mapping Rochester

in August 1996, on my Russian map of the world, Rochester, NY looked like a big black dot on the shore of lake Ontario: a city with over a million people. as my father was quick to remind me, in the Soviet Union, a city with over a million residents qualified for the construction of the underground metro. (In contemporary Russia, seven cities have at least one-line subways).
My family members tried to locate Rochester in an encyclopedia and in an atlas. Information was scant. My grandmother with the atlas reported that Rochester lay nearly on the same latitude as Yalta, Crimea: I was going far, far South! A good thing, because I had no room for a winter jacket in my luggage.
I couldn't think "Rochester" without picturing Mr. Rochester of Jane Eyre: English, noble with major character flaws, blind.
What else did I know? The names of all the five Great Lakes--we'd memorized them for an exam in my English class. The Pathfinder, a much-beloved novel by James Fenimore Cooper, was set on the shore of Lake Ontario. Niagara Falls.
I recall being surprised that "New York" was a name of a state, as well as a city. I recall being confused about the nature of "states" (America is America is America.) I recall hearing rumors that cities in the US were so clean, people wore white socks outdoors.
Adventurers before me had set forth on far less information.
Rochester, however, turned out nearly beside the point. The town I landed in was Henrietta, NY, where Rochester Institute of Technology's campus was located.
Oh, and speaking of James Fenimore Cooper, let's not forget Mark Twain's essay, "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses." According to Twain, Cooper commits 114 out of possible 115 offenses against literary art. To summarize, Twain didn't think much of Cooper's attention to detail.

 

 

.

огни большого города

Отправив меня в Штаты в 1996ом году, моя семья начала заботиться о том, чтобы держать меня в курсе петербургской жизни. Родные слали мне вырезки из местных газет. Вырезок у меня накопилось много, одна чудеснее другой. Вот, например, статья (от, согласно пометке на газете, 24/10/96) о создании памятника фонарям разных эпох у Смольного. Что ж, идея хорошая.

Pager

in Dave's portrait circa 1996 one detail that soon fascinated me was the pager. I don't think I noticed it right away -- to notice, one must be aware as I had not been -- but eventually the pager attracted attention to itself. it would beep, Dave would tinker with the device attached to the belt of his jeans, and then reach for the nearest phone.
a junior, Dave was juggling three jobs. his main gig was off campus: he managed computers for a Rochester realtor who worked with low income and veterans housing projects. Dave didn't have a car, and took a bus to work, and, on occasion, his boss would drive him home. Dave's second job was on campus. Ethernet had just been laid to the residential halls, and students who had computers could connect to it. Dave took shifts to answer all the tech support questions that came up. His third job took up most of the floor space in his and Jason's room. He would custom-build computers for people, ordering all the boards and the cases separately and then assembling them all at once. The end result was a lot cheaper than a ready-made computer, and there was a decent profit margin in it for Dave.
(when I visited Dave in that room, the only place to sit was the bed, and to get to the bed, one had to kind of jump over the computer carcasses. I came over, climbed onto Dave's bed, Jason would put on a movie from his side of the room, and we would watch something while Dave half-watched, half-worked.)
"wouldn't your time be better spent studying?" i would ask him, meaning that if he studied hard, did well in school, and got a great job, he would have a greater earning potential down the road.
"i learn more at work that I do at school," Dave said.
i doubted that answer, but the fact was that most of the students at RIT worked, men and women. the food services, the library, the academic and admissions offices, pretty much every office relied on student labor--and kids with cars delighted that they could hold off-campus jobs that paid more.
one of my mentors in the international student program, a sophomore from India -- let's call him A for the purposes of this narrative (I'm working up to writing more about him) -- suggested that I was a spoiled privileged brat because not only had I never worked a day in my life, but I also claimed that none of my classmates in Russia worked. (there had been sordid rumors about a couple of kids who'd started working at the end of high school. nobody talked about this directly, not in 1996. tutoring was one thing, but serving food and even selling computer parts was another. service jobs seemed somehow embarrassing for future mathematicians and engineers.) seventeen, without a job? according to A, it turned out that I and all of my friends must've been not only incredibly rich, but also very lazy. don't even rich kids sometimes want to have their own income?
when I tried to convince A that in the Soviet Union people didn't commonly work until after the university, or at least, until after third or fourth year in the university, he laughed in my face. "You're such a daddy's girl."
that I couldn't deny. And yet, I didn't think his description of me as privileged fit, but in our many, many conversations about this, in person and in email, I could not convince him otherwise. at least I could prove to him that I wasn't lazy. i started thinking about getting a job.

desire vs decision

хотела ли я или не хотела уехать в Штаты в 1996ом году? мне было семнадцать лет, сама себе я казалась взрослым человеком.
в Рочестере меня с первого дня начали спрашивать Why did you decide to come to the US? меня этот вопрос вгонял в ступор. мои русскоязычные читатели, наверное, легче могут понять, как можно оказаться в Америке, не приняв ни одного решения. когда в феврале 1996г родители подняли вопрос, а не стоит ли попробовать поступить куда-нибудь в одной из англоязычных стран, я согласилась, ну почему бы не попробовать. от такой пробы до отъезда было как до луны. ну попробовали и забыли. а когда за пять дней до отъезда я получила визу, отступать было уже поздно. какие уж тут решения. (если верить дневнику, то создаётся впечатление, что единственным решением, кот я принимала было: брать или не брать с собой . . . дневник)

но вот хотела ли я уехать? с этим тоже далеко не всё так просто. чего может хотеть человек, который верит в то, что хотеть чего-то слишком сильно -- это значит сглазить, а мало хотеть -- проворонить?
в дневнике на этот счёт много всякой всячины.
"Америка -- свободная страна." наверное, хотела?
"я сейчас фантазирую: какие лица будут у моих друзей, когда я скажу, что уезжаю. В этом я вижу как бы вид мщения." скорее всего, не хотела (хотела, чтобы мои друзья не спорили со мной, когда я навязывала им книжки.)
мечтая о развитии отношений с мальчиком, в которого влюблена: "я всё время обрываю сеюя: лучше и не мечтай, не фантазируй, ты всё равно уезжаешь." отъезд -- как конец всего, обрыв.
но тут же и: "я страшно хочу уехать. искательство приключений -- вот, что мною движет и не надо придумывать никаких новых слов и определений. Приключения необходимы человеку, а мой возраст для этого самый подходящий."
"у меня есть новый горизонт -- Америка. Ведь там я не буду заниматься никакой математикой, а стану экономом. Что-нибудь в этом роде. За границей люди другие. Там меня ценят. Оценят." хм.
а накануне первого тура президентских выборов, "от результатов которых зависит моё будущее", я пишу вот что:
"Боюсь чего-нибудь определённого хотеть -- пусть всё будет как будет."
иными словами, Америка -- это открытый космос. а хотение оказывается тяжёлой эмоциональной работой, к которой я не готова. избавьте меня пожалуйста от неё. пусть всё будет как будет.

hangers

later that night in September 1996, on the day when I moved into the dorms, having helped me to find my way to my room, Dave came up to visit and brought his roommate, Jason.
my roommate hadn't moved in yet, so they sat on her empty mattress and stared at me. I sat on my bed across the room. I had a horrible suspicion that once we'd learned each others' names and where we were from, we had nothing else to say to each other. though this was my first night in the dorms, i'd been at RIT for a month, and had learned to explain right away that I was from "St. Petersburg, formerly known as Leningrad," and no, there were no white bears there. silence lingered.
I tried to study Dave and Jason without looking at them directly. at that time I didn't know how to look people in the eyes, and didn't think that I should. looking somebody in the eyes felt like such an intimate gesture, nearly a caress. so i looked either at the window or somewhere above their shoulders. at some point, the guitar must've come out as an aid through this awkwardness. (I studied business at RIT, and later on, the need to look people directly in the eyes came up in my classes: a revelation.)
did I see in Dave then what so many people have pointed out to me since, that he looks very much like my brother and several members of my mother's family? I don't think so. but I do remember being comforted by the name "David." I struggled with learning the names of my new friends at RIT, the names that represented so many ethnicities and histories. in Petersburg, i grew up among people named Masha, Misha, Alexei--names that repeated endlessly. I was always one of three or four Olgas at school. In comparison, English-speakers seemed to have endless imagination for names. But with David, I struck on something familiar: my grandfather's patronymic was Davidovich, son of David.
meantime, silence lingered.
this was awful, because I really did like these kids. they seemed cute. it was so sweet of them to visit. i was lonely and afraid to close the door and to remain completely alone in the strange room, when my thoughts would naturally turn to all the Mashas and Mishas whom I was missing.
but awful too was this lingering silence. if they stayed, and if conversation seemed unlikely, we needed to do something. did they feel this too?
at some point, I got up from the bed and continued to unpack my clothes. "what are you doing?" Jason stopped me.
"what?"
"how come you're putting all of your clothes on one hanger?"
"I only have five."
"why don't you get more?"
"i don't need more, look." I showed him the way it made sense to hang a skirt on a rod then a t-shirt on the shoulders of the same hanger, then a couple of button-downs on top, and cover all with a sweater.
"but don't you want to see all of your clothes?"
"why would i?"
the conversation is not verbatim--this all happened twenty years ago, and i had stopped keeping a diary when I arrived to Rochester. the fact is, aware now that I had a problem, I eventually accepted the guys's offer to fix it. they led me down to the corner store in the tunnels under the dorms, where Jason surprised me with a gift of a dozen hangers. I still have them, too.

бойфренд

тем летом 1996 г, за два месяца до отъезда в америку, у меня появился мой первый бойфренд.
я пишу эти заметки по следам флэшмоба ‪#‎янебоюсьсказать‬, и поэтому сейчас некоторые подробности этой истории с бойфрендом кажутся особенно выпуклыми. например, что важным обстоятельством моего отъезда, одной из причин, из-за которой я так стремилась в штаты, было неумение прямо сказать "нет".
познакомились мы с ним при очень, как мне казалось, романтичных обстоятельствах. на выпускной наш класс совместно ещё с двумя, отправился кататься на теплоходе по Неве. до этого, помню, что с одной из моих подруг мы распили бутылку шампанского в какой-то подворотне: поздравили друг друга с окончанием одной пытки и передышкой перед началом другой. на теплоходе я, соответсвенно, грустила. ко мне подошёл мальчик и спросил, А почему ты не танцуешь? (пишу по дневнику). играла медленная музыка и танцевало несколько пар. я замялась. "Наверное, потому что не приглашают," сказал он и пригласил. В дневнике: "о чудо!" белые ночи, туман, верхняя открытая палуба. мы танцевали полчаса, потом параход причалил и мы пошли в школу и целовались на окне у кабинета астрономии. как Fuck you всей школе. потом обменялись телефонами.
на следующее утро пошли гулять и потом гуляли несколько дней подряд.
ретроспективно, единственное, что я обо всём этом помню, это то, что от этого мальчика пахло, а особенно пахло у него изо рта, оттуда шла какая-то гниль и ещё что-то кислое, и чтобы целоваться с ним, мне приходилось как-то пересиливать себя. но сказать ему, что, милый, погуляли пару дней и всё, пока, я не умела. надо же дать человеку шанс. присмотреться, понять. выслушать.
за романтичное знакомство на корабле надо было расплачиваться. надо было отметиться перед подругами, вот такой мальчик, не простой, а из единички.
через четыре дня он уже признался мне в любви. в дневнике: "сказал, я тебя люблю -- а я промолчала. а что я могла ответить? любовь с первого взгляда? я не знаю. мне он нравится. мне приятно с ним беседовать."
после этого я уехала на дачу, засела читать Фрейда, Введение в психоанализ. молодой человек достал меня и там. приехал, пытался целоваться на моём любимом озере, это казалось очень не кстати. но опять-таки, сказать ему прямо, честно, что меня не устраивает я не умела. а обиняками, увиливаниями он отказывался меня понимать. я ему не звонила, но и не брать трубку, когда бабушка звала меня к телефону не могла.
надо отдать ему должное, мальчик был очень славный, очень заботливый. он не торопил меня особо и раздевал по фазам. но мне понятно было, что я оттягиваю момент, когда надо будет "дать". спать с ним не хотелось вот никак.
Когда речь заходит об отъезде в Штаты, в дневнике вот что: "А бойфренд? а, может быть, я теряю единственный шанс?"
Единственный шанс ЧЕГО, семнадцатилетняя Оля?
ниже, там же: "я страшно хочу уехать."
уехала -- уж точно значит, всё
а не проще всё-таки сказать человеку, ты мне не подходишь? как это делается корректно?
мне не хотелось его обидеть
он потом мне ещё где-то год писал письма в Штаты.
ему-то так никто и не объяснил, что, с моей точки зрения, мой отъезд означает полное окончание наших отношений.
его письма тут у меня лежат, но открывать и смотреть, что в них я ещё не готова. мне стыдно. в какой-то момент я просто перестала на них отвечать.

ESL

people frequently want to know how well i knew english when I came to the US in 1996.
here's an email conversation with Dave from October 25, 1996, two months after my arrival.
Dave> i woke up late today and only when my friend ted came in and told me he found a girl becky in the hallway at 4:30 in the morning, puking and bleeding out her nose, and covered in mud, and convulsing (shaking), and not speaking english, and he took her in his room . . . and she is almost conscious!

Olga> The story Ted told you was really nice, exept one moment which i didn't understand well: what was she doing in the corridor at 4:30? I mean, what had happened with her, that she was in so bad condition?
(AKA: Dave thought I wouldn't understand the word "convulsing" and so explained it as "shaking." In fact, "convulsing" may have been the only word of his email I understood quite well: its Latin root has spawned a Russian word with similar meaning. I must've understood "bleeding" and so knew he was describing somebody who was in "bad condition," but I was so confused about the emotional charge of this narrative that the most appropriate words I found in response were "the story was really nice." Nice!)
Dave> haha okay the girl was PISS DRUNK and she had alcohol poisoning :) i met her this morning. She is very cute and very FUCKED UP (please excuse my language). she is probably still asleep on our floor :)
i interpret Dave's "haha" and the smiley face as sheer incredulity at how much i didn't understand.
alcoholism was a major problem at RIT. people drank cheap beer in astonishing quantities. my roommate drank so much in the fall that by the spring she developed cirrhosis of the liver. but that's a different story.

Teffi's Memories

"Teffi, nom de plume of Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya, was born in 1872 into a prominent Russian family. Following in the footsteps of her older sister Maria—poet Mirra Lokhvitskaya—Teffi published poetry and prose from the age of 29. She soon rose to fame by practicing a unique brand of self-deprecating humor and topical social satire. In her 1907 hit one-act play The Woman Question, subtitled A Fantasy, Teffi imagined a world in which a women’s revolution against men achieves a full role reversal. Women come to occupy the prominent political, military, academic, professional, and bureaucratic roles, while men are subjugated to the childcare and household management tasks. Though the play’s ending largely dismisses this scenario and trivializes the feminist cause, through humor, the piece makes the point that bad behavior—infidelity, sexual harassment, excessive drinking, pettiness—is a function of social status rather than of biological sex.

By the time of the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, Teffi had nearly a dozen books to her name, and new printings of her story collections sold out instantly. With Lenin at the helm of the government, her fame became a liability. Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea opens with Teffi being talked into going on tour to Ukraine (then outside of Lenin’s domain)."

Read the rest of the review in The Common.

письмо от дедушки

письмо от дедушки Исаака, первое, кот. он послал мне в Штаты.

тут, напр: "Оленька в нашей краткой прощальной беседе я акцентировал твоё внимание на вопросе умения общаться с людьми а главное уметь хорошо выслушивать собеседника, кем бы он не был. Этим искусством я владел в совершенстве и оно помогало мне быстро завоевывать уважение к себе и любовь и если хочешь знать, что в страшную годину моей жизни--находясь в плену среди порой очень опасных и страшных людей я чётко знал где и что сказать, где своевременно умолчать, а где блеснуть своей эрудицией (заблаговременно соответственно подготовившись к этому разговору). И вот я выжил и живу.

 

фрейд и драйзер

тут приближается 20ая годовщина моего отъезда в Штаты. интересно повспоминать 1996ой год.

3 июля состоялся второй тур президентских выборов, на которых победил Ельцин. победить, видимо, не должен был: рейтинг у него был крайне низкий. впрочем, альтернатива: Зюганов альтернативой не казался. потом, в Штатах, я использовала геологические метафоры, чтобы описать политическую напряжённость жизни в России (вулкан, землетрясение). меня никто не понимал.

мои одноклассники готовились к экзаменам в университеты, занимались с репетиторами. одна подруга по матшколе поступала на финоугорское отделение филфака--это казалось фантастической смелостью с её стороны, потому что про филфак было известно, что туда так просто не поступить. для меня вопрос с филфаком казался давно решённым--стоило ли тратить столько усилий на матшколу, чтобы потом-таки заняться филологией. тем более серьёзным казался её поступок: попытаться в возрасте 17 лет понять, чего ты по-настоящему хочешь от жизни. впрочем, финоугорское отделение филфака было, видимо, компромиссным решением. потянуться на другие было немыслимо.
 
я, дважды поступив на матмех, избегала каких-либо мыслей о будущем. жила с бабушкой на новой даче. бабушкин Паркинсон прогрессировал так сильно, что работать в саду она совсем не могла и не пыталась, что очень положитлеьно отразилось на наших с ней отношениях. я помогала бабушке готовить, а всё остальное время читала. друзей в окрестности у меня не было. зато была с собой гитара, и по вечерам я уходила на пляж и играла там Битлз (по нотам). а читала я Фрейда, Введение в психоанализ. "Очень увлекательно--об оговорках," записано в дневнике. "Я теперь внимательно слежу за речью дикторов, родителей, и т.д."
8 июля в дневнике запись: "Фрейд очень интересен, но после него думаю взяться за американских писателей -- Теодор Драйзер и всякое подобное. Посмотрим, можно ли это читать."
 
в начале августа объявлены сроки практики на матмехе -- надо отработать любые пять дней в Петергофе.
 
а через несколько дней пришли документы из Штатов, которые позволяли мне идти в консульство за визой. тогда в американское консульство попадали без записи--надо было отстоять в очереди.
 
события вдруг начали развиваться с невероятной скоростью. билеты в Штаты были забронированы на 23 августа, и только за неделю до этого я попала в консульство. визу я ходила получать самостоятельно. в дневнике: "теперь я практически убедила родителей, что не пропаду в Америке одна."
 
мама повела меня делать новые очки--и сделали, почему-то с розовыми стёклами.
Драйзера, кстати, я так до сих пор пока не прочитала.

anniversary

coming up this August is the 20th anniversary of my arrival to the United States. i'm giving myself a gift and a challenge of posting some about 1996, in Russian and English.

here's one image I'm working with. Rochester, New York. a dorm hallway. September, a month after classes started. it's late afternoon, lots of kids are at home, doors thrown open, music pouring from each room and clashing. most of the kids in this dorm are men and most of the men are programmers. in each room there's a computer or two. some computers are without their cases, wires exposed, boards flashing. many kids have TVs. the microwave is in the hallway, and from it emanates the smell of popcorn. many kids are on the telephone. many are simply hanging out in the hallway, talking to each other in their brand of English that might as well be Martian for how little I understand it. nobody appears to be studying. in any case, there are lots of people to ask for help. I'm moving in, and I'm lost. the longer I'm walking back and forth, the more attention I attract to myself. 

I'm looking for a staircase to the second floor. the building clearly has a second floor, my instructions clearly state that my room is on the second floor. where is the staircase?

in one end of the hallway, a tall man with long purple hair and wearing a gown of a 19th century grande dame is going on about something to his entourage. I've never seen cross dressers before; I'm not familiar with the idea of gender-fluidity, and so I interpret each of his gestures is a miniature drama. he is a beacon--I recognize this guy, which means I've gone the wrong way again.

(though I'm only now moving into the dorm, I've been at the school since August and have already had the traumatic experience of walking through a closed door marked "Exit" and setting off a terribly shrieking siren. for the moment being, I've decided to assume, incorrectly, that all doors marked "Exit" are armed. generally I prefer to walk only through doors that somebody else has already opened.)

I try not to attract too much attention, but I've got a lot of stuff and I'm making plenty of noise. i'm conscious that the guys are staring at me. I'm 17 years old, hair down below my waist, dressed in a polyester summer dress, black with bright paisley print. (the dress also has shoulder pads--it's 1996.) I'm carrying a large duffel bag over one shoulder, a guitar over the other, and I'm dragging a suitcase (it does NOT have wheels).

one of the kids approaches: hey, I'm Wesley. Do you need help? and then, after I try to explain, what's your accent? where are you from?

he then leads me down the hall and around the corner, where another guy asks if I need help. his name is Dave. apparently my room is just above his.

A General Theory of Oblivion by José Eduardo Agualusa

"War. Diamonds and oil and war. If in the United States we’ve heard anything about Angola, it’s likely related to the protracted bloodshed or to the trade in oil and diamonds. The seventh largest country in Africa, situated on the Atlantic coast just north of Namibia, Angola became a Portuguese colony in the 16th century. Fighting for self-government began in 1961 and went on until the 1974 Carnation Revolution and the end of the Salazar dictatorship in Portugal led to the country’s withdrawal and, in 1975, Angolan independence. This did not end war in Angola, however. ...

Ludovica “Ludo” Fernandes Mano—whose true story became the basis for José Eduardo Agualusa’s novel, A General Theory of Oblivion—leaves Portugal and arrives in Luanda, Angola’s capital, months before Independence Day in 1975. She makes the move reluctantly, following her newly married sister, Odete, whose husband, Orlando, an Angolan mining engineer, works for a diamond company. A shut-in since early in her life, Ludo occupies her time cooking for the newlyweds and managing their luxury apartment on the 11th floor of a building in the center of Luanda. Life, even before the narrative turns dramatic, is a little too much for Ludo . . .

My review of José Eduardo Agualusa's novel A General Theory of Oblivion, in full, appears in The Common.

From Sevilla to Granada

"From Sevilla to Grenada" Professor Preobrazhensky hums obsessively in Mikhail Bulgakov's 1925 short story "Heart of a Dog."  The line is from a well-known Tchaikovsky tune, "Don Juan's Serenade." Preobrazhensky hums the tune because that's who he is: a man of high culture, attending opera and theatre instead of the meetings of the housing committee that's trying to appropriate his apartment. "From Sevilla to Grenada" is European civilization, all that is beautiful and valuable in the world, according to Bulgakov. In the early 1990s, when I read the story, "From Sevilla to Grenada" came to mean all that was beautiful and inaccessible, the world of knowledge and culture from which we'd been cut off by the Soviet Union's iron curtain.

The names of these towns evoke oh so many romantic notions formed on misleading cultural stereotypes. (Don Juan, the trickster of Sevilla, is such a trope in Russian culture, a burrowing from Spain long detached from its roots and used by countless writers from Pushkin to Vysotsky through A.K.Tolstoy who wrote the play that formed the basis of Tchaikovsky's serenade.) What becomes apparent traveling from Sevilla, through Cordoba, to Granada is to what extent the European civilization in these parts is built upon the remnants of the Islamic kingdom Al-Andalus; so much so that a thousand years later the main attractions in these towns are the old Moorish buildings that have been built upon and re-purposed but never quite destroyed. Cordoba fell to Christians in 1236, Sevilla--twelve years later, and Granada held on until 1492. Today it takes about two hours to drive between these cities, a convenient triangle for tourists with a baby napping in the back seat. We brought our own car seat with us, and this part went perfectly according to plan: each time we got on the highway, Bowie fell asleep and slept until we rolled into the next town.

Road tripping!

On his blog, Dave outlined the highlights of our road trip. The two hour naps were about half of what Bowie needed, and most of the days we weren't able to provide the other half. Whatever museums, palaces, mosques, synagogues, and cathedrals we wanted to visit had shortened their hours for the holidays, and Dave and I also needed food, coffee. Bowie humored us most of the time. Only when we got to Granada, his need to sleep outweighed all else. We have just finished our morning rituals, getting dressed, taking the medicine, tinkering on our devices, and Bowie yawned so hard and so plaintively that we relented. Instead of going out for breakfast, we returned to bed and took a nap.

Somewhere between Malaga (where the ocean scared him) and Sevilla, Bowie developed a feverish love for running water. Be it in a hotel sink, at a Moorish fountain in the Alhambra, a medieval open sewer in the middle of cobblestones, he wanted to get close to it, to touch it, to taste it, to figure out where it was going, to capture it with a cup or a glass. Several of the hotels greeted us at the reception area with carafes of drinking water flavored by fresh fruit, and at our comings and goings Bowie asked for this water, dunked his hands into the glass, licked his hands, drank more, tried it with his hands again, spilled it all over himself and the floor. What a wealth of joy and information captured in one carafe of water! (One of the hotels also provided an aperitif of anisette, a treat for mommy. On our last morning in Granada and in Spain, mommy also got to enjoy coffee with a cognac. A perfect morning drink, it wakes you up, smoothly.)

Bowie studies a glass of water

The highlights of hotel-living: a massive nativity scene under the floor of a hotel lobby

 

We flew home through Paris, where we stopped for the night. Dave and I have a history of funny overnight stays in Paris; the highlight of this one was seeing Marie Houzelle. She played along when we proposed this late night middle-of-nowhere CDG meeting, and as we collected all of our ten pieces of baggage (the number of bags had started out sanely in San Francisco and grew unreasonable during the road trip), there she was meeting us in the lobby! I've written about Marie's novel Tita, and now she says she's days away from finishing edits on a new novel--something to look forward to this year.

And then--and then--some number of hours and a few unsatisfactory naps later--we were entering our home in San Francisco. The cab dropped us off on our street. The look on Bowie's face was that of recognition, yes, but also of wonder and a kind of disbelief. Was it possible that he was recognizing the garage door, the tree in front of our house, the front steps? On a Saturday, our neighbors who had seen us off on the trip two weeks earlier were greeting us and welcoming us home. He knew these people. He knew this house. Was Bowie dreaming this? Or had his adventures up to now been a dream? After waking up in four different hotel rooms in the space of two weeks, was it possible that he actually had a place of his own to come back to, a home?

We entered the hallway. Our building is over hundred years old, and after two weeks away it develops a very particular odor--Dave and I picture a prim Edwardian-era lady who in our absence moves in with her scents and powders. It was this concentrated scent that hit home with Bowie, and then seeing his room with his play rugs and toys. He took in the impossible familiarity of it all--and cried. Bowie was home.

He had a good cry, and then wanted to get down to the floor. Bowie was home. There were blocks to stack, books to organize, boxes to unpack. He was suddenly oh so very busy.

Feeding his pony with a carrot

Andalucia

Dave, Bowie, and I met the new year in Fuengirola, a resort town in Spain, on the Mediterranean coast. With us was my brother Kostya (Konstantin for the English speakers). Our friends Olga and Ron made a feast of paella, with rice meticulously cooked in broth to perfection and the freshest local seafood. Just before midnight we took champagne and grapes out onto the town square, where the locals and expats and tourists were assembling.

Once our phones announced midnight, we started placing grapes into our mouths, one a second, for the first twelve seconds of the new year. We’d been hearing about this Spanish custom. A few seconds into this, the church clock rang, and the locals started counting the seconds out loud, in a choir, and eating their grapes. We were almost done with ours but gladly took the opportunity to slow down. Then, instead of the fireworks, the town’s official started shooting firecrackers. Bowie, attached to Dave’s chest in a carrier, handled it well: he startled, but didn’t cry. Olga and Ron’s six-month old baby was also awake, and he came out of his stroller to dance and sway in his parents’ arms.

One of the local bars broadcast dancing music. Many families were out and groups of friends with champagne and beer and cigars and cigarettes. A heavily tattooed Englishman whom his friend called John-O and we heard "Turbo" tried to give high fives to the babies and then pinched them on the cheeks. A local family gave out rattles. Two years earlier, Olga, Ron, Dave, and I celebrated a coming year together in Bangkok, dancing and drinking on top of a skyscraper into the wee hours of the night. Now our babies “danced” around each other and tried to poke each other in the eyes.

Dancing with uncle in the square

Sparklers!

Kostya wanted to take a middle of the night swim in the Mediterranean, and I entertained the idea of putting Bowie to bed and then skedaddling to the beach. Once, a few years earlier, on a New Year’s trip to Israel, Kostya and I had shared a late night swim in the Mediterranean—not a bad thing to turn into a tradition, I thought. But this night got a little too late too fast and we were a little too tired, so we let it go. Sometimes just having the idea is enough. The thought alone felt fun and irreverent.

Thanks to Bowie, I’ve been carrying this sense of joyful irreverence all throughout this trip to Spain. We’ve been here for a week already, with another week to go. Kostya returned to Vienna on the second of January, and we took our leave of Olga and Ron and started a road trip in Andalucia. Our first stop is in Sevilla, with Cordoba and Granada coming up on the itinerary. A road trip, across Andalucia, with a thirteen-month old? Why not! It looks similar enough to California and there’s a mountain range here called Sierra Nevada.

Bowie wants room to run around. He’s not walking yet, but he wants to cruise and crawl and climb over things and play hide and seek. On the floor, he'll hide around the corner of a hotel bed and sit there, quietly, until either Dave or I find him. “There’s Bowie!” He laughs. Then, he shoos us off to another part of the room and goes back into hiding. “There’s Bowie!” He laughs. In Fuengirola, Olga and Ron took us to a couple of lovely playgrounds where Bowie tried going up the slides and down the staircases. He spent a couple of afternoons on the beach, eating sand and throwing clumps of sand on his head and hair.

"What's that?"

Let's go UP a slide

Playground/cafe

What Bowie resolutely does not want to do is sit tied up anywhere. He does not want to ride quietly in his stroller. He does not want to sit in a high chair at a restaurant and listen quietly to adult conversation. He does not want to be in restaurants at all, especially the busy and the noisy ones, where we don’t let him get on all fours and explore on his own. He’s been showing his displeasure by loud shrieking, wiggling, and crying. At best he tolerates being in mine or Dave’s lap, staring at lights, into windows, flirting with other babies and little children. He wants to know what everything is. At one restaurant we received a reprimand from a child psychologist. “Are you from Russia?” this woman asked Dave, having overheard me speak to Bowie in Russian. She spoke English, but with a Nordic, perhaps German, accent. “A child should be in a hotel room, resting,” she told him. “I’m a child psychologist and I don’t care about humans, I only care about children. The restaurant is too noisy for children.”

Backup at the hotel, after a late night game of hide and seek, we received a handwritten note from our neighbors slipped under the door. It said, “Idiots.”

Idiots!

Every morning, Bowie wakes up with a question on his mind. His eyes barely open, he extends an arm and points a finger, “Eh?” Which I take to mean, “What is that?” “Window,” I say, “A curtain. A light. Another light. A smoke detector. An alarm clock. A telephone. Blanket. Pillow. Daddy. Bed. Window. Light. Wall. Our bed. Our luggage. Our clothes. Window. Light. Telephone. Daddy. Daddy’s nose. Mustache. Mouth. Lower lip. Beard. Teeth. Large teeth, the easier to eat you up, baby.”

Bowie’s been nursing a lot. For a week, he hardly ate any solids but a few pieces of bread. After the new year’s feast of paella, he’s been trying more foods. Baby eels. Pasta with meat sauce. Rice in squid ink with calamari. That last meal went down particularly well because Dave had him in the carrier and we ate at a bar window, outside, standing up, so Bowie was sort of on the move throughout the entire meal. He could also eat the rice straight from the table, just shove it into his mouth with both hands. Because we were outside, the waiters didn’t care when half of the rice ended up on the floor. Nobody rushed in to clean it up. Picture baby whose entire face, hands, and sweater are covered in squid ink, and who’s got a grain of rice stuck between his eyebrows, and more rice in his hair. Picture his proud parents: baby’s feeding himself. Professor baby.

For another perspective on the trip and great photos, check out Dave's blog.

Nomination for the Pushcart Prize

Epiphany Journal has nominated my story The Green Light of Dawn for the Pushcart Prize. So honored. So grateful that this story, on which I'd worked for several years, has received this recognition.

This story isn't available online yet, but you can buy the hardcopy or the ecopy of the magazine--or take out the subscription.

Action Fiction!

What: My story In the Cloud, performed by actors Reuben Alvear and Jimmy Cross
Where: Stage Werx (446 Valencia Street)
When: Sunday, December 20, at 7 pm
Why: Because it's Action Fiction! Stories by local authors performed by local actors. This evening, my story will be included in the lineup of six performances.

For updates and more info, go to the event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/503389189833682/

Exit Strategy

"Stepan’s hope used to be his children—both of his sons showed such great promise when they were little! The first was the son of a poor father, born while Stepan was a simple engineer in Moscow, earning 120 rubles a month, and the second was born after Stepan had started a software company and made his fortune. Stepan had always, always tried to do his best by his family, but no good deed goes unpunished, and now was payback time. Look, just look at what they had done to him—his whole body aching, his hair white by the age of sixty!"

Read the rest of this story in Best New Writing 2016 anthology.

The Green Light of Dawn, in print!

"The end of August in Crimea was hailed as the height of the "velvet season." The warm weather held, but most vacationers from the former USSR returned home to work and school, and the accommodations were cheap. Boarding the plane in New York, I made two connections, in Paris and Kyiv, and landed at the international airport in Simferepol, early morning, two days later. From there, I caught a train to the coast of the Black Sea. I didn't have a firm agenda, except that I eventually had to make it to the top of Mount Ai-Petri. . ."

The opening to my story "The Green Light of Dawn," that appears in the current issue of Epiphany magazine. The current issue is sold out, but do subscribe. And, if you're in New York, come to the opening party at the New York Public Library, on Tuesday, November 17.

Wrapping up Tokyo

We flew home from Tokyo on Saturday and spent the weekend unpacking, working around Bowie's jet lag. Sleep is such a skill. Over the years, Dave and I have developed practices that allow us to barely feel the aftereffects of time travel, but the little guy is an innocent. He stayed up till two in the morning on Saturday night, and then on Sunday slept until three in the afternoon. Sunday night was rougher: having gone to bed at midnight, up again at two, wanting to play, which we did for two hours. Today, I'm planning to wake him at one in the afternoon, and expecting crankiness. The baby will sleep!

Yesterday Dave posted his round up of the remaining photos and stories about Tokyo; I have some, too. First of all, a series of photographs from the efficiency apartment.

 

The main room, with the view to the kitchenette and the front door. Observe the ladder that would lead to the alcove (and additional bed) in the attic had it been moved to the ledge over the door.

The main room (picture taken from the same spot at a 180 degree angle to the one above), with the view towards the crib, the bed, and the bathtub behind the glass wall. 

The all-important feet warming pool by the bathtub.

Every efficiency apartment needs a balcony -- for drying clothes on warm days or, say, growing plants.

This is how clothes drying happens on wet days -- in the closet.

The front door of the unit. The closet with the washing machine, next to which (not pictures) the clothes closet above, with the drying rack. Bowie's stroller fit nicely into the walk-through space.

The large sink in the kitchenette with all the wrapping from one afternoon's lunch (see story below).

Every day, after nap, Dave, Bowie, and I picnicked on the floor of our room for lunch. We made cucumber and tomato salads, fruit salads, finished leftover noodles, bought take out sashimi at the grocery stores, pastry from the local cafes. Each of these lunches generated a heap of packaging, as pictured on the photo of the sink above. San Francisco outlawed plastic bags a few years ago, and we've forgotten what it's like elsewhere. The packaging felt overwhelming. Often, individual fruit, say, pears and apples, came individually wrapped. (Postcards I bought at a corner store too came individually wrapped). Grapes came in plastic boxes. At the supermarkets, if I bought two bento boxes at different stalls, each vendor would give me a new bag, regardless of how many bags I already held in my hands. I habitually carry a cloth tote with me; showing it to the cashiers helped little. (Of course, there was also the language barrier.) Each pastry was wrapped thrice: first in paper, then in a tiny plastic baggy, then in a thicker to-go bag, especially when two or three pastries were purchased at once. At the end of the trip, I brought all the extra plastic bags home--Dave takes regular trips to Safeway, where they collect and claim to recycle plastic bags.

By the way, the perfect tool to clean an efficiency apartment? That's right, a lint brush. Our apartment came equipped with one. I watched the lint brushes in use at an indoor playground at the Tokyo Dome. At closing time, employees scrubbed all the play structures with different appropriate solutions, including the carpeting with lint brushes. That's the way to keep a place clean.

Tokyo Bookstores

Dave and I love downtowns. The shared energy of millions of people, the bold physical, spacial way in which this energy manifests itself, the chance encounters to which it leads. A common complaint about cities is that they alienate people both by pushing them up against each other and separating into individual units. But few among city residents are true loners. Making friends in a city takes some skill and patience--or a very cute baby, who will talk to anyone and will get anyone to talk to him. I've seen the most dour-looking middle-aged men light up when Bowie babbles in their direction or pokes them in the knees, elbows, or shoulders. True, in Tokyo rush hour even a cute baby will get tossed around and moshed with the crowd.

Getting ready for the trip to Tokyo, we asked around for a baby-friendly neighborhood where to book our accommodations. Our friends Megan and Ted, parents of baby Ella, recommended Shibuya-Daikanyama area. They'd spotted baby strollers and carriers here, cute baby stores and playgrounds, baby- (and parent-) friendly cafes. Megan, a fellow writer and book person, sold me on this neighborhood by describing and forwarding an article about a must-see bookstore, a location of a Japanese chain, Tsutaya. We booked our apartment as close as we could get (Ebisu, in Shibuya, next to Daikanyama).

Bookstore culture appears to be going strong in Japan. In one of our sightseeing afternoons, we explored an entire bookstore neighborhood, Jimbocho (for more in-depth view, see this and this English-language blogs). Located between several major universities, this area houses dozens upon dozens of used bookstores, manga comic book stores, book publishers, and multi-storied locations of national bookstore chains (there are several). Each of these stores, we assume, must own its specialty area. I spent some time in a foreign language bookstore, Kitazawa, that shared a building with a children's bookstore, giving me an opportunity to browse while Bowie and Dave played downstairs. Looking at the shelves of dusty hardcovers, I imagined I'd found Haruki Murakami's reading list. Toni Morrison, Nabokov, Salinger, Ezra Pound, e.e. cummings--doesn't this sound just right? Yes, and Scarlett--Alexandra Ripley's fan fiction to Gone with the Wind (I was a big fan in my teens). Downstairs, Dave and Bowie located a whole shelf of Cheburashka and Crocodile Gena toys--popular Soviet cartoon characters, rights to whom had been purchased by a Japanese company a few years ago and successfully merchandised. I'd read of this; nevertheless, the encounter seemed surprising.

Kitazawa bookstore entrance

Murakami reading list??

Cheburashka!

Towards the end of our vacation, feeling more grounded and comfortable in Tokyo, Dave and I decided to split up during Bowie's nap time and venture out on our own. This allowed me an evening of browsing at that Daikanyama Tsutaya store (T-site) Megan had told me about. The bookstore consists of three cube-like two-storied buildings, connected to each other by a "magazine row"--an enormous collection of Japanese and international magazines. I spotted issues of MIT Technology Review and Lucky Peach, among others. Most of my allotted time I spent studying the shelf dedicated to English-language translations of Japanese authors. I wanted to take home a book by a female author. This criteria narrowed my choices to half a dozen books (sigh). I ended up with Kuniko Mukoda's short story collection The Name of the Flower and Hiromi Kawakami's novel Strange Weather in Tokyo. I suppose, a book report must follow one day. The stories from The Name of the Flower I've read so far are as good in Tomone Matsumoto's translation as anything one might read in The New Yorker. The first few are stories about wives and lovers and sad businessmen who, though they might excel in their jobs, are cut off from their emotions, which causes family strife and general unhappiness.

The selection of books by Japanese women in English translation

Besides bookstores, cafes, and boutiques, there are several interesting cultural sites in the Shibuya, of which we visited Meiji Shrine in the Yoyogi park and a 1919 traditional house of a local politician Kyu Asakura. After the firebombing of Tokyo (an extensive series of bombings at the end of WWII), much of the city was destroyed. What we see today was built after the war. These historical sites seem to be popular places of pilgrimage for the tourists and for the locals, who take the opportunity to dress in national costume and take pictures here for special occasions--like weddings. Dave has a photo on his blog.

The inner yard of the Kyu Asakura traditional house

For us, Shibuya turned out to be a great choice of a neighborhood to stay. Not as busy as more central Tokyo locations, it provided lots of things to do with Bowie. Twice more we visited T-Site, the Tsutaya bookstore in Daikanyama: a good place to write our postcards while entertaining Bowie with pop up books. Though, it seems that good Japanese babies don't climb bookshelves while they are at it--and good Japanese parents don't let their babies climb the bookshelves. Bowie and I got reprimanded. The employees of the children's sections also seemed disturbed by Bowie's desire to nurse in public, so they showed us the way to the "baby room"--many stores, especially department stores, in Tokyo provide private places for nursing. I know, I know, "When in Rome Daikanyama..." Tsutaya, by the way, is a part of a larger conglomerate that goes by the name of Culture Convenience Club. I can easily imagine finding this name in a Murakami novel.

At the Fish Market

In many ways, the three of us vacationing together is easier and more fun (even more fun :) than Bowie and me on our own. The responsibility is divided, and so risk tolerance increases, as does our mobility and physical prowess. Dave's been carrying Bowie in the baby carrier, but even when he's not, we're able to pick up the baby and the stroller separately and so manage shortcuts to subway and stores. Tokyo subway seems fully handicapped accessible, but the elevators are not always in the most obvious locations.

Each day, as we understand each other's needs better and grow more accustomed to the patterns of life in Tokyo, we're able to stray further from the apartment, to see and experience more neighborhoods and attractions. Olga eats a substantial breakfast in the morning. Dave wants his coffee in the afternoon. Bowie must nap and crawl. It sometimes rains in Tokyo--coming from San Francisco in the middle of a prolonged drought, we forget what that's like. Bicyclists here ride on sidewalks (we see lots of moms on bicycles with one child seated in front and one in back). Pedestrians seem to obey automobile traffic patterns and walk on the left side of the sidewalk, making window-shopping a bit tricky. Stations in the subway are marked differently--on some, arrows for walking point to the right side, on others, to the left. People who wish to stand on escalators and moving sidewalks stand on the left side; those who want to walk, do so on the right. Those who want to walk fast make a weird zigzag between the first and the second.

We've made it to two major tourist attractions so far, the Sensō-ji temple in Asakusa and, this morning, to the Fish Market. Ok, we may have only barely stepped inside the actual wholesale fish market and spent most of our time meandering the entertaining foodie stalls in the outside market area, but we did see a lot of dead fish being chopped to pieces. This is sort of the opposite of what our diving and snorkeling excursions have been about, and so we weren't hugely comfortable on the premises. That didn't prevent us from eating sashimi for brunch (the freshest, most fragrant and finely textured fish I've had anywhere). Of the three of us, Bowie held the moral line the firmest: he refused to have any fish and stuck to the noodle-like shredded radish.

Bowie's been eating noodles almost exclusively this week and breastfeeding lots. As we're approaching his one year birthday and he shows no signs of being ready to wean himself off breast milk, I'm considering my options. KellyMom.com, the website I've been using to answer my breastfeeding questions, suggests that children naturally self-wean somewhere between two and seven years of age, and that health benefits of breastfeeding do not have an expiry date. I'd love to give Bowie the option to wean himself, though I'm not sure I'm prepared to wait seven (or even two) years for him to do so.

Being on the road, if anything, has definitely strengthened our breastfeeding bond--he's been nursing for comfort in unusual places and situations, asking for the breast almost as often as he did as a newborn, every hour or two. Our Tokyo efficiency apartment comes with a full-sized crib and most nights I put him in it. But his sleep is very restless. He's teething continuously (his bottom canines are out now; we're waiting on the last set of molars), and cries out in pain in his sleep, then wakes himself up. So I take him into bed with Dave and me, which means he's nursing throughout the night. He's a strongly attached baby, and I'm starting to worry now about how these patterns will have to adjust when we get back home and I return to work. I nearly cried of joy today at the fish market when Bowie picked off a strawberry from a mochi custard dessert Dave and I shared and little by little munched all of it (he tried the mochi too, but didn't go past one bite). A child could probably survive on noodles and strawberries, right? Right.

On to the Tokyo Dome for the afternoon's adventure. It's a notable concert hall venue (the Beatles played at the Dome two years after it opened, and George Harrison recorded Live in Japan here) and an amusement park. We hear there's an awesome indoor playground there, and we can all ride the carousel too.

In the alleys outside the fish market

Chopsticks are the best part of what you call dining

Ebisu-Tokyo Living

From the palatial halls of the Beijing business class hotel we are delivered to an efficiency Tokyo apartment that we booked via AirBnB. There's a hallway/kitchenette and the main room with the bathroom partitioned behind a glass wall, so that the bed is actually jammed against the bathtub. The three of us, our three pieces of luggage, two backpacks, Bowie's utility tote, a stroller and a car seat, all fit inside, just so. Seen another way, we're severely under-utilizing the space. If we consolidated our luggage and hooked the ladder over the door, two more people could use the bed in the attic space.

The tiny apartment is a thing of beauty. Several things make it so: tall ceiling in the room and the window that admits plenty of light by day; large sink in the kitchenette; a washing machine and an ingenious drying rack in the closet; a small shallow pool outside the bathtub that, when I unplug the tub, automatically fills with warm water--to keep my feet from getting cold while I'm drying the rest of my body with a towel.

I also love the fact that the apartment is keyless. A combination code opens the door to the unit, and the front door opens like the entry booths in San Francisco's subway, with a tap of a plastic card. At least three security cameras monitor the entrance, and I have a feeling that these are not pro forma, somebody is truly watching and monitoring the security of this building. Upon our arrival on Friday night, the card that opened the front door was missing from the agreed-upon location, and so we were milling about outside while Dave texted with our AirBnb host. One of the neighbors let us in (taking pity thanks to Bowie, who was babbling plaintively from his car seat), but wouldn't do so until she confirmed we had the right combination code for the unit.

My first impression of Tokyo? I had no idea how many stereotypes about Japan I'd consumed. My imagination was largely fueled by the few novels I'd read (Murakami, Kobo Abe, Amelie Nothomb) and movies (Seven Samurai, Rashomon, Spirited Away, a recent art film The Great Passage)--in addition to WWII stories of bombings, geishas, and vets, occasional news stories about financial crises, electronics empires, fashion crazes, overcrowded subways, alcoholism, and overwork. As is the case with China (though China's case is more extreme), this media diet now seems extremely one-sided and largely negative (at best, Japanese customs might be represented as "odd"). In short, without thinking about it, I'd been expecting to meet sad and depressed loners (mostly men and young school girls), subservient and prone to suicide. Needless to say, this is like picturing all Russians as vodka-guzzling murderers of old women and prostitutes. Argh.

We're staying in the Ebisu area of Tokyo, a fun mix of fairly gritty bars and noodle bars and a maze of alleys with the yuppiest establishments I've seen anywhere. Think: a cafe that imports beans from Yemen, ice cream topped with honey comb, another ice cream shop that makes its own square cones and serves up vanilla-azuki bean flavor, a flavored canele craze, with competing pastry shops serving up their own versions of this French pastry. Bowie's nap schedule and the weather (o joy! it rained hard this morning) continue to set the pace for our journey, so we're fully enjoying exploring the alleys, the cafes and the playgrounds of our neighborhood. The party sometimes comes to us: apparently, this area is Halloween central; so on Halloween night, Dave and Bowie got into the midst of it--Dave's posting his pictures on his blog.

A novel way to travel!

Yemeni cafe in Ebisu

A preternaturally calm poodle getting a haircut

How about a fistful of noodles