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.

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.

Valentine's Day

Yesterday Matt and I went to the ICA: he wanted to take me out for Valentin's day, even though I don't care about it but it was nice to go, which I guess is the point. We saw the short animated films nominated for the Oscar, of which we both will highly recommend: Negative Space (Max Porter and Ru Kawahata). He wanted to see some of the museum as well, but we just ate and went home on account of a headache. Planning on returning this Thursday.

Thinking back on past Valentin's day's: one year Kostya got me roses, which I accepted and felt like I was doing him a favor by not being cruel and turning down. So long ago. One year I went with a roommate to eat cheese and drink beer at Aeronaut. I want to go there again; the roommate and I no longer talk. When Matt and I started dating, February rolled up fast so we ran away to Canada, where it was too cold for all the little red hearts. Last year we did go out: Wednesday night I think. I got drunk though, I didn't like myself that night. This year I got got him small things over weeks: vinyl of an artist we will be seeing this summer (hear), we made palmiers (taste), a scented candle (smell), poems (feel), flowers (see). About half way through he said "are these gifts for me, or is this an art project?" "both - and you are my muse"

A couple days ago I finished reading Cities I've Never Lived In by Sara Majka. I'm going to send it to Luisa, I think she'll like it.

Tonight Matt and I spent an hour reading old pieces we had written, leaving us pensive. I am falling asleep now. good night.

Construction

On October the 19th, we were over at Em's. This was the night I had smoked a full cigar, exhaling it through my mouth and inhaling the smoke through my nose into my lungs until I felt too dizzy to sit. I lay down and listened to the sounds of the room, exclamations and roaring laughter gave way to chitter and chatter and quieter conversations, and by then the world had stop spinning so much around my body. Em and Launti had gone to bed. World Matt and I stayed up watching "That's My Boy", which World claims is the movie of his people (set in his hometown of Somerville). I said we should go for a walk, but a little past midnight World fell asleep in his chair, mid-sentence.

It was drizzling outside when we left the apartment. I used a gray blanket from the couch as a cloak and Matt pointed at a building not too far away and said it looked like Christmas lights so we went towards the twinkling, found the gates to the site unlocked, and climbed, ten stories up, with a view of the city spreading out below us on all sides. I wanted to return to take photos so on the 14th of December we did. It was unseasonably warm and rainy, and in two months glass had arrived to the first nine stories of the building, and wooden beams had appeared on the first couple floors. But the gate was still unlocked and the security guard was not doing his job, so we went up and up again. Here are a few of the photos from that hunt -

different building, still twinkled

 

 

 

Truth and Beauty

At the very end of my shift on the 31st, a code was called that resulted in three restraints. That was how I exited 2015.

They say your year will go the way you entered it. I entered it with warmth. I was surrounded by people I've known since I was ten. I called my family in Arizona. I messaged those who I wanted to carry with me from 2015 into 2016.

My first conversation of the year was
Eloosha, with a smug look: Huh, doesn't feel very different.
Me, insistent on magic: almost like New Years is an artificial time construct, you jerk.

traditions carried for generations: Oranges or clementines. Champagne. A table laden with food. Ирония судьбы (The Irony of Fate) playing in the background. Saying goodbye to the Old Year before saying hello to the New. Family. A New Years tree. Sparklers and fireworks. Snegurochka and Ded Moroz. Gifts. Love.

First Day of the Year, discussing bunnies as secret illigal pets during college
"I only ever saw two bunnies at Yale, one was named Truth and the other Beauty, and one of them almost certainly overdosed on cocaine" (which one though, is unknown)

I woke up the next morning and knit for a little bit before falling asleep and waking up with everyone else: all of us soon transitioned to one bed, a lump and warmth and promises to try to stay horizontal for as long as possible. Liza said "my new years resolution is to keep my heart over my head for as long as possible". Eloosha said "I think with my hands". I tucked those away.
Wasting time to the fullest with cuddling and music and late brunch. 
The next morning I woke not in my own bed yet again, and read Autobiography of a Corpse (Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky translated by Joanne Turnbull, 1920's) while surrounded by sleeping beauties.

I made it back to my apartment eventually, only to go back to the same company for a conversation that lasted hours, a midnight visitation and trying to breathe and be brave.

blue tape white snow

I got paint at Pills Hardware store and somehow ended up with a VIP card, 10% off with a signature of the owner (I'm much friendlier when I'm tired.) I got Yosef to come and help me evacuate all my belongings, blue tape the floor, paint the walls. I took him out for pad-thai, so I don't think he regretted coming.

I also went with my family to New Hampshire. We went snowshoeing. Sima struggled to get up the mountain but then we slide down most of it on our butts, the longest snow-slide and excruciatingly fun.

Black Cat White Cat (1998, Yugoslavia, Emir Kusturica)

dream --
We had crash landed on another planet, our jar of human stem cells cracking in the process, the culture spilling all over, infecting the air. The creatures that lived in took on the form of what they touched, and so they looked human. But if they touched you, you turned into one of them: empty, imitative, reflectory. And so we were terrified: who is human and who is not? They moved and were watching us, slowly pretending not to hunt.

free chocolate

That same day I met up with Karen in the evening. It was my Monday off (I'd worked the weekend of the play) so I wanted to make the most of it, and for once everyone else had a Monday off too. Full weekends become a very exciting event when you only get every other one - a marked switch from the three-day weekends typical of my college experience.

Tuesday, Wednesday were normal work days: up before the sunrise, done by 3:30. Thursday I got mandated to do a double shift for the first time. I still had work Friday morning and had woken up at 4am for no reason. I was so loopy (and also it was my fourth unit in three days, which meant yet another set of names and rapport to establish) but it went well, though I'm sure the other MHW, who had never worked with me before, thought I was crazy. I told him that during my break my eyes welled up with tears after watching a Cheerios commercial.

I met with Cat and Alana after work that day, and watched The Wolf of Wallstreet once I got back to the apartment (2013, USA, Scorsese, not worth your time). Beer and a movie; classic American way to end the day. Totaling being up for 22 hours for no reason at all.

Saturday morning I got up and Therese (roommate) and I joined her friends at Harvard Sq. where a chocolate festival was going on. Lots of free samples, also lots of people lined up, patiently. We were not patient. We ate the samples we got before a couple hundred people swarmed the square, at which point we left to get afternoon margaritas. This is what classy ladies do - drink margaritas in the middle of the day. And the cherry on top was my parents coming to drop my bike off, and then falling asleep, finally, after they left. (There ain't no rest for the wicked.)

after my parents left and I fell napped, I woke up in time for wine & sparklers

wrap up

I was just watching stand-up on youtube with people, but have a hard time getting into it. The go-to explanation is that I'm too pc to laugh, but a lot of it was pretty inoffensive. Just boring. Or sad. Many jokes come from sorrow.
But I'm not a lost cause -- A few of the patients said about me "that one has a sense of humor".
I'll take it.

Welcome in the new year. Here is what happened in the last one (listing off for myself so I can start afresh?):

The next generation was in the second iteration of the Harms play from 2008. I talked to Eloosha, half asleep, after that, and to a half-awake Valya the next morning. Dew-covered thread connect sleeping moment to sleeping moment, new faces on an altered stage.

I went to the Goya exhibit with Max M. There was this beautiful print The Blind Guitarist and some paintings on ivory that had a really interesting effect.

bits of James Bond. The Manchurian Candidate (1962, USA, Frankenheimer); Print the Legend (2011, USA); Footnote (2011, Israel, Cedar); Mazerunner (2014, USA, Ball).

photo by Miriam E

helix

what?
a helix piercing, followed by vegan milkshakes and watching The One I Love (2014, USA, McDowell).

when?
The 14th of September, it was a lovely day.

where?
Stingray Body Art, then FoMu and finally West Newton Cinema (the theater is slightly decrepit, but I like it).

why?
because I've wanted to for so long it felt like I already had it done years ago. I told Dasha Sh when I was in Moscow in February of 2009, and she sent me a letter with a little hoop earring, which took about two months to come but did make it (surprisingly, happily).

who?
me, the writer, with her lovely friend Yulka.

how?
with a needle. with money. with pressure. with choice. with a hand. with a deep breath in and a deep breath out. with advice. with memory. with metal in flesh.

which?
the right one.

girl on ground

1) Yesterday, Yulka and I went to Vegi Galaxy (black bean burger for her, chickpea and mushroom for me) before wandering around Central Sq. and inevitably ending up at the Arts&Craftsman store. We indulged ourselves in calligraphy pens and ink.

3) We then watched The Double (2013, UK) though I should probably read the Dostoevsky short story. Also recently: Man on Wire (2008, UK).

Welch-Dickey Loop from a couple weeks ago

4) Karen and I met up for the first time in a long time at the beginning of the summer, ate at the Border Cafe in Harvard Sq, walked from there to Northeastern. We followed up last weekend with pizza and coffee. The distance between people vacillates.

5) I dreamed I was dancing on water. I had to make sure my weight was distributed equally on the soles of my feet and that I moved quickly not to fall through into the lake.

6) Our refrigerator broke over a week ago. The snow my brothers gathered and kept through the years melted. The oldest bag filled with water and small twigs is from winter 2008-2009.

7) Sima did not manage to keep it a secret when his tooth fell out. He was too excited, running up to Mama and me to show it before washing it, putting it in a sandwich bag and under his pillow to be replaced by a Sacagawea coin.

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).

night blossom

I was the first Russian girl Adrienne was ever friends with, so we have been planning on watching The Russians Are Coming The Russians are Coming (1966 USA) since freshman year and finally followed through today. This morning Amanda and I got brunch and then I had my last class on Joyce's Ulysses (читала, читала, прочитала).

it's been raining and the drops have taken down the apple blossoms, wet petals hitting the ground. Sasha and Luisa visited me for a day and we went to a senior photo show. Yesterday after Hannah's board we went to the Tivoli bakery. Lemon square, coffee, cranberry scone.







--for some reason I don't think I can study parts philosophy without understanding quantum physics, which will never happen. How can I understand choice if I don't understand chance or the splitting of the universe?

aquacities of thought and language

Senior photo exhibit I, Alex's senior opera recital, the senior dance show, Dani's senior music recital. Pill for reduction of lyme disease by 80% if taken within 72 hours of being bitten (the bite itself swollen and itching.) My shoulders have browned and freckled from the sun. The picking of a stem of apple blossoms and putting them into a glass milk bottle. Kelsey said “Brooklyn is the Bard afterlife”. Jono got a bird and it screams at the birds outside. Text from Yulka, 11:59pm 10/3/13: It's ok, understand. I took a picture of the magnolia tree behind my house, after asking Sorrel and Hannah to stand in front of it. Found out that (wood) Sorrel is what I know as заячья капуста (bunny cabbage). Text from Hannah, 5:07pm 3/25/14: Between ny and philly: bleakest train ride ever. Nj a hellscape. Valley of ashes. we were making a film but we could do more complicated things, such as overlay ourselves into previous renditions (so that there could be two of each person in a scene). And we decided that we could each interact with the previous version as we wished, without planning out everything before hand. But then a couple of us started killing us off. And I was upset: not only because we were being murdered (it only half felt like it was only in the movie we were making) but because a horror flick didn't fit my artistic version for the film. I screamed in fear and woke up silent. I need to install my AC again because it's getting hot and humid and my room is right under the roof. I can hear it when the rains, which I like. I tried smiling at someone from class but it he looked away mournfully. Emma is to come around noon and we will walk to the burrito stand. She switched majors from psychology to photography, I never did a senior project for studio art, taking a drawing III class in my final semester. Text from Sasha, 10:48pm 4/21/14: (I know but one soul this romantically damned.) I watched The Garden State (2004 USA) last night alone, and found it irritating. Some say say happiness is the absence of sadness. Farm fest was 4$ chili with bread and rice and we left the music when we came around in the evening. Mass Text from Kelsey, 10:49pm, drunk and standing right next to me 5/2/14: I love you ;) Went to the klezmer concert at Two Boots, eating mediocre pizza with Hannah and Will before going to Kelsey's room to watch ParaNorman (2012 USA). Sang the last full chamber singers concert for the masters choral conductors (Sicut cervus – Palestrina; Trois Chansons – Debussy; Spirit Seeking Light and Beauty – Stuart; Pater Noster – Stravinksy; Agnus Dei – Hassler; Rest – Vaughan Williams; There will be rest – Techeli; No. 8 Wenn so lind dein Auge mir, No.16 Ein dunkeler Schacht ist Liebe – Brahms; The last words of David – Thompson). “you can't make eye contact with half of campus” Emma said as we sat in the grass eating our burritos. This is the final truth. 

 

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)

m&m cookies

Perhaps one would expect four 20-somethings in NYC to go out and have a wild Friday night. (I don't know who you are, reader, but perhaps you know better than to expect this of me?). We got two bottles of red wine and made m&m cookies and stayed up until a pointless hour. Saturday I headed for soul food at Amy-Ruth’s in Harlem with some people, before going to some shitty bar in upper west side. Wouldn’t say that food spoke to my soul, personally, but then I don’t like fried food or rigorously salted food or food I have to pay more than 9$ for, and they are famous of their fried chicken on a waffle, which isn’t something I would order, so I’m a bad judge. The bar was Bourbon Street, and had bras hanging from the ceiling from all the girls that had danced they away in exchange for a free drink - bar policy. Not sure why: bras are way more expensive than drinks. The TV screens glared at us from all the walls.

Yesterday I went to Spectacle Theater in Williamsburg, Brooklyn to see a movie with Damon. The theater was small, so that we missed it twice before finally realizing that what we had been walking past were not apartment buildings. The movie was a rather odd 1987 Japanese documentary called The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On. Odd because there’s a combination: the main characters search for truth of the horrendous campaign during WWII by the Japanese in New Guinea. Then there’s the ideological side of what makes a good man, what it means to bring peace to the dead, how to prevent further wars, what is the cost of bringing up the truth, the use of violence. Then there’s the characters themselves, the veteran heading the expedition is, for lack of a better word, mad. 

3$ falafel and 2.50$ for baklava

lichen lace

We went to Craftsbury Vermont to cross country ski and snowshoe. There had been an ice storm so the trees had crackle-snap-crashed from the weight of the ice. There was this one tree covered in reindeer lichen, and then with the ice it looked like it was decorated in green lace scrunchies. I was enamored.

Smultronstället (Wild Strawberries 1957 Swedish)

True Romance (1993 USA)

Иваново Детство (Ivan's Childhood 1962 Russian)

We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011 UK)

Stoker (2013 UK)

The Godfather (1972 USA)