven't sent Emma any photos of her beloved Vilnius? How the day after this we heard "Nah Neh Nah" on the radio--one of Emma’s favourites, I learned; the song she and my grandfather danced to over and over at their wedding. How the same day, during a night at the symphony arranged by Sonata's husband, we heard Beethoven's 7th--another one of Emma's favourites.

This continued as my father waved at me from every one of the million bookstores... as Sonata's youngest casually philosophized at the kitchen table: Everyone doesn't understand something (he, Russian; I, Lithuanian; Sonata, English)... as I noticed the insane difficulty of being a full workday ahead of home.

All continued as I observed this strange new connection to this half-empty city... this accidental city of my birth.

It took Cormac McCarthy and an 8-hour flight to snap me out of years of reading paralysis and terror and paralysis ... and that seemingly endless cycle possibly broken by a man who reads like Faulkner, who demands full attention and every word chewed, swallowed, digested, making its way into your blood stream..

i've often wondered about my urgent need to record strange, frightening, curious dreams; about my utter disappointment when, due to time or circumstance, one falls through the cracks.

it struck me today that capturing the surreal world of each snapshot, each bizarre universe, is a lesson in writing...a test of skill..

like the herald of an ancient god, a dazzling monarch butterfly fluttered past the 21st-floor window, past the bland black/brown of the meeting room, past the drivel, past our deep distances, our careful constructions, the stern facade, the concrete, all melting beneath its sudden gaze

سال ۹

این کیه
این کیه
که‌ با من همنفسه

what is UP today. shaking, shaking, shaking with a not-unusual amount/type of caffeine...

driving reminds me of oxford.
driving reminds me of oxford.
driving reminds me of...

Ласкаво просимо

Hello, lone reader in Ukraine.

the night before last

i was running through a massive field, at dusk, terrified that it would soon be too dark to see.

and suddenly, it was.

i reached the edge of the woods, turned back, and ran the whole length of the field again in a trivial haze of moonlight.

a near-slip as the otherwise flat, grassy surface sloped to reveal a glittering outdoor pool; the shock of pavement; the flicker of a quick shadow as i turned in time to see the wolf leap toward me, teeth gleaming, scaring me awake...

the little moments alone

walking home from the store. cooking with the music on. stepping into the shower. watering the plants. crossing a large, empty lobby. a bike ride. the five seconds of an empty sidewalk.