The truth was revealed only in 2002
Oh! That’s where I left the blog.
Let’s get that in a list:
1. Not that the internet has been standing outside the restaurant, impatiently checking its watch, wondering where the hell I’d gone to, but there has been illness upon our house. Specifically the Central Asian kind, with fountains of intestinal distress. We kept reducing food to its lowest nauseating denominator, until all we were eating were snack-sized portions of various beige things. I finally tried this antibiotic that costs only 50 cents and made my mouth taste like a melted pipe and I swear produced olfactory hallucinations, specifically my fingernails smelling of onions. I kept wandering around, sniffing my fingertips deeply, which I know is kind of gross but that’s why I pay for walls to separate me from the rest of the world.
2. We dropped down to the beginner’s class in aikido. Things had gotten to the point where we had that Sunday-night feeling when thinking about class, and frankly I didn’t bide my time to reach legal majority, become captain of my ship, etc, just to forfeit the delicious authority of adulthood in which I get to choose my miseries. The instructor for this beginner class has a refreshingly Soviet way of teaching: when someone fucks up, he simply calls them to the front of the class, says “show everyone how you’re doing it”, then in a flash has them in a horribly humiliating hold saying SEE HOW I COULD BREAK YOUR ARM WHEN YOU DO IT LIKE THAT?
Last night we learned how to hypothetically decapitate someone. I think I’m really starting to get the hang of this.
3. I am normally not a fan of blogs that rely heavily on cross-posts for their content, because that blog already exists and it’s called Google. So I will try to keep “guess what I found on the internet!” to a minimum. But I want to note this piece on Laika, the first mammal who went into orbit 50 years ago. Radio Free Europe has this lovely article about her, with a photo-portrait that can only be described as noble, enhanced by the knowledge that she died within hours of blast-off, all so we humans could someday send our multimillionaires to space.
“[Her trainer] describes Laika as a friendly, endearing dog.
Gazenko says Laika’s six-month training was intense. “She had to be trained to sit still in a small cubicle, to eat gel-like food dispensed by a small machine, to get used to the stress and irritating aspects of space flight,” Gazenko says. “We accustomed her to the sound of rocket engines and spun her in a centrifuge.”….
To this day, the 88-year-old Gazenko says he is regularly gripped by remorse over Laika’s death. But perishing in space, he says, was Laika’s fate.
“Unfortunately, the mission was necessary,” he says. “Before Laika’s flight, we were able study the effects of weightlessness for just a few minutes. Laika’s flight showed that the path to space was open for the Earth’s living beings.””
4. This weekend we went to see “Swan Lake”. (?er? Does a ballet name need quotation marks?) Odette/Odile was danced by a visiting ballerina from Ukraine – a kind of standard issue blonde elastic elf with arms like Twizzlers. The prince was a virile gent visiting from Kazakhstan’s ballet. I realized that nothing beats Act III for me in terms of sheer camp and oh-no-she-didn’t high drama: the international flashdancing, the heartcrusher Odile who eats baby pandas for breakfast, her drag queen uncle von Rothbart stage-managing the take down of treacly storybook romance. But they danced the happy ending, in the Russian fashion, where there are no swan suicides.
I am a man who will fight for your honor: The Aikido Adult
A few weeks ago we started taking aikido lessons. We went to observe one class to make up our minds, and it was impressive – like a ballet about aggressive people who never forget their manners. Lots of fluid sidestepping and deliberate tumbling. It’s how I wish I could recover when I trip over something – just slide right into this polished somersault and pop out of it with my hands in karate attack stance, ready to fuck that curb up if it tries any more funny stuff.
I can’t say it’s going so hot. The teacher insisted that we jump in with the advanced students, so we can be exposed to as much as possible, and so we will (in his hopes) fall in love with it. The aikido though, she plays hard to get!
Class consists of a series of demonstrations and then partner work to practice the techniques. Unfortunately, I get all tense and utterly blank out when the instructors are demonstrating a new move in anticipation of having to do it myself. I wish I had a little cop in my brain who would cuff my attention and drag it back by the ear when it tries to play truant during these critical moments.
Picture watching a video, where someone’s demonstrating how to make an origami praying mantis, which is consuming an octopus. The video is in Swedish and being played at half volume. You get to watch the video twice, and then someone hands you some paper and you have to make one of your own. Oh what, you can’t do it?
Part of the problem is one of language. I know distinct lexicons, and I have a little library of dialogues from classes long ago, like an exchange between cosmonauts in orbit (“Falcon, it’s me — Golden Eagle.”), or when it’s zoo day for young Pioneers (“Don’t feed the camel!”) or when Kolya and Misha get together to listen to their record albums. Or an entire one-sided conversation I scripted in advance when confronting a landlord in St. Petersburg about the roach infestation in my apartment. But I don’t really know sportsy vocabularies, all sorts of action verbs and prepositions. So all I catch is “Now [verb] your foot [direction]. No, no verb it direction. No, that’s not right. Now verb it this way. Okay your hand should verb there, feel the difference?”
In addition to this frustration of simply not getting it, advanced aikido for beginners is hard on the ego. When we split into pairs, I know I should be more aggressive about seeking someone out, but I turn into the wallflower at softball picks. The last man scrambling for a partner looks around before confirming that – ugh – he has to practice with me.
Next class I’m showing up drunk.
There are some upsides. I strongly like the outfit. There’s something very democratic about it. And dressing the part gives me an extra helping of confidence. Also, I like how the point is to not hurt yourself and not hurt the other person. I am taking this to extremes with my partners in class, who repeatedly tell me to verb them harder. Must break myself of the urge to apologize when I actually land one on the mat.
At the end of the day, I feel like it’s good to be doing something that’s hard, something that makes me really uncomfortable both physically and emotionally. To keep my bushwhacking in that territory up to speed.
Gooooooooal!
Yesterday we went to a soccer match at Bishkek’s Spartak stadium, Kyrgyzstan versus Jordan.* I know you’re probably sick of the coverage of this game, but read on anyway. Below is a list of what I learned.
*It was a qualifying game for the 2010 World Cup. They start early, no? I feel like there are lessons there on not procrastinating.
1. If you can’t pony up the 50 som for an entrance ticket, an alternative is scrambling up a tree behind the stadium and hoisting yourself over the wall. We watched as the police officer who stands guard there not 15 feet away kept a very deliberate blind back turned toward this. I am not sure how much it costs to maintain his blindness. Our guess was 10 som a head.
2. Although they are all great sports, those Jordanians were no match for the Kyrgyz, who are accustomed to the brutality of buzkashi and muscling to the head of queues. The medics came on the field with a stretcher no less than 8 times throughout the game, and many a Jordanian were left rolling around the field clutching their face, leg, arm, etc after a particularly forceful Kyrgyz interception.
3. I kept waiting for a chance to use the one sports expression I learned when my high school Russian club went to the Russian-US hockey game: Судья на мыло! The referee’s on soap! When I heard people yell much more colorful things about the referee at this match though, I thought maybe I’d been sold a very G rated sports slur all those years ago. But then I heard a little boy holler it himself! Baby steps with the ref dissing.
4. People were so loving the wave! As was I! Stand with me and say WHOOOO! Even the crowd of like, 30 Jordanians got into it.
5. The most important thing I learned is that it’s better to sit toward the top of the stands, since you’re less likely to be downbleacher of the hail of empty bottles that people chuck when jubilating.
6. The Kyrgyz won, 2-0. Наша команда was sponsored by наше пиво. Nashurally.
7. Next time in Amman.
I’ve been temporarily offline by a cold OBF brought back from southern Kyrgyzstan. I almost never get sick (hello Fate, hope you’re not reading this blog!) so I never worry about contagion when people around me are unwell. After a few days though I got the same thing, so I dipped into these cold meds to stop the flow of snot coming out of my face. It’s been a while since I had a cold medication, and hey! Thur kinda fun. Although with the snot evaporated out of my head I feel like a layer of my brain that handles things like thinking has also been stripped away. So can we conclude that snot conducts smarts? Like that gel that obstetricians use to do ultrasounds on pregnant ladies. Let’s conclude it.
***
We had a small earthquake last week, right at midday as we were both working in the living room. Every time this happens (which okay, is maybe three times that I remember) some survival instinct kicks in, but instead of looking for a sharp stick or a tree to climb, for some reason I hold my breath and freeze. (So the earthquake doesn’t notice me?) And then, when it’s over, I jump up and think about running for the door.
I try not to be a ninny about what are actually very tiny earthquakes, but when the whole apartment starts shaking like God slid a quarter into the bedpost, I lose my cool.
***
So the Nobel prizes are in. The people who won for physics developed a somethingsomething sensor. Here is a breakdown of its significance for you lay folks:
“A computer hard-disk reader that uses a GMR sensor is equivalent to a jet flying at a speed of 30,000 kmph, at a height of just one metre above the ground, and yet being able to see and catalogue every single blade of grass it passes over.”
Please read that sentence once more and really, really try to picture it. This description is so sensational that it makes me sorry I have no tolerance for marijuana, since I would like to reread this quote twenty nine times in a row, each time a little bit slower, until my brain is literally crawling on the floor. But I guess I could just take some cold pills and do the same thing. Fast times!
***
We went to watch the rugby world cup semifinal this weekend at the expat bar. I’d never seen a rugby game before, but OBF played a couple of years in college, where he earned the nickname “Crackhead” since he (ta-da) split his head open. He remains fond of the game and of whatever memories have stuck with him of playing.
England was playing France. It was nice to watch a sporting event where I don’t have a dog in the fight, and I found myself chipping in with each side’s cheers, which are fantastic! Allez Allez Allez! Oogie-oogie-oogie! OY! OY! OY!
***
And finally: I can’t believe that the WordPress spellchecker picks up the word blog as a mistake. It suggests I replace it with bog.
I spent the last couple days in Kazakhstan for work, at the Alatau Sanatorium. I think of sanatoriums as a place where the wealthy go to recuperate from nervous breakdowns, or to lay on lounge chairs taking the waters as they wait for their TB to go into remission. This one is a grand old Soviet complex, still highly regarded as a place to convalesce from just about anything, including everyday life. Although, as an American, creaky resort hotels in the off-season, with long dimly lit corridors absent of people, conjure up unavoidable redrumredrum associations.
There was a pharmaceutical exhibition going on in the hotel. On the way to breakfast one morning, the hallway opened on to a festival of drug advertising. Two tall wafer-thin women in black minidresses and beauty pageant sashes offered glasses of champagne to the breakfast crowd. Near an advertisement for Candida treatment featuring a foxy redhead, people were in a frenzy to collect those pharmaceutical trinkets, like chubby ergonomic pens printed with pill names. I scored a new bookmark advertising a pimple cream for Russian speaking teenagers.
My colleague had a birthday at the end of the workweek, so we celebrated the last night in the classic way, by drinking like it was our job. We occupied a room and everyone brought modest contributions to the table: a banana, some candies, a small package of chips, some cheese, a can of olives, plus the collection of booze bits left over from previous celebrations: a couple of half-drunk bottles of vodka, some vermouth, some syrupy wine.
It’s been a while since I’ve been to a proper FSU drink-up celebration, with hours of toasting, snacking, smoking, and drinking into the early hours. For a chunk of the world not known for its friendliness, this is truly their shining hour, gathered around the table, everyone so so earnest and unafraid to turn their hearts inside out in the wash of drink. I clumsled my way through a birthday toast, working myself into a sentimental pitch, my eyes practically turning Anime and leaking tears. Dear friends, a toast to international friendship!
The next morning I had a grand mal hangover, but was still doing better than the guy who showed up to breakfast holding a handkerchief to his face where his eye was swollen over. I wanted to ask What the hell happened? but my Russian tank was at E and I knew all I would have been able to come up with would have been “DUUuhhhh……eeeeee…..?” So I managed a little “me too brother” smile and went back to the task at hand, faith in the healing power of dairy fats, of putting as much into my stomach as it would allow.
Update from the field
This week’s banner stretched across the local circus says “SALAM, CLOWN!”
I like to think of this as a line for a Muslim tough-guy movie, right before someone gets nailed in the chops.
I may be wrong, but there seems to be zero sense of clowns as uncanny here. Or dolls. Or the laughter of small children.
***
In other news, the price of bread has gone up from 5 soms to 7 soms (about 13 US cents to 19 cents now). Bread prices are making headlines across Central Asia. I am truly one of the lucky ones where I can think more about clown greetings than the price of bread.
Then again, our landlady just jacked our rent up by 20%, which is a lot of bread.
Our non-maker is located right across the street. He is a hot Uzbek who says his name is Evro (Euro). Which is not a traditional Uzbek name as far as I know, but maybe is Uzbek nouveau gangsta.
When I buy bread with OBF, he and Evro do all the talking. When I buy the bread by myself, Evro looks me over and says “Kak boi frend?” How’s your boyfriend? When he knows I’m married! The cheek! Okay, so I love it.
***
Kyrgyzstan is rolling out a new constitution for Fall ‘07! It will replace the two (2) constitutions used last Fall. So far there are no protests planned for the coming months, since people are generally beyond Over the whole thing.
Maybe, finally, this will be the constitution that little children will someday go see on field trips, cased in glass in the state historical museum. Maybe not though.
What I did on my summer vacation
[Note: I have several pictures I wanted to sprinkle in this post for some show and tell. Apparently you need a PhD in blogging to do this on WordPress though, and it makes me want to kick something how my pics get pasted in the size of an interstate billboard. And my frustration makes me feel like an unlovable old person. So I'm done with photos, I will just go ahead and post this thingie below and describe verbally what would have been there visually. It will be tell and tell!]
We took a trip to Kegety Gorge earlier this summer, to celebrate our first anniversary. Almost every last bit of Kyrgyzstan is a mountain, the result of copious hot tectonic plate-on-plate action. Science shows there is a mountain for everyone.
We stayed at a lodge at the very end of this gorge’s long road, where a hunter named Talai lived.
[Talai seated casually on a railing, smiling kind of roguishly like a Kyrgyz Clark Gable.]
In the winter he takes wealthy sport hunters out to shoot ibex and the rare Marco Polo sheep. His kitchen was decorated with several sets of antlers.
[Kitchen-lodge wall; pairs of symmetrical horns come out of the top of the wall.]
We shared some beans with Talai for lunch. He scooted them around in his dish and smiled. “I’m pretending the brown ones are meat.” He shared some fresh cream so thick that slices of bread could stand on end in it.
Our room was where hunters normally stayed when pussy vegetarians aren’t in town. A group of hunters staying there once got into some firearm hijinks, and one of them shot his rifle across the table. The bullet missed his hunting companion by inches and exited through the lodge wall. They named the bullet hole:
[A bullet hole, piercing an old wall with faded wallpaper. In a semicircle curving over the hole, in capital letters, is printed JESUS.]
We spent an afternoon hiking up the gorge to a waterfall. The terrain was mostly scrawny pines, thick wildflowers and animal poo. Sometimes a bird would circle overhead. There were ladybugs everywhere. And zero people. Which is maybe why the ladybugs felt comfortable reproducing so much.
When planning this trip, we were warned to be careful of ticks, which can carry tick borne encephalitis in this part of the world. Before leaving, I called a few clinics, asking about how to get the vaccination. Nobody had it, and one place summed up: everyone’s too poor here to afford that.
Later that day I found a tick buried up to his neck in my hip, like a piggy boy face-down at a no-handed pie eating contest. We spent the rest of that day intermittently glum at the prospect of tick borne encephalitis and its attendant brain-swelling action. I pictured OBF having to spend the rest of our marriage tightening the chin strap of my helmet and wiping drool from my face, recalling how good that first year was up until that fateful hike. We would periodically hug and tell each other how much we loved each other. (Happy anniversary!)
Here’s a funny thing: The word for encephalitis (энсефалит) is dangerously similar to the word for syphilis (сифилит).
I am happy to report that no энсефалит has emerged.
The next day Talai let us shoot his Kalashnikov rifle. We took turns laying on our stomachs in the grass, scootched up into a short wall to brace ourselves. Try as I might to line up all the sights, I failed to kill the glass bottle, but I did manage to shoot the enormous mountain. Talai smiled good naturedly, took the rifle, and exploded the bottle with one try.
Talai had two boys. Serious little boys, when staring down a camera. Here they are, posing for their daguerreotype before heading off to the war:
[Sepia picture of two small Kyrgyz brothers, each looking up at the camera, mouths set tight.]
We gave them the camera to take some pictures of their own. This is what they came back with:
[A mountain.]
[Someone's feet, out of focus.]
[A nearly empty sky except for a a few bits of linty cloud.]
[A self-portrait, out of focus, eyes and mouth screwed up for funny effect.]
[Green door, the number 1 painted on in white.]
[Another mountain.]
Wee paws for station identification
We have a yoga DVD from the local TsUM called “Yoga for two”. The premise is that yoga practice will make you a better lay. (Not why we bought it; we just wanted some yoga. But anything fitness-y here tends to be charged with a lot more sex appeal than in the US, especially for women, many of whom work out in full makeup and even kicky accessories like a little hat.)
This whole time we’ve been doing this yoga program, I thought the lead instructor (who literally does yoga IN HER PANTIES) has been saying to breathe through your seksualnoe vedro – your sexual bucket. I never had a problem with this, thinking a sexual bucket in Russian must be like a honey pot in English. And since the yoga lady is a real minx, always making bedroom eyes and looking like she’s cruising a singles bar, it all made sense to me.
As it turns out all this time she’s been saying to breathe through your seksualnoe yadro – your sexual CORE.
So disappointing. And unclear too. What is a sexual core? I think my sexy is kind of spread all over. I transport it places in my bucket, the bucket that is my body.
In America
1. Rhode Island
In the middle of the night, while sleeping next to my sister in her bed, she sits up on her elbow, peels the covers away from me, pats me gently on the center of my chest, pulls the blankets up, and goes back to sleep.
2. New York City
We go dancing at midnight on a man-made sandy beach on the shore of Queens, with the Manhattan skyline some dazzling wallpaper across the water. Staying out till 4 in the morning might as well be staying out till 4 in the morning of the following day, since I need a whole extra 24 hours to recuperate.
It’s strange to think I used to live here, a little ball of rubber cement with glitter smeared on my forehead and an illegible “Hello my name is” badge, zinging around at 90 miles per hour with the rest of them.
3. New Hampshire
The fight with the neighbors over a sliver of unused woods continues. Once it is finally settled someday, she wants to build a wall ten feet high in order to shut them out completely.
4. Maine
Blueberries, corn, retrievers, loons, plus this year: a brand new tiny baby girl. She still seems most content when squinched up on someone’s chest, tiny newborn tush sticking out. While holding her, for maybe the first time I think that I could probably do this too.
5. Connecticut
The wedding overlooks the water. The sun is in my eyes and my face squeezes up and I cry during the vows, and then cry more later at the reception. I dance so hard my hair falls down. My husband looks like a leading man and I hang on his neck as if it’s last song at the prom.
At 2 a.m., while trying to load floppy dollars into the snack machine in the hotel basement, it makes an ear piercing buzzer noise like I just answered the question WRONG. Because I am drunk, I keep at the damn dollar slot until I realize the noise I’m hearing is actually a fire alarm.
6. Massachusetts
What are the odds that two separate visits, to two different parts of the state, will both involve contact with pet goats? A quality of life indicator for the new millennium.
It’s the part when a naked toddler who’s just started talking the week before proudly announces her bowel movement that I make up my mind I need to move back here.
SU 180K
…is not a retirement savings plan of the Soviet Union. It’s my flight to New York! Taking place tomorrow!
Now I just need to dig out my fanny pack and Nike Airs so they don’t mistake me for a non-American at JFK.
