one microspike

I said I would come back to the ridge between 2018 and 2019, so here is the end of 2018:

the last Friday of 2018 I left work and went to South Station with my weighty backpack and a tube with a painting in it. Did you know that Portland, ME is only two hours away? I didn't, until Sorrel and Hannah started telling me I should meet them there. There's a bus that goes once an hour, which surprised me; 40$ for a round trip ticket, which is valid for a year. Of course I got there five minutes after the bus had left so I had to wait for the next one, but in due time, after watching a very strange animation about a speed-crazy snail, I found myself in Maine - which I insist is supposed to be no fewer than six hours away but somehow I got there in two.

Sorrel and Hannah met me there, bringing with them a much welcome dinner and hugs. We drove about an hour before getting to Sorrel's parents house: they have an interesting home, with a compost toilet and solar power and a wood-stove which heats the house. They were off the grid for years but recently hooked up to it and give their electricity into the system.

In the morning, we went to Portland and met Hannah's brother and poked around the little shops. Hannah left too soon with her brother to Belfast ME. Sorrel and I headed to a used bookshop (which is were I got the previously mentioned White Tiger).

We got home and made dinner and the next morning we got up and went for a walk up a little hill. Maine has snow, which I haven't seen much of this year. There was a dusting in Massachusetts this morning, but even when Papa and I climbed Mt. Monadnock the weekend before there wasn't much snow. Sorrel and I only had one set of microspikes between the two of us, so we each bore weight on one leg as we made our way up the icy slope. At the top, there was a view of some frozen lakes and mountains further out.

At the end of the day the four of us (Sorrel and I, and her parents) watched Dinner with Andre, which makes it the last movie I saw in 2018. The next morning Sorrels father showed me the starts of permaculture plots they had planned out around their land. Being there reminded me that I wanted a goat to get milk from. I imagine being a therapist with a goat and a vegetable patch. I guess I don't have a very good imagination, because mostly I imagine the goat and the vegetable plot in my parent's backyard. Mama had a boy goat named Pashka when she was little, and he's in some of the family photos.

Eventually it was time to go back home and Sorrel drove me back to the Portland station. On the bus I read I Talk Pretty One Day (which I finished later without feeling any accomplishment, and feeling confused as to why Sidaris is so well known). At some point on the bus I got a text form Veta with my Secret Santa; Eloosha, and I started to think of what to give him that I could assemble in the few hours I'd be home, which now leads us to the part of 2018 which is practically 2019 - for next time.

half eaten books

I met the new year surrounded by old friends, having ended 2018 surrounded by slightly less old college friends. But perhaps more on that later: the new year is often a time to reflect. In my case, I am reflecting on the books I have started in my life but not finished. From the bottom:

First: I don't think I will finish this book. Prisoner's of Love has been treacherous, I just can't get into it. I give up. I do.
2nd: The Geographer Drank His Globe Away does not have the same ring to it in English as it does in Russian. My mother gave me this book; I am #blessed with a mother who's book recommendations tend to fall in line with my literary tastes, I guess this is no accident (side note: that is my least favorite hashtag that I see all the time). So I know I should give it another try, in spite of my borderline illiteracy in Russian (I'm exaggerating but still)
3rd: Has anyone ever actually finished this book? Not only is Infinite Jest difficult to carry around, it is also the most depressing thing I have ever read. In some ways like the Bell Jar but longer, without the southern romanticism of The Sound and The Fury to take the edge off, or the Irish romanticism and nationalism of Joyce's Ulysses (see, those books I somehow managed to read!) Because reading it is so mundane, and is lasts forever. Absurd as well, sure, but mostly it feels like waiting in line for your groceries behind someone talking about tennis. We'll see. Not a priority.
4th: The White Tiger is a book I picked up while in Maine at a second hand book shop with Sorrel. It is the first book I ever didn't finish, senior year of high school, because it was a school book and I didn't finish it in time before graduating. Not only do I want to finish it because it has stuck in my head all of these years, and I hold a true curiosity of how it ends, but also perhaps finishing it will allow me to stop this pattern of not finishing books. Except for that bottom one. Nope.
5th: Notes from the Underground. It's really good, the bit of it I have read I've truly enjoyed - though being a classic I guess this is a given. Plus Matt was asking me about it a month or so ago, so I'll have someone to discuss it with once I'm done in addition to my parents. Bonus.

I also have A Young Doctor's Notebook and Twelve Chairs on my list for Russian ones, and Howards End (EM Forster) in English.

any other good reads I should get to this year?

the rain

I want to go outside because the downpour smells warm through my window. The trees are relishing the wind and the lightning is tearing the thunder asunder.


Went to Baxter State Park with my family for the fourth of July weekend but the tornado made us too miserable to stay a third night. We canoed in the rain and walked quickly in a vain attempt to escape the gnats and mosquitoes (they do so relish our blood).

The prodigal daughter has returned to write again.

movies: Cabare (1972, USA), Blade Runner (1982, USA), F for Fake (1973, France, in English), Magnolia (1999, USA).

Baxter State Park 2013

Wednesday after my internship I went to Penn Station and took a bus home. The next day my family and I packed and drove up to Baxter State Park, as we have for years. Since we last went, both Sima and Yosef have grown quite a bit, so the tent is getting a bit tight. But the weather was warm and there were plenty of gnats to go round. We swam, hiked, canoed, and sat around the camp fire drinking tea and fishing mosquitoes out of the soup.

Sima kept telling me the following joke -What do vegetarian zombies say? -What? -GRAAAAAAAINS

Baxter State Park 2011

I've been going to Baxter almost every 4th of July weekend since I was two, and my parents decided to go camping. They thought all the green parts of the map would be campable, but most of it turned out to be paper mill land, and so they drove all the way to northern Maine until they hit Baxter, and we've been returning ever since.

Last time we got cabins, but we never make reservations, since the only way to make one is to go there, and early. The reservations can only start being made in January. Togo all the way up there in the winter to wait and then drive back is just not realistic. Sometimes it means moving around a lot. This time we got a lean-to for a couple of days.

A thing about lean-to's: they are great when its raining, but when its not, they mean lots of bugs. Mosquitoes, gnats, horse flies. Tent+lean-to combination works well though, though our tent barely fit.

I don't know why, but this time we were simply exhausted most of the time we were there. Kept waking up in the middle of the night, but by evening we would wake up...

The people in the lean-to next to us seemed to eat, drink and collect wood all day, but they went to bed pretty early and got up early too. They spent part of the days building a raised rock-bridge in the river in front of us to get to all the dead logs across it. It was funny watching them walk across it when they were drunk, attempting to keep balance and not fall in. They kept a crate full of beer in the river as well (very effective cooling mechanism, though Mama said it was a standard way, but I was impressed.) They tried opening wine bottles by putting them in shoes and slamming them against trees. When Папа offered a bottle opener they said "No thankyou! we are having fun!"
We came home on the 4th, and watched Independence Day :P.

Yosef wasn't with us, which was weird. He left to Israel with Бабушка (she lives there), as a barmitzvah-esk present, except that he isn't actually having any ceremony.  He was complaining that this summer was going to be like all others, so we sent him off. He hasn't really been in contact, except for the first night when he was being plagued by jetlag. Hopefully he's enjoying himself now.

(Shimon pouring sweetened condensed milk over buckwheat in the morning)