life as film

Yesterday I got a text from Max, who travels a lot for his new job.
it said:
I am officially a regular at JFK Laguardia airport, gate official recognized me and said, "Hello again Mr Mendelssohn" before he even saw my ticket.

and I thought: this is so great! It's like a scene from a movie. Those small-town feel in a large city scenes the establish a character at the start of a film. It also reminded me of a long conversation Leonid and I had (via letters) about being a 'regular' somewhere; how so many shows are set up around this idea that people meet up at a bar or a coffee shop or comic book store a lot and there's this community there. How little either of us know of establishments that have that. I was edging on that at some point at the 1369 cafe in Central Sq: the people who work there seem cool and there's a lot less turnover than at most places (I even named the blond girl with the dreads in my head, don't know when that happened) . And they recognized me and one even came over to chat one time. I would come three days a week in the morning before work and get the same thing almost every time. And then I moved. But that experience felt like I was filming in a movie, in a really artsy movie that I would maybe like to watch. What other good moments are there like that, where life imitates fiction?

---

The long weekend was taken at it's fullest: on Saturday Matt and I went to Walden pond. He read Walden at Walden Pond. I finished Be Here Now by Ram Dass. We walked around and took a dip in the lake. We talked a bit about Skinner's Walden Two and the like. The kind of day I like. He's spent the whole summer pretending shorts are swim-trunks. I've spent the whole summer without any shorts. Somehow we got by; it is now September.

On Monday Sima and I finished a project we had started the weekend before; that is, we finished bleaching his hair. He just got braces and glasses (Harry Potter style, his choice) and wanted to complete a trio of changes by doing his hair as well. Mama tried at first with a pharmacy kit, but those never work well so I took over after purchasing some more heavy-duty materials at a beauty supply store. He was so excited throughout the process, even biked over to the train station to meet me.

It was also Yosef's birthday, the day before he left to go back to his second year at university. I made him coconut cupcakes; he made everyone Uzbek plov.  I told him "We are both in our 20's!" and he said "you are closer to being 80 that I am!" -- how dastardly! I miss him already.

affections

Let me start in small strokes. I am feeling better than the last time I wrote. The boy who would evaporate on me has evaporated altogether, and the only thing that's keeping me from writing 'gone forever' is that I don't like ultimatums and certainties; believe in eventuality and chance. He lives fifteen minutes away but he has evaporated as he was, as people sometimes do. I've always kept this out of here but here it is anyways, I have changed and so has how and what I write. And so on Friday Paras came from NYC, because he is not one of those people who just goes away. Amy showed up and Adrian and his brother, and we all went to play pool and were so cool, so cool.

Yosef showed up the next day and we drank tea and drank words and eventually realized that we ought to take a walk so we did, circling around Inman Sq. I'd given him a haircut so he looked more civilized and in the evening Mama picked him up and dropped off another wild-haired brother, also seeking a haircut. I'd said to Sima that he could sleep over as a birthday present and that's what we did. I'm glad that I'm fourteen years older than him because if we had shared a womb the way we shared a bed I certainly would have been the smaller twin. I woke up a few times to find myself taking up a third of the bed to a child half my size. In the morning I made him oatmeal and then he read for half an hour for his school homework, reading excerpts he thought particularly funny aloud. I gave him a haircut and we walked to Harvard Sq where he got frozen yogurt - he left content.

kaleidoscope

I keep having words but not putting them together here, like a moving kaleidoscope and I can't quite snatch up the shapes and colors before they disappear from before me.

green glass - I went to the Somerville porch fest with Adian and Margo. We shifted from venue to venue, and with the change in location came a change in population. Old married couples with grandchildren in one place, people in their late 30's at another, those in their 20's and early 30's at a third. It's kind-of perfect though, the idea of a porch fest. People come out and share their own music with the people living around them, using the cross of urban and suburban space: tightly packed houses stacked next to each other -- creating a town-wide bbq-party. Green bottles filled with beer in hand, music dances in the air.

teal strand - I dyed my hair. People keep asking way and I say "I just felt like it" except to Paras to whom I said "whenever I change my hair it's because of a boy" and didn't repeat myself when he didn't hear.


a feather, refracted - we went camping: the boy who used to live in the room I live in now, Therese, Paras, and Amy. I had never gone camping without the supervision of those a generation above me! I had never gone camping without Russians! We snuck around trying to scare each other throughout the day, like real adults. We had about 7 different types of 'dogs' to accommodated so many different dietary restrictions. We pitched a couple tents and didn't get wet when it rained. We toasted marshmallows for breakfast and swam in a lake with ducklings.

a mirror slate - at work, I now only have 32h schedueled per week, and only work day shift, which means I no longer feel like I'm chronically jetlagged. Unless I pick up a shift, I always work on 3South, on of the acute units, like I had asked. All of this makes me much happier, I didn't even realize how much weight had been placed on my chest until it lifted. Two days ago I had a few tears escape my eyes while at the nurses station, in front of people. One of the patients had screamed and called me a bitch, and I also found out that I was almost certainly mandated. Usually I am ashamed when people see me cry, but this time I apologized and it felt okay. "Relax" Cole told me, and gave me a one-armed hug. I didn't get mandated. She apologized to me the next day "you know you are one of my favorite staff! I was waiting for you to come in after yesterday so I could apologize!" I said, yes, thank you, but wouldn't it be great if you didn't have to apologize? Think about what you think will help you to control your temper, before it boils over. "You are right!" she said. We will see.


how many times have I turned the kaleidescope?

warm home

 Sunday, March 16 filled to the brim with pseudoephedrine and cough medicine, I went to An Opera Double Bill: Payne Hollow by Shawn Jaeger (which was....eh) and The Turn of the Screw by Benjamin Britten (which was disturbing, and I haven't read the story). Since I have turned in a paper and traveled back home. Massachusetts, Massachusetts, my sweet sweet love. 

But having drunk coffee with my grandmother who's visiting from Israel, giving Yosef the requested buzz cut, driven Shimon to his swim lesson, helped Papa fix up the basement after the electrical wiring got redone and helped Mama pick out a skirt, I am now at the end of the part of my spring break that is me being at home - and leaving tomorrow at 7am.

The lakes are still frozen but the geese are back.

deep snow

Valentine’s day morning Hannah and I went for a walk, enjoying the 21 inches of snow that had recently fallen on top of the snow that had already been there for a week. I look like Snow White: dark features against white skin when I was five I thought I was ugly because I’m so pale. I told my father I thought I wasn’t pretty and he was very confused, but I don’t remember telling him why. I told him I thought I stick out in the class picture they took of us at school; a white face, a red splotch of lips, a dark tangle of hair that nobody could manage. He told me he didn’t think I stuck out oddly, and that he thought I was pretty, and possibly that he wasn’t just telling me that because I’m his daughter.

I went to the root cellar briefly and but soon left with a friend. She was angry,  we took a walk -- kicking snowbanks and then sneaking into the music building to try and play someone's drums but the sound we created was terrifying and so ended up in Blithewood, looking at the cold-struck vines lacing against the moonlit sky.

That weekend I took a walk to the waterfall, where the only animals before me had been deer. Their hoof prints in the deep in the snow, their dragging bellies making a path that split in two closer to the water.

Movies the last two are ones I forgot to jot down from two years  ago:

1. 砂の女 (Woman in the Dunes, 1964 Japanese)
2. Amores perros (2000 Mexican)
3. Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997 USA)
4. Submarine (2010 UK)

spelling

I've just given both my brothers haircuts. I've spent time with family and seen friend (Annutik is going to India! She just came back from Australia. Everyone else seems to be staying on this continent for the next few months). I'm leaving for NYC tomorrow morning until classes start up again.

My sort of New Years Resolution:

I've attempted to make New Years resolutions before - twice. However, neither of those years ended with me doing the intended split. Mama says Russian's don't make resolutions, and I have a conspiratorial theory that it's a habit brought to culture by capitalist gyms trying to sell memberships (everyone who goes to gyms regularly hates this time of year).
But in spite of my mother, and myself, I've decided that there is something I should work on. Spelling. And what better place to make sure I do this but here? I'm not sure how I've managed all these years - read so many books, written so many papers - without absorbing the proper way to order letters. Most people seem to make adjustments without conscious effort. It's at the point where it looks like I'm making errors in my grammar and pronunciation, particularly in Russian, but in English too. Sure, it's embarrassing. But mostly I want to improve my spelling because I'm vain (vane, vein) and I got two really great compliments on my speech this year. Amanda consistently tells me I speak and write poetically (in English). Kostya told me that sometimes he thinks I'm quoting classical literature, and then realizes that I'm just talking (in Russian). If spelling is blockading my ability to bring poetry to the page, then I should work on it. Right? Of course, I have yet to figure out how I'm going to do this...

head full of dominoes

Central Park is packed on the weekends, and I bumped into Lenya and Anya on the day of their wedding anniversary. They were going to listen to Wagner in the evening.
They helped me cross the park, I may have been a bit overheated and felt like the sentences coming out of my mouth were heavy like lead.
Amanda stayed the night. Outside my building, teenage boys stood by a car pumping music.  Men of various ages played dominoes, as they do on many nights. On the way over, Amanda counted the numerous barber shops, all packed at 9pm on a Saturday night.

Last night I had a dream in which I lost my mothers ring. It was made out of a black pearl, carved out, and then this man found it. His first wife had been a circus act, but had passed away. He had two kids. The boy had one large eye in the middle of his face, the girl crawled on all fours in a bridge. Somehow in giving it to me the ring, it was a proposal for marriage, to have a child. And I said I'd think about it, and his kids clung to me, I guess they needed a mother. He was kind and handsome but not very intelligent. Time felt like it was leaving me, I had to decide; if I said no, there was no guarantee there would be someone else, but I didn't know if I would be happy if I said yes. I wanted a child more than a husband. I also went to a ball at Dean's house. It was snowing out, and to get there we had to climb up in our fancy dressed, move some bricks and squeeze through a tiny window into a Gothic looking home.

other recent dreams I remember less distinctly; I was bisexual, but this was exhibited by the fact that I was a witch, and my parents wanted to murder me for it. I tried evading them by drinking champagne and wine with strangers in a fancy hidden cafe. In another one, a mad scientist serial killer was getting away, sometimes the dream would be like an animation rather than real life. The house I lived in was large but not finished, and one of the two walls holding in my room had a broken pipe from which water was leaking everywhere. Walking past human remains with flies buzzing over them was disturbing, even though it was in Miyazaki's style.
movies

1. Moonrise Kingdom
2. Возвращение (The Return 2003)
3. Harold and Maude

Not Purple

The other night I had a dream and what I remember from it was the empty stone whales. They were life-size, and sometimes they would fill up with water and bacteria and drown, but the new ones and the ones with tops that were closed well floated, even though they were stone, because they where filled with air inside. It was a giant park. I was looking at it from above and there was a really clear river flowing through, but it wasn't horizontal, it went up, like solid bricks of water, somewhat like an aquarium without glass. There was beautiful coral and seaweed growing in the river, and a boardwalk throughout the park. I also remember some friends taking funny photos in a bathroom; making faces at the camera and standing in ridiculous poses, but I only remember Louisa being there, though I know there were more. She was wearing a costume, it was black and red. Also I'm pretty sure CIA agents were somehow involved, or maybe the mafia.


Also Inka helped me dye my hair. Osya and I went to sleep over at their house and that night we went to the pharmacy to get dye. The only purple dye they had was "Spalt".
1) Bleach for an hour (not all my hair, there was only enough in the bottle to cover about a third)
2) Dye it in "Lusty Lavender" for an hour (there wasn't enough bleach to cover all my hair)
3) Wash it out and watch most of the dye come out (it didn't stick)
4) Sleep
5) Decide if I want to keep the pink, copper and natural hair (it was still nice, but I was set on purple)
6) Bleach/Dye with Llongueras "Violin" which Inka had brought from Spain for an hour (even though it said 35 min)
7) Wash it out.

It still isn't purple. 









































Today nothing exciting happened; had my weight and height measured, blood taken and answered a bunch of questions. Physical. Haven't had one since before college. I also met with Eames at Copley yesterday and we got froyo at the Red Mango and walked around Newbury Street (that's when the photo is from.)

Tonight is the third (and last) night of filming with Sara and a few of her friends. We have been shooting at the Newton Library from library closing time to when the lights go out (9-12) about four kids who are meeting up during the summer after being at college for a year. They grew up in a really Christian town and there is a whole thing set up around strawberry cigarillos (thin cigar; no filter and you aren't supposed to inhale.) as a rather pathetic attempt to be cool.  I play the girl girl who brings the cigarillos and is trying to convince everyone that "we are the same people we used to be...just cooler"

Music of Tacheles

I am home now. The first time I woke up today I had been dreaming about the German past tense. I am home now, I woke up at 6am and, among other things, have spent some time picking the ants out of a jar of honey someone left open. A multi-part recap of the last days in Berlin:

Part 1

I woke up at 9:30, and could smell the smoke that had sunk into my hair. I lay awhile and then left, Lisa was awake and I told her I would contact her about going to the photography museum, but of course later it turned out that I can't reach her phone, possibly because she has a Maltees number. I came back to The Convent and ate and showered and then went to the Museum fur Fotografie by Zoologiche Garten. There were three exhibits, one of ethnographic photos that had been lost and found, which was okay but the photos, being falsely scientific, were stiff (you should have seen some of the original texts.) And then the other exhibit was of "White Women / Sleepless Nights / Big Nudes” which although I recognized one of the photos and Helmut Newton isn't a no-name photographer, it seemed like an exhibit of the male gaze. The exhibit also flowed into a section called "private property" which made it worse. I went back and napped and then went to by the Bode Museum and briefly met with Bengi, before realizing that the concert I thought was on Saturday was probably on Sunday. (I didn’t stay to hang out because I needed to get my hand disinfected; Sasha, vodka, lack of surprise, appreciated.)

Sunday I decided to stay away from the really large museums, so I went to the Sammlung Sharf-Gesrtenberg in Charlotenberg, especially since the selection of Max Ernst and Buffett appealed to me, even though I couldn’t remember any work by them. I got lost though, and ate and then ended up at the Museum Berggruen, which is free and not very good, but there are blueprints there, and there was one small painting that I liked. I wrote down the name of the artist but threw out the paper. Sammlung Sharf-Gesrtenberg was fantastic, there were really good prints in the lower part of it and it made me want to go back to the zinc plates and acid baths of the print studio. 

Then I napped and after that I actually went to the concert I had attempted to attend the day before, except that I was an hour early. Thursday Katrin had shown me around the area a bit: little hidden courtyards, Tacheles, empty buildings and pretty streets, so  I went back to take pictures of Tacheles, which was an abandoned building that has now been taken over by artists to use as studio space. Some investor wants to kick them out, I don't know why, there are so many buildings in much better shape in just as good areas.

The concert was:

Anna Faber- Violine

Daniella Strasfogel- Viola

Boram Lie- Violoncello

Clemens Hund-Göschel - Klavier

Marc Sabat (*1965) - Claudius Ptolemy für Violine und Cello*

Gabriel Fauré - Klavierquartett Nr. 2 in g-moll, op. 45

Marc Sabat - Jean-Philippe Rameau*

I really recommend it. Free. Open air. Good music. The weather was perfect, and people where drinking the beer and wine being sold on the bridge. 

I was surprised when Bengi called after the concert was over to hang out. I was also relieved, she could have well been annoyed by me for the day before and before that as well. Relived and flattered and happy, becuase it meant I walked around at night with my camera, which I hadn't done much of, with good company.

this was fun

Last Thursday I took out my braids, and Britt dressed me up as if it were the 90's, crimped hair and plaid, and we watched Clueless. Then at some point later in the week  I made banana bread,

which turned out really well (I doubled the recipe and made it in a cake pan.)  

Friday Anna organized an ecoreps event where we made a really good salad. There was also a screening for a movie, but since the salad was my lunch and dinner it needed to be supplemented with something else, so I went to get more food. Here's the recipe:

Lentil Salad:

(on the recipe it said it should take 30-40min to prepare, and this is a recipe for 6 servings

Ingredients:
1 cup lentil
2 cups of water

1 cup of dry bulgur weat
2cup of boiling water

The dressing:
1/4 cup Olive oil
1/4 cup lemon juice
2 medium garlic cloves, crushed
1 tsp of salt
1/2 tsp of oregano
2 tbs freshly minced mint
2 to 3 tbs freshly minced dill
fresh black pepper to taste

(Ingredients to chop
1/4 cup freshly minced parsley(packed)
1/3 cup red onion
1 small bell pepper diced
1/2 stalk celery finely minced
(half a cup crumbling feta)
1 medium sized tomato, diced
1/2 cup chopped toasted walnuts

1/2 cup chopped toasted walnuts
(+squeezable wedges of lemon for garnish)

cook the lentils and the bulgar, let them cool.

Chop everything else. Add all the chopped ingredients (apart from the tomatoes) to the bulgur. Add the lentils. Mix all the ingredients for the dressing together and add to the mix. Add the tomatoes.



Then Saturday we tried to track down a party (Shivalika, Clea, Britt, Tamding, Armaan and a few others). We went to smog at like, 10:30 because Shivi had a friend who was djing there, danced it up in the empty space. When we tried to go to manor around 1am the party had already broken down, and we headed back to smog (just me, Britt and Cindy, who we kidnapped from her dorm on the way) it was totally empty, just the djs-very eery. So we didn't find anything, but it was still fun.

Tuesday I had breakfast at Manor for the first time, and my shoe broke on the way to neuro so I went to nuero and research methods barefoot. Amanda and Meg kept calling me a hippie, I had a long flowy skirt and everything.
Two nights ago I went for a night photo escapade with my tripod. I've always had this frustration with night photography that the camera can't capture what you see. It goes like this: Camera! You know there's a face there! stop being so blurry!
But with a tripod it can compound all the information it is getting, and see more than a human. It's awesome.

Stargon at night

also last night when I was walking back to my dorm, I saw a couple guys go into the woods. I was really confused as to where they were trying to get to that way until I heard peeing.