no doubt summer

dinner on the balcony
Margo: Isn't this a great weather day? Can this day be any better?
Adrian: no, it can't be. It feels like the sun has been making out with you all day, you know? Especially around 3 or 4.

I had a dream this week in which I had cancer and was going to die in three days. A spot had been found on my lungs. I only told my family, and we didn't know what to do and they love me so much but I'm not sure we could even really cry. I still came in to work. I glared at a vacuous member of the administration, who was vapidly going on about the new colors of the walls and being a team. I did not want to die, but my lung was giving out.

Tuesday I followed three of my coworkers to Revere beach, drinking wine handed to me by Meils in the backseat on the way there. "Who is this person?" asked LauntyLaunt. The label read: RELAX. Towels, sand. Drunk sounds of the waves crashing. We drank every time we saw an airplane - and they did come, right out of Logan Airport. I said "guys, let's go swim! The ocean is beckoning us!" "beckoning? It's BECKONING us T---?" but they did come. World flipped me into the water, I pinched my nose so the salt wouldn't rush into my nostrils, joyously bobbing with the waves. I'm a terrible swimmer but that doesn't matter when the moon is full and you've had too much Corona.

The Idiot

I finished reading The Idiot earlier this week. I'd been so frustrated with it. My reading speed in Russian is slow, slow enough that I had already been reading it when I interviewed for the apartment in December. When you read that slowly, the fact that Aglaia was blushing for two pages and then it is stated explicitly that she, was, in fact, embarrassed - it feels like the author is condescending to my ability to comprehend the redness in her cheek. I got why she was red when you started, Dostoevsky, and three pages later I'm quite sure I don't need an explicit statement. I'm sure if the process had been less painstakingly slow it wouldn't be so glaringly annoying.

And I'm not as enamored with Knaz Mishkin as I ought to be. I do not like that he conflates pity with love. I do not like Dostoevsky's hysterical women, strange caricatures of some Russian ideal. But I love when, near the end, (here, I found a translated text) Knaz says he loves both and that he just needs to explain everything to Aglaya, and receives in response "No, prince, she will not. Aglaya loved like a woman, like a human being, not like an abstract spirit. Do you know what, my poor prince? The most probable explanation of the matter is that you never loved either the one or the other in reality."

And I did quite enjoy the way the writing changed nearing Mishkin's epileptic fit, flickering like something quite modern - Faulkner? - and the change the fit caused in Knaz. I think the rambling of Ippolit in his letter reading is quite great too, though I never figured out what Ippolit is, as a character, and ended disappointed in him.

And then, nearing the end of the book, I decided that Knaz Mishkin and Rogozhin are the same person. Rogozhin is like a shadow: eyes imagined in a crowd, a spirit met at first after many sleepless nights, a knife sneaking up right when a fit is about to occur. His being present in all these moments is not a mere coincidence, nor, I think, because Rogozhin as a person is fixated on Mishkin. Rather, it is Mishkin fixated on himself, but it is his dark side, one that her refuses to acknowledged as himself.

They are so similar, in some ways: both abandoned at the alter, both feverish in temperament, both preoccupied with Anastasia Filipovna, both feverishly passionate at times. Mishkin knows Rogozhin so well he states at the very beginning that he is likely to kill Anastasia Filipovna. At the end, on that fateful day in St. Petersburg, Rogozhin answers in synchrony: Here was a question Knaz had while trying to track down Rogozhin - and Here is the thought Rogozhin had, exactly relating to the thought Knaz had, almost as if they had a conversation throughout the day. After a day of the two of them being in the same place at the same time with almost the same thoughts, Knaz is not surprised to find Anastasia dead, remaining calm as Rogozhin tells him what happened, asking the wrong questions but overall acting as if he already knew, he just had to realize he already knew. Rogozhin insists on sleeping near Knaz - the two souls need to mingle in proximity, finally the two sides of the same coin together.

However, once Knaz, filled with goodness and naiveté, has killed Anastasia (as Rogozhin) he can no longer exist as the image of goodness. Knaz looses himself fully to his epileptic idiocy, unable to exist as a murderer. Rogozhin, loosing half of himself, (as Knaz ceases to exist) suffers an inflammation of the brain, but survives as himself, a dark murderous shadow still in synchrony with its own identity.

so in the end, I did manage to keep myself entertained, albeit with a rather modernest take on the novel.

Jetlag 7th Ed. 

no hurries

I told Adrian that the heat makes me feel horrid and groggy. He says he likes it, that he feels like the world is giving him a warm blanket-hug.
I thought that was very sweet, and that all I can do is envy him.

On the forth of July weekend I stayed in Cambridge, and saw the fireworks for the first time in a while. We live on the fourth floor in an area surrounded by three story buildings, so we have a clear view of Boston from the balcony, and the light show was lovely and so was this strange and delightful blimp with a whale on it and a name of a gin across on a banner, which kept circling around and around.  Elyse came over and a few of us ate nachos and eventually it devolved into hide-and-seek and watching scary music videos with masks. (Pitbull Terrier by Die Antwoord, Alles Neu, Ramstein's Du Hast)

In the morning I woke up and Elyse was still asleep on the couch, and together we decided we have no hurries.

Hurries are like worries mixed with harpies, suburban mothers clucking I have to pick up cake for Sally's birthday party, and make it to yoga class, and finish 50 Shades of Gray for book club this Wednesday, and Paul asked me to pick up the dry cleaning, and I should make sure Ronda did her English hw this time and...

So with no hurries we wandered over to her place in Quincy, stopping by a beach filled with dead jelly fish, reading in the sand, eating drippy ice-cream and meeting up with Sam for dinner. No hurries is great.

Misha and Nastya

Misha got married to Nastya, and Nastya got married to Misha.

In a magical house filled with handmade decorations, and a backyard filled with people I've mostly met before but whose names I can never remember and good food and plenty to drink and vases filled with flowers.

To my American (and some other non-Russian?) readers: There was a "vikup": a traditional ransoming of the bride before she is given to the groom. In this case, the three friends of the bride came up with questions and challenges, and kept the bride hidden away in a room on the second floor. Each question the groom answered correctly, he gained a step. He could ask for help from the team he assembled, but if they could not answer the question, or complete the task, they had to pay up. What is her grandmothers full name (including the patroym), what is her favorite store, what animal does she think you are most like?

Eventually he got her.

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?

into the fold

I tried to eat every morsel of remembrance on my trip back to Annandale, it was hot and on the ride there Donnie manned the music, and Charlotte manned the wheel, and Elyse and I sat in the back awaiting our fates. "McDonalds bought a nearly complete T-rex skeleton for a museum in exchange for it's own wing. How do you guys feel about this?" Charlotte asked.

We arrived on campus and went to explore the changes. There is a new baseball field, cut out of the woods where many a person had peed on those fresh-aired Smog-filled nights. There was a bench we found by the campus center, bright blue and fresh. The ropes on the swing had been changed, and on North Campus there was a barn that had only been in the minds eye last year. We went to the burrito stand and feasted (some things are reliably good), the smoky hot sauce and cool root beer went down my glutenous throat.



Glutenous for all I had missed: hours pouring over books, long walks and conversations, screaming from the community garden to hear my anger echo against the dorms and back to me, and the beautiful ephemeral bloom of magnolia blossoms each year. So much had not changed, but I am no longer there, it is no longer mine, and I am no longer part of the Hudson Valley landscape.

After lunch, my road-trip companions dropped me off at Sorrel's house, same one she had lived in last year, and Will and Hannah (back from France just last week) were there to greet me. There is so much more responsibility as a graduating person (I had forgotten). The balancing of visitors, and family, and friends graduating with you, and looking for advice from favorite professors!

So Will skipped off and Hannah and I made dinner while the night set in, Sorrel still tending to all her other responsibilities. Hannah and I sat by the window talking about the feeling of religious devotion without religion, depression and who you surround yourself with, solitude and lonesomeness. Nina asked what rituals we do in place of those religious ones so many have. Hours passed.

When Sorrel did come, we huddled on her bed, avoiding the crowded tent party in favor of the company of two. The shunting of conversations deeper than a kiddie pool that happens in the real world did not happen here, and depth of warmth to match. The effervescent eager conversation. Here: here is my heart and mind now, know how I have changed and how I love you.

The next morning Will, Hannah and I went to the Tivoli Bakery. Cranberry-corn muffin, cinnamon bun, sandwich, coffee. We sat in the grass with Will's friends.  Then we went to see our seniors walk.

When the fireworks came, I was surrounded by the right people. "If you lie down on your back, the sound reverberates in your chest" "Oh! It's true" Kelsey responded. Will kept berating me for missing the fireworks - "Look T---! Look! Turn around!". After that we all danced.

In the morning, I watched Kelsey pack.
Now it's their turn to go.

lilacs

One patient who has been there for a while: now not too paranoid to leave her room, hasn't showered in a month, thinks she is the fbi, keeps showing me and others her badge, making a motion by her hip as if lifting up a cover of a wallet. I tell her I don't see it, and I confirm that she has told me that she is the FBI. She doesn't like this – she now thinks I'm the Illuminati. When I denied it she said that I'm a bad liar. When I was dissuading her from going to check on someone who was getting restrained, and denied that I was killing him, she called me a selfish bitch. In the past, she has told me I look like her sister. A change of pace.

This morning, I woke at 9am, ate a banana, sat on the couch drifting off. Talked to Adrian. Went onto the balcony and continued writing a letter. Talked to a neighbor who was also trying to drink coffee outside, until he was herded back indoors by bees.

Another patient is here for a second time, having left in a state of catatonia – waxy movements, silence, not eating or drinking for days until his face looked shriveled. Now he is actively psychotic, taking his clothes off in the middle of the hallway, trying to kiss everyone and spitting at them when they do something he doesn't like. A different pace.

Having finished my lettering for the day, I smelled the lilac I had ripped off a neighbors bush in the middle of the night, and started off to a plant shop 40 minutes away. It is a hot day, but I returned, joyously, with lupin, angelface, sun parasol, clear crystal and some droopy plant, the name of which got lost in transport.

I had to restrain a man yesterday who was trying to hurt his foot. In the past he has claimed auditory hallucinations, but this time he said he was feeling not great. He demanded meds and ignored any healthy coping skills. After a very long time here, it has dawned on all of us that he is borderline – this is not something that is ever written in a chart. He did not like it when I told him that slamming his foot into a door repeatedly is not the appropriate way to express frustration, that medication is not the only part of the puzzle to feeling better, that he has to wait a little bit for the medication to kick in because it's not going to start working one minute after he has swallowed it. A shift of pace.

Max M is biking over to meet with me for something some iced drink.

This day in May has turned stiflingly hot, good for noon-day naps and lethargic conversation.