Domestication

Picture taken during last night’s concert with my boyfriend’s band BOA in Gothenburg, Sweden. From the left: my awesome boyfriend, his cousin and his brother. Sitting next to me during the concert was my best buddy Annelie. Needless to say – yet I’ll say it anyway – it was a splendid Sunday spent together!

Here we go, comrades, here I come, comrades, and here I am, comrades: back in Sweden! Once again! After a terrible, awful, haunting experience flying Finnair on Friday with from Yekat via Helsinki to Gothenburg – which involved getting stuck for seven hours in Finland after my flight got cancelled and having my bag arrive only on Sunday morning – I am officially back in the same country where I was once born. I’ve been back many, many times before while living in Russia. Of course. But this time it is different than all the other times before. Why? Currently I’m living with my boyfriend. My first two days here in Gothenburg I lived in a Transylvanian collective [adding to my Hungarian also his brother and his cousins, members of the band BOA], but now we’re living all on our own. This is exciting! This is my first try at domestication. Keep reading and I’ll keep you posted on how things proceed.

Also I’ve decided that next year – the year of 2010 – will involve more Jesus for me. After contemplating my life while getting stuck in Finland for a day, I came to the conclusion that I do not get enough of Jesus in my daily life. So there’s my new year’s resolution: more Jesus!

Glögg

Visa tungan! Glögg is Swedish for глинтвейн and that's what the people on the picture above drank tonight. From the left: Vlada, Sasha, Marina, me & Vasya. Good times!

Hymn to Heterosexuality

Time to fashion blog once again, comrades! This season’s must-have accessory: the facial mask.

Tonight I felt so amazingly and overwhelmingly inspired by my boyfriend and his awesomeness that I couldn’t do anything else but write a poem about everything I’m feeling right now [already on the 5th of December I’ll be back with him in Gothenburg again]. After finishing the poem I looked at it for a long while and then concluded: “Oh my! This is a hymn to heterosexuality!” Thus I realize that publishing it here might be offensive to people of other sexual orientations. Also this poem was written by a Swedish Protestant girl in love with a Hungarian Catholic man, leading to obvious difficulties for people of other confessions outside Christianity to enjoy it fully. I completely comprehend it if, for example, many homosexual atheists and plenty of asexual Buddhists were to complain that this poem deals with a rather limited subject and therefore lacks the opportunity to touch the masses in the way that all good literature should be able to do. I hope you can forgive me this. After all this poem was not intended to be a part of literature at all, it was only intended as an honest expression of what I feel about a certain someone [known in the Central Urals as “Boyfriend of the Century”, known in his ‘hood by his homies as “the big cheese”, known simply as “the Hungarian” in my family].

“Feels So Good”

Maybe I’ll never know

why it feels so good

to stand on my tip toes

and reach his lips;

why it feels so good

to lean my head back

and fit into his arms;

why it feels so good

to close my hand

and put it inside his;

why it feels so good

to let it all fall down

and wear nothing

but his touch.

Maybe I’ll never know

why it feels so good

when a woman can

just love a man.

Maybe I’ll never know

why it feels so good

for a woman to be safe

in a man’s embrace.

This is what I know,

learned from what I’ve seen:

the differences between

you and me

is what blends us

is what mends us

is what sends us

is what lends us

a moment of complete

of passion and heat

when we understand

we were made by God’s hand

that He had a plan

knew Adam would never leave

after meeting his Eve.

Maybe we’ll never know

why flowers have to be brought,

why rings have to be bought,

why being together

has to last forever,

why two become one

and create a new home,

why wearing your last name

turns our play a serious game,

why all I really want to do

is to have you.

Maybe all we’ll ever know

is it feels so good

to find the missing piece

that makes the puzzle

a painting.

Infirmity Studies: Continued

The bed in the 40th Hospital in Yekaterinburg where I spent four nights with pneumonia.

On Thursday afternoon I called up my friend, lovely Anna Mikhailovna, who’s parents are both doctors to ask what to do about this cough that won’t go away and how to cure my troubles with breathing. Because I really had trouble breathing; when I didn’t cough all I did was fight to get enough air into my lungs in order to not feel dizzy and light-headed… Anna Mikhailovna’s mother told me to call a doctor and see if I might not have come down with pneumonia after having the swine flu. Said and done, lovely Anna Mikhailovna came over, and shortly after her cute Katya also, and they both helped get through the visit to my home by two Russian doctors. One doctor was mean and old, one doctor was young and kind and kept repeating over and over again: “I never thought I’d ever meet a Josefina in my life…” They listened to my breathing, then they put a mask on my face and together with Anna Mikhailovna I got to ride in a Russian ambulance to the hospital. There we waited for almost three hours before I got to see a doctor. The first thing the doctor said when he saw me was: “So you want to spend the night here?” I screamed: “No! No! First have a look, then tell me the sentence. Don’t condemn me to hospitalization just from looking at me…” He listened to me breathe, then he sent me to have my lungs x-rayed and after this I was hospitalized on Thursday evening. Since the nurse placed something wrong when putting medicine into my veins, I ended up spending the whole night without sleeping due to enormous pain in my right arm… Friday was terrible. They woke me up at half past seven to take my blood and then I cried, cried and cried for a few hours sitting on the floor and wanting to go home, home, home… On Saturday I woke up to a new life, and on Sunday my cough was almost gone and I could breathe almost normally again. But I was so tired from all the antibiotics that I slept until 5 p.m., after which I felt wonderful. Today – Monday – I was released from the hospital and now I’m home. I’m still not completely healthy, and I’m not allowed to go back to the university for a couple of days – that doesn’t mean that maybe I won’t still on Wednesday because I miss teaching that much – but I’m doing so much better now. The whole experience at the Russian hospital was traumatizing at first, but in the end I realize that it was exactly what I needed. I needed to get good medication – read: strong medication – and to just lay in bed and be fed good food by the kind man living in the room next to mine. All in all I’m glad that I got hospitalized, even though I would never go back there ever again. If I’m not feeling that way again, that is…

*

The Hospital Poems

I. Before You

It seems impossible now to believe

there was life before you.

A life where I walked, talked,

lived, was perfectly fine before you.

That life now seems so unlikely,

a life without knowing your name,

a time before seeing your face,

yet I remember I used to laugh,

and even smiled often before you.

But then you came –

shifting everything out of place,

shaking the ground under my feet,

expanding the sky over my head.

And then you came –

lifting everything upside down,

melting my stubborn heart,

breaking all my firm plans.

Yes, then you came –

arriving in all that you are,

showing all I never knew before,

taking up every inch of my skin…

No, then you came –

claiming every little part of me,

taking every little piece of me,

discovering every little pour of me.

It seems impossible now to believe

there was life before you…

II. The Incredible We

Let’s make a list

of everything I honestly

never thought I’d do

like go to the moon

or dye my hair

and unexpected color (green?!)

and I thought never

would I ever

think the equation me

plus someone else entirely

could add up to we.

In all the early mornings

after all the late nights,

I never thought

waking up to find

your chest under my head

could feel as if

I’ve won first place;

as if I’ve traveled

every corner of the globe

with my fingers on your skin,

as if I’ve seen

all the wonders of the world

with your smile in my eyes,

as if I’ve been

everywhere and made it all

without knowing at all

the greatest victory of all

was waiting for me

here

in you

in the equation me

plus you

equals we.

Infirmity Studies

Must-Have-Look of November 2009: presenting The Swine Flu Outfit! This fall it is all about layers, comrades, keeping warm has never been more in! Wear tights under your p-j pants, match with carefully chosen knitted items such as socks [wholes included], cardigan [complete with faint smell of sweat] and pink wrist-warmers to add a splash of color. To get that tussled-right-out-bed-hair all you need to do is spend most of the day under covers…

Disease Day nr. 7: No fever. No appetite. Still coughing my lungs up. Finding it difficult to breathe at times. Wonder what that’s about? Spent most of the day in bed with John Mayer. The only light at the end of the tunnel right now seems to be his new album “Battle Studies”. He is the only artist that I always download straight to my iPod, then go and hide somewhere dark [preferably in bed] , put his music in my ears and listen to nothing but his voice for hours and hours until I’ve remembered all the lines that he sings. John Mayer soothes me. He heals my nerves. I think his latest album might be his best ever. But then again, I always say that.

I didn’t eat any real food during the first five days of my disease, but yesterday I fried two eggs in lots of oil and ate them with plenty of beans. Today I’ve fried green lenses with onions and garlic and beans in just as much oil. I pushed everything down my throat in a desperate effort to cure this condition of mine in which it is only a matter of time until I can actually rest my iPod on top of my hipbones.

Ural State will be in quarantine until the 21st of November. Before I thought this was good because it meant that I will have plenty of time this whole week to get some things done that I’ve been putting off doing for weeks now. I need to write an essay about Avvakum’s autobiography, prepare two presentations for that class in self-education I’m taking and start working on that analysis of Mayakovsky’s “My Soviet Passport” in Swedish translation for my last class of Russian Verse Theory. But so far this week I have proved unable to remain outside of my bed for more than an hour at a time… And since the fever left I have made no improvements in my ill condition.

Thank God for John Mayer. Without him I don’t know what I’d do. I would be left listening to Robbie Williams' new album, but there’s only two really good songs on that one and that’s no fun. John Mayer doesn’t do bad songs. He’s all good. I’m going back to bed with him now.

Memorabilia

Putincity. Fall of 2004. I was 19 and everything had just begun…

*

[oпыт феноменологического рассказа]

I remember a late, warm evening one summer somewhere in a small Russian village. He’s waiting for me with hot, black tea in glasses – not cups – and dry cookies in the almost empty kitchen of his little summer house. The sun is far from setting, though it is already late, and I look around as I step out of the tiny building which is his banya that he has built with his own two hands. I am warm and wet and clean and smell of strawberry soap and birch trees… Everything around me is full of stillness, stillness of the coming night, stillness remaining after another lazy summer day in the country side; the trees are bending down heavy over the small garden and the blue, cloudy sky seems lower and lower by the hour, but it is not going to rain; no, tonight it will not rain. I wrap the towel around my wet hair, leaving a couple of strands to fall down my damp back… The front door is open and he’s standing there, smoking his Belamor kanal, watching me as I step down the little stone path leading from the banya up to the house. The house is almost empty now. We’re the only ones here now. His wife is in the hospital. He has been alone for three weeks and now I’m here to clean off the dirt of dusty Russian summer roads that I’ve walked, walked, walked barefoot while picking berries in the fields and looking around me in the woods and thinking that after all, despite of everything: this must be it.

I remember how he cared for me that evening; I remember how he turned out to be something of a country side gentleman left here, so it seemed, from another time very long ago. I remember his heavy grey eyebrows and his long, straight forehead, and his hair that lay like curly silver on top of his large head, and those big, blue eyes as he placed the glass in front of me on the table. I sit down on the chair by the table; he places himself on the bed behind the table as to be closer to me. We talked of old times and of his wife and he told me of his grand children and I listened to his soft voice echoing in such a poor room… There was nothing on the walls. Not even a single picture. Except for the icon over the stove. There was only one single, lonely light bulb hanging from the ceiling. It was the only light. The cookies placed on the wooden table without anything underneath them. The glass was old and steaming with hot tea. I sip and he sips as he watches me and I remember how I liked the way his blue eyes kept looking at me. I remember his large hands, I remember how they lay so still placed on his knees and how we discussed old times and how I couldn’t help but not to forget that we belong to different generations; of this we also talked and he sat so close to me and kept filling my glass with more tea and never tired of caring for me. He didn’t let a single glance of mine pass unseen. His name is Anatoly, but he insist I call him Tolya. Uncle Tolya. I do not object; I call him uncle Tolya and he smiles. Sitting there in that kitchen in a Russian summer house that evening made me remember another kitchen in another Russian summer house two summers before this…

I remember waking up in the double bed next to him, on white, wet sheets; I remember stretching out my arms to touch the yellow sunrays coming in through the open window; his body was sweaty and young next to mine and I was wearing a purple silk nightgown and we had the entire house to ourselves. We had the entire day to ourselves. We had the entire world to ourselves. There was nothing outside our window but blue sky and green trees and deep Russian woods and somewhere, further down the road, a river running through from somewhere, and all of this belonged to us. We were young and we had never promised each other anything, and in the mornings I would make him breakfast while he walked the dog – yes, there was a dog, we had a dog – I fried eggs, made a salad from fresh vegetables that I picked in the garden, brewed black coffee and cleaned the table from what had been left there the night before: an empty wine bottle, a torn copy of some Murakami book in a poor Russian translation, a half-empty package of condoms… And then we sat there and ate together, playing with each other laughing about something, drinking our coffee slowly and looking out over the garden, expecting nothing but another hot day filled with sunshine. I remember we took long walks together with the dog. I remember how we sat together in the dark in the evenings and read Murakami together, how we discussed everything and nothing and then it really seemed to me that there would be no end to this summer. That there would be no end to our youth, that we would always be this young and that this summer house would forever stand in sunshine and warmth and that the fall would never come, that our arguments would never begin, we would never fight, we would never have any worries every again but stay like this. Right there. I remember running through the wet grass in the evenings down to the lake after sitting in the banya for an hour, sweating and beating each other’s naked bodies with birch trees… I remember jumping into the water, I remember swimming side by side with him; I can’t forget the way the grass felt against my bare feet, how the water felt to my naked body, how free we were that summer. It was as if everything in the whole world was just us: the house, the dog, he, I.

I remember standing outside in the small garden with uncle Tolya, we’re standing barefoot in together the grass and he’s smoking Belamor kanal and I’m smoking what he calls ‘women’s cigarettes’; it is dark outside now. The sun has set, the moon has come out. We’re watching our shadows on the grass in front of us, the light coming from the kitchen is behind us and falls before us on the grass. His shade is bigger than mine; his shoulders are broad, the smoke coming from his cigarette is thicker, fuller than the smoke coming from mine. My hair has almost dried now and I remember letting it out of the towel as we stand there looking at our two shadows – so different and yet almost the same – on the ground before us and in silence we contemplate. Somehow both of us know that life must go on, that life always goes on, that I will have to take my things and walk back from where I came, that his wife will come back from the hospital, and that we’ll never have an evening together like this again. We want to tell each other what’s important, what matters, and I remember thinking that even in silence, even when we’re not saying anything, we’re still staying within the territory of what matters the most, what is truly important in this world. “I don’t think I’ve ever loved anyone,” I say and he nods. “What makes you think that?” “All of this is so new to me…” He smiles: “It is new to all of us, my dear.” “Can you love more than once in your life?” “You can love a million times,” he answers. “But will it ever be like the first time?” “Every time is special, every time is a universe in itself,” he says and continues: “Every relationship is a world of its own, and you will never know that world if you don’t close your eyes and let go and fall into it with your back first… keeping your arms stretched out as if you wanted to fly, as if you not only could fly, but knew that this is the time that you’ll really soar.” “I think I’m scared,” I say. I remember how uncle Tolya looked at me, how his stern face of an old man who’s served over thirty years in the Russian army broke into the kindest, the warmest glow and how his one hand took a hold of mine. “I don’t know what it is like for you young people these days…” “I think it is nothing new, I think it is the same as it was for you, just…” “Just?” “Just nothing.” He smiles again and again and again. “I want to love another man now, and I want to give him everything, but I’ve already given everything once and that…” “We’re not in this for eternity, we’re in it for the moment,” says uncle Tolya. “It is not about forever?” I ask. He shakes his head. “No, my dear, it is all about now.”

The Psychological Upper-hand

Curing oneself Russian style: here’s everything that the doctor told me to buy at the pharmacy today. And yes, comrades, we [Sweden & South Korea] have a quilt on our window sill placed up against our window to keep the cold out. Today it’s only -11, but we all know that’s just the start.

On Tuesday evening I spent a couple of hours talking to my boyfriend on Skype – which was lovely as always since A. is not just my boyfriend but also my friend – then I went to bed straight away afterward though it was only half past nine. And fell asleep. And woke up at 2 a.m. because I received an sms from A. I answered him and then thought: ‘Well, there’s no way I’m going to fall asleep again now…’ After this I fell asleep and when I woke up it was already 10 a.m. and I had slept for more than twelve hours. I paid little to no attention to this strange fact as I went about my duties yesterdays. In the evening I felt very tired and decided to go to bed already at 11 p.m., and so I did. I noticed this strange pain in my throat and lunges and how my body was sort of strangely shaking the whole evening, but again I paid little to no attention to this odd behavior of mine. Only when I woke up today and realized that it hurts so bad to breathe and that I can’t stop coughing and that I have a headache that doesn’t want to go away did I become afraid. Ever since the swine flu arrived in the world I’ve been saying that I’ve got “the psychological upper-hand” and thus I will not become ill. Today I understood that the psychological upper-hand may not be working out so greatly anymore, especially since we’re currently having ourselves a real epidemic situation here in Yekaterinburg. They’ve closed down two universities – not Ural State, though (yet!) – and everywhere you go people are wearing those ridiculous masks. And they’re even getting foreigners vaccinated these days. I haven’t done that; I thought I didn’t have to because I have the psychological upper-hand, you know.

Today after breakfast I went to the university doctor. On my way there I couldn’t help but to cough once in a while, and whenever I coughed people around me jumped away, giving me worried looks as they covered their mouths (if they weren’t already wearing those masks, that is, which almost everyone is anyway). As I waited in line outside the doctor’s office I started thinking about what would happen next to me if this really is the swine flu, or pneumonia (could happen), or TBC (could also happen – this is after all Russia, a third world country when it comes to diseases) – and arrived at the conclusion that if I’m really sick, then they’ll probably need a sample of my blood to figure out just what sickness it is. Thinking of having to give blood made me so scared (I’m scared to death of anything related to the human body when it is in an unwell condition) that I started to cry. Thinking of having to actually go to a real hospital made me so afraid that I couldn’t even stand still anymore, but I had to start jumping around and the other people started to stare at me and probably thought that I was in a most ailing condition and on the verge of dying. Of course, when the doctor told me to come in I was already crying with mascara running down my cheeks but she showed me no mercy, since she is Russian and Russians are not prone to showing mercy to those suffering from illogical fears. She looked at me with stern eyes: ‘Josefina, why are we crying?’ I said: ‘I’m sick!’ She took my temperature and wrote me a note with a number of things to cure myself with. I didn’t have any fever. ‘So it is not the swine flu, then?’ She shook her head: ‘No, it’s just a flu. There’s a lot going around these days. Go home and stay in bed for three days and you’ll be fine.’ Okay, I nodded and left.

There it is. I’m sick. I had to cancel my Swedish classes today and tomorrow, but now I’m really going to do my best at getting better and thus I am now officially headed for my bed. I hate being sick. But on the other hand, right now everyone is sick in the city and thus it is not really surprising that I would also come down with something.