Back to the Start

Oh, comrades, what tremendous a joy it is to have both Saturday AND Sunday off! Since I always spend my Saturdays disinfecting my floors, doors and walls, I have all the time in the world to do nothing on Sundays. On Sundays I skip the makeup (!), wear jeans (!!) and sneakers (!!!). On Sundays I love to take four hour long walks all around Yekat, playing with my camera and roaming through bookstores. This Sunday I bought what’s on my knees in the picture above – «Венгерский разговорник и словарь» [Hungarian phrasebook and dictionary]. I was overcome with delight immediately and decided to write an sms to A. straight away using some interesting phrases from it. I laughed for perhaps thirty minutes because I thought I was so funny. Then he answered. And I didn’t think it was funny anymore because I only understood… two words.

But what’s so lovely about life is that there’s always something new around the corner. And when I started going through my little phrasebook in Hungarian yesterday I couldn’t help but to think that I’ve been here before, that I’ve had this feeling once before… I look at the words for a long time and read the translation and then I pronounce the sentences according to how they’re transcribed in Cyrillic but I don’t understand anything. I do not understand Hungarian at all. It is completely incomprehensible to me. All I know is that it’s great! I haven’t been this mesmerized and intrigued by a foreign language since I arrived in Russia and began learning Russian. Every language is a new world. I have forgotten a little bit how wonderful it was to begin living in Russia, to start studying Russian, to begin understanding this culture, this new world… But yesterday I remembered.

Today, as I was watching “Mitt liv som hund” with my students, one of them asked me if my eyelashes are real. I said: ‘I’m glad you noticed!’ And then I explained to her that I bought a new mascara – Maybelline’s Lash Stiletto Provocative Length – last Thursday and haven’t been able to believe my eyes [word punch!] since then. My eyelashes are literally all over my face right now. They’re unbelievable. I’ve always had very long, very black and thick eyelashes but this is unparalleled even in my life and to my face.

I’m learning Hungarian and I have eyelashes that I can sweep the floor with. Does life get any better than this?

Unexpected Expectations

Meet the teacher: this is how I looked [don’t you just love it when I photograph myself in the mirror in the restrooms at Ural State, comrades?] before I met my new students of Swedish this year on Thursday [yesterday] evening. Please do note my super-patriotic earrings – yes, that IS a tiny Swedish flag shaped like a heart! I’ve been thinking of chronicling what I wear when I work here on my blog – naming it something like ‘How to Wear Cardigans with Every and Anything’ or ‘The Bombshell’s Guide to Academia’ – but I’m not sure this will be possible. For example, today [first real lesson with this year’s beginners – 30 of them! Scary!] my outfit was the cutest ever but when the day ended at 20.30 I was too tired to even take up my camera… And my camera is tiny and very light.

What has happened to me? What is this? The question – sorry, William – is not ‘to be or not to be’ but: ‘what’s the matter with me?’ Yesterday evening, after giving my new students everything they need to know about my Swedish course this new academic year, I went with Nadia to the huge 24/7 cosmetic store here in Yekat called “The Golden Apple”. There I purchased black nail polish to use on my black leather cowboy boots that I just had fixed up for the coming fall. But this morning I woke up in a strange mood which meant that after I had gathered my fixed boots [they’re like new now, thanks for noticing, comrades!] and put on black nail polish on them I suddenly found myself also putting black nail polish on my own nails. I’ve never worn black nail polish in my life. But it looks awesome! It looks radical, let me tell you! Inspired by the blackness on my finger tips earlier today, I put on a black skirt and a black top and marked my waist as tightly and thinly as possible with a shiny, black belt. This I combined with black tights and my above-mentioned black boots. I don’t know if they’re more cowboy or more MC. Maybe it’s a combination of the two? Who knows? They make me feel bad, anyway, and also a little bit sexy. The black nail polish even more so! Only when I was already standing in front of my students did I realize that I had overdone it a tad. But by then it was far too late and I had to act like I’m always dressing like I’m hitting the club to get down while sipping cosmopolitans after class. And since this class is on Fridays – maybe I am? Who knows? Nobody knows!

Among my new students are two of my best friends here in the Urals – lovely Anna Mikhailovna and cute Katya. It was great to have them in class this evening and I can’t wait for us to be speaking Swedish with each other soon! They gave me a bribe in the form of chocolate after class. That was nice.

The coolest thing so far in my life – okay, I’m exaggerating a little, but it’s pretty cool – happened to me last weekend. The superb Russian site about the world’s greatest writer [now I’m not exaggerating at all] Varlam Shalamov published a photograph of mine that I took when I was in Krasnovishersk on July 17th! How awesome is that? I think it is very awesome.

Competing with being the coolest thing so far in my life is the fact that A. wrote music to one of my poems. Not did he only write music to one of my poems, but he also recorded it and sent it to me. It is the wildest thing when I’m listening to him singing my words and even wilder yet when I’m listening to him singing my words and miming him singing me – it is like miming yourself except it’s really not. I’m so damn inspired these days that I’m going to thank A. for his musical gift my way – poetically!

*

“Without a Sound”

Against your lips I place my finger:

“Be silent and listen,” I whisper,

“Did you hear something?”
Your head is shaking.

“Can your hear anything?”

Your voice is breaking

through my hand

taking command

conquering all land

with soundless strength

going the entire length

reaching the farthest corner

in my kingdom of disorder.

Your lips I feel against my finger:

“Be silent and taste,” you whisper,

“Did you feel something?”

My face is smiling.

“Can you feel anything?”

My skin is breaking

under your fingers

softness lingers

nothing hinders

seeing it so clearly

looking at you sincerely

while without a sound

my walls fell to the ground.

Absurd Patriotism

Of course most of you comrades must have heard the rumors by now about how patriotically I have decorated my dorm toilet here in the Ural Mountains. As a matter of fact, 100% of our Hungarian comrades have expressed a deep wish to see picture proof of my patriotic pride and joy: a bare-chested Putin on the lavatory wall. And here he is! Complete with a rifle, roaming the Siberian woods! But my devotion to the Russian Federation and its leaders would not be completely expressed [read: completely absurd] without a big picture of Medvedev hanging above Vova. Now that’s what I call having ‘something to look at’…

Once Again

Behold – my awesome new bag paired with a pair of black heels that I found underneath my bed this morning [the space underneath my bed is like the twilight zone] and a volume of Mikhail Bulgakov’s short stories in Russian. Every day I walk the streets and write poetry in my head. This kind of poetry seldom ends up on paper. My ‘inside-my-head-poems’ have no readers, only one listener – God. And today it occurred to me to ask myself [and God, since He’s always listening] – does He even like poetry?!

*

And not everything always turns out the way

you’d hoped it would but don’t despair

just remember the correct way to

cure lost dreams

and wasted hopes

and broken hearts

is not by staying up until half past four in the morning

smoking in your ex’s ninth floor communal kitchen

you won’t feel less alone and rejected just because

he lets you play with his hands just because

they’re twice the size of yours as you cry since

you’ve once again given into

a feeling

an idea

of dreaming

the correct way to get rid of the hold around your throat

that images of his smiles and echoes of his words

have on you is to wake up and put on a pair of black heels

anything less than four inches won’t do and you’ll need

a pointed toe and a wide skirt with a narrow waist

some plumping gloss on your lips and loose light hair

before you hit the streets make sure to load your iPod

with Dolly Parton’s Greatest Hits and you’ll be set

and work it without a grain of regret let alone despair

if he made you

feel like the

world’s most beautiful

woman

there’s no reason for that feeling to leave with him!

And don’t forget –

every Russian that dares to look twice

deserves nothing less

than the evil eye.

Everything is easier

earlier in the day

and gets harder

as evening approaches

and you leave the university and become one in the crowd

one step outside and you realize that you are but one of

all those pretty girls walking with blisters on their feet

along Lenin’s Prospect on their way home after work

but one out of thousands of young women dressed

in flowing skirts and strict jackets with smudged mascara

under eyes that were never innocent as they

keep a steady rhythm against the asphalt with tired feet

and you think

let me sink

into this sea

of anonymity and let me remain one of many I don’t

want to be anybody’s special I don’t

need to be somebody’s everything I don’t

have to be your northern light I don’t

mind it but I don’t think that’s what we need

and after all I’m not a natural phenomena but just

one of all the Russian women that passed by Lenin

today

this evening

thinking

God, I’m sinking

into a sea

of grey buildings grey skies grey rain

that’s washing away everything else

except what truly belongs to me

which cannot leave with anyone else

because even though we’re only given

one pair of eyes, one mouth, one nose

one life long or short – you decide –

there’s one thing you can have again and again

and all over again as much as you want

and that is when the first fragile

golden leaf of fall

lands on the tip of your black high heels

and you know

some things must die

in order for others
to be born.

Aurora

Look at the transformation! It’s a regular metamorphosis! Three new red shelves; one for all of my textbooks in Swedish as a foreign language, one for Shalamov [the almost empty one in the middle] and one for Dostoevsky! And of course my new shelves had to be red… One of my readers/comrades commented, upon seeing the picture of my room in the previous post, through mail that it looks like “Soviet Union exploded in your room”. Well, now it looks more like communism itself threw up in here…

On Monday evening Swedish time, or Tuesday night Ural time – depending from where you’re looking, comrades – something unprecedented happened in my life. Someone wrote a song and dedicated it to me. Not only wrote it and then dedicated it, but also recorded it and then sent it to my inbox complete with lyrics and all. The song is called “Your Silent Smile” and in it the composer calls me ‘aurora’. That’s northern light, and also – incidentally – the name of my favorite drink that consists of half vodka, half champagne. Since then I’ve played this song to everyone I know here in Russia [it is not just good because it is a song about me and the composer and our quick but enjoyable relations but good because it is a good song and it would still be even if it was about someone else], always afterwards adding the words: «Вот на что я вдохновила молодого человека!» I know I sound super silly, but I haven’t been able to stop smiling since I received it…

Tuesday started out with a visit to the hospital where I had my lungs photographed at a private clinic but didn’t have to pay a single ruble for it since the doctor concluded that I’m too «обаятельная» [charming] for that. I love Russia – everyone in this country is so subjective. I do not have TBC. After that I had my hair checked for lice – something which I also don’t have – and went to the university in order to enlighten myself during four lectures. I barely survived but I survived and came home at 8 p.m. and stumbled into bed two hours later.

Wednesday marked the big day at IKEA. I and my Korean roomie started out after lunch and were finished putting up the new shelves – she bought two and I bought three – somewhere around midnight. Actually we didn’t really put up the shelves on our own; I called my former more handsome half M. from the taxi on our way back from MEGA and asked him politely. He said yes, of course he’d drop by later in the evening and put them up for us. And he duly came and put all of them up by hand – that’s how strong the hands of my Russian ex-boyfriend are – after I made him the strongest Swedish coffee to be found [Forza!] and not only he liked it, but also my Korean roomie. M. put up our shelves while I discussed general matters in life with him and we suddenly remembered that he put up my three first shelves almost exactly two years ago – on the 17th of September 2007. Now that brings me back… After all we’ve been through – «как ни крути» - it is nice to be just good friends.

Next week I’ll start my Swedish classes with a big meeting for everyone on Thursday the 24th of September in room 425 [that’s on prospect Lenina 51, comrades] at 18.00. That’s why I’ll have to print out information about this in several copies today and then put these papers up all over the university… After which I need to get my act together and blog some for my other blog. I love to have the day off!

Home Sweet Home

The good people at IKEA know their stuff, comrades: this is indeed the most important place on Earth, and no, it’s not just half of a tiny room in a Russian dormitory but – home. My home is great but it owns too many books and that’s why this week’s big project is going to be buying more shelves. At IKEA, of course!

Some things I can do with my eyes closed. I can make the trip from Sweden’s west coast to Russia’s Ural Mountains without looking – take the train from Gothenburg to Stockholm, catch Arlanda Express to the airport, get on the flight from Stockholm to Moscow, find and ride the free transit bus from Sheremet’evo International Airport to its Domestic Terminal, jump on the flight from Moscow to Yekaterinburg and take a taxi from Kol’tsovo to Ural State University’s dormitory number 6. From there on I have to keep my eyes open because the dorm’s elevator is super tiny and my big red suitcase just barely fits through its doors.

Okay, I made it. I’m back. I’m home. In Russia.

My first day has been crazy – I filled in many documents in several copies, prolonged my student ID, turned in my passport for registration, gave my professor Alexey Swedish vodka, checked my schedule for this fall [being in the Master program’s second year feels unreal even though I realize that it is very real indeed], rejoiced when I found out that I have Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays off this semester, and then I booked classrooms for my Swedish courses and now my only day left off is Wednesday [not counting my whopping TWO day weekend! It’s going to be like living in a western country!]. I met everyone at the university and everyone’s first question was: “How’s your mother?” Don’t you just love Russia? And Russians? Every Russian knows that the polite thing to do first when someone returns from being “in [their] Motherland” is to inquire about the person’s mother’s state of health. I couldn’t be honest about mine, though, since if I tell them she has the flue they’re going to think it’s not just ‘a flue’ but ‘the flue’ and put me in quarantine. And I don’t need that.

Tomorrow will be yet another eventful day – I have lots left to deal with. I’m going to go to the hospital tomorrow, because I must 1) check my chest for tuberculosis; and 2) check my hair for lice in order to stay another year in the dormitory. Then I’ll have to take out a huge sum of money from my bank account and feel rich in rubles for a moment – until I pay for this academic year. After this I’ll have four classes from 12.20 until 19.30 and arrive home tired and sleepy and my body ready to adjust to Yekaterinburg time. I have only five subjects this fall. I can’t believe it. I suspect they’re just pulling our legs. But then again, it makes sense in a way – after all, since we had eleven subjects in the spring semester, how many subjects can we have left to study?

Tomorrow I will wear the cutest outfit and fit into Russian reality. I realized today on the street that my outfit today was cute enough for Sweden, but not nearly cute enough for Russia. I’m going to combine my new blouse with my new black skirt. [When I was in Stockholm this weekend I saw that Malin has the exact same one – when she wears something it is not simply a statement of fashion; it is a statement of classy and cute. Few people can combine classy and cute the way Miss A can!] Everyone loves my new bag in Russia, though. Even Sara complimented me on it during my very fast, very nice visit to Stockholm from Saturday evening till Sunday morning. Everyone in Russia tells me I’ve lost weight. Everyone in Russia compliments me on my new hair-cut. Everyone in Russia is nice and some Russians even smile – it must be the weather. The weather today was great; we had sunshine and 20C. Now I don’t really understand why not everyone loves this country as much as I do?!

Hungarian for Beginners

Look, comrades, you actually can see Russian territory from my private tutor’s window in Gothenburg. That’s the consulate’s flag on yet another day without wind.

*

When you keep the beat with your finger tips

of yet another song against my hips,

I don’t know what it is you do –

if you tie me together,

or make me come undone.

Tonight as I fall down beside you in bed

softly placing on your chest my head,

I don’t know what it is you do –

if you bring me closer,

or push me further away.
 

While I keep one of my hands free to trace

along the edges of your unexpected face,

I don’t know what it is you do –

if you made a new me,

or found the old one.

*

And you asked the question I never have

ever been asked before – “What’s underneath

all of this proper, tidy and serious exterior?” –

and before answering I must stop and think

and gather completely new words since

what’s inside has never been spoken of

until this moment though it has been thought –

know what I mean? –

and I answered you then but my actions has since

spoken louder than words ever could and I hope

that you saw in me what’s beyond and below

all of those feminine skirts and heels and long hair

that inside and within I’m really just this girl

with an awfully ironic tongue

who’s allergic to dairy

and a vegetarian and

listens to country (oh no!)

and judges songs mainly by the criteria

“Jesus – no Jesus”

and has traumatic memories of

music lessons in school (sorry)

and can’t sing

yet secretly loves to (loudly in private)

and doesn’t like to drink beer

doesn’t know what or who to vote for

doesn’t believe in global warming

doesn’t watch TV –

some things I just don’t do

and some things I’m just not

even though I wish I were

(especially the things that other people are)

but underneath all of my neatness, correctness, sternness

this is what I am and not

anything more

or anything else

and that’s why a question like yours – proper, tidy and serious –

can sometimes make me loose my breath and wonder

and doubt or confuse myself but somehow this

time it was different maybe it was the candle light

maybe it was the wine maybe it was your bed

maybe it was your eyes maybe it was your beard

maybe it was because we’re different maybe it was just you

maybe it was simply -

Hungarian for beginners.

För kärlekens skull

Yesterday – September 5th 2009 – marked the wedding day of my cousin Renée and her [now husband] Josef. Here they are in the church in Svalöv [that’s in Skåne – the very south of Sweden] while Josef’s sister Linda sings Ted Gärdestad’s “För kärlekens skull” accompanied by ‘the secret [Hungarian] guest’ on guitar. The golden clad kids are Linda’s – my pretty cousin and her soul mate may have tied the knot but that’s an adventure still ahead of them…

The weekend’s long-awaited wedding was filled with love. Love between the bride and the groom, love between family members, love between relatives, love between friends – both old and new. It was a very, very nice wedding – everything about it was pleasant, warm and loving. I can’t imagine two people belonging to each other more than Renée and Josef do. They will have a wonderful, long life together. I’m sure of it. After all, it did rain on their wedding day – a sure sign of good luck in the future according to Russian culture. During dinner after the wedding I was placed next to ‘the secret [Hungarian] guest’ – Josef’s childhood friend – and thus my evening was pretty much made. We enjoyed a very pleasant conversation while sitting next to each other at the table. After dinner we enjoyed dancing with each other and after dancing with each other we enjoyed kissing each other. I think I might have a bit of a crush on Hungary now… And, like my mother said – of course I had to end up locking lips with the only East European in attendance! Anyway, the evening was lovely and a lot of fun. Very much thanks to him. To imagine that I had almost forgotten how wonderful men are… And how nice it is to kiss someone who knows how it’s done. He’s indeed a very kind and highly agreeable man but what is not so agreeable is the fact that he lives in Gothenburg and that I’ll be out of here in a week. Dang. I have no timing.

Besides from having a bit of a crush on Hungary currently I have also caught a bit of a cold – both my sister and my mother are down with the flue. But I can’t be sick. I have one day left – tomorrow – when I have to finish preparing my Shalamov seminar at the university because Tuesday is only one day away now. Said and done – I’m off to fetch my huge map of Russia in the basement. Wish me luck! Since I can’t have timing, let me at least have some luck…

A Love Story

“Russian press about our student in Yekaterinburg”. I gave my adorable professor M some articles by/about me from Russia, thus he made copies and duly put them up on our institution [of Languages and Literatures at Gothenburg University] as always. Since practically nobody here studies Russian – or any other Slavic language for that matter – I’m not in the risk zone of becoming the least famous because of this. But it’s nice.

All of this week [and I’ll only wrap it up tomorrow] I’ve spent preparing the literary seminar on Varlam Shalamov that I’ll be giving on Tuesday next week. The seminar’s title is highly provocative and reads as follows: “Varlam Shalamov – the late 20th century’s biggest Russian writer?” [if you click on the link you’ll arrive at the university’s announcement in Swedish]. This week I’ve spent four entire days in the university library reading and writing, reading and writing. Reading, writing and walking along the long book cases deep in the basement and touching the books and smelling the old paper and sometimes helplessly falling down with my knees against the floor as I breathe in and out and can’t think of any place in the world where everything is so silent and calm and beautiful, yet every second I suspect someone’s going to walk in, come in, see me, notice me, think me strange… I love libraries. I love the stillness. I love the abundance. I love all of the voices; I love each and every one of the voices. Often I pick out one of the books – purely and randomly and curiously – just to sit down with it on the floor and read a page of it. Then I close it, then I close my eyes, to think – think deeply, as I sense the stillness, listen to the silence, smell the old knowledge – and become happy. Consider myself blissful. Acknowledge myself blessed. When among books I feel safe. And all around I’m surrounded by my kind when surrounded by books. When I was a child I was at first afraid of books – because there were so many grown-ups around me who had ‘their’ books and ‘their’ idea of these books and thus these books seemed alien to me, their grown-up opinion seemed to alienated me from the books – but when I was 10 and wrote my first book, I finally realized that books were written by people just like me. People who wanted to express themselves. I expressed myself and as I expressed myself – through words! glorious words! – I became aware of the beauty of others’ expressions, of others’ words… As I child I would play with books; I would pick up one of them – often when I came to visit my grandparents because they had been librarians in their earlier life and had many strange books around – and read a page and then put it back and think about it. Sometimes I would solely touch the back of the books. I loved to walk around and touch the books. I still love to just walk around and touch the books. I close my eyes and feel surrounded by friends. By people who – just like me – couldn’t keep their words to themselves. What’s the secret about literature? Why is it so special to me to walk around bookshelves and sense everything – with all six senses – what is it that it brings to me? Perhaps it sounds egoistic, perhaps it sounds improbable, perhaps it seems a tad shallow – but among them I meet myself. And I consider meeting myself to be the best, most interesting, most fascinating meeting. I can’t get enough of meeting myself. I meet myself in every emotion, in every shade of emotion, in everything I think – feel – am – places, faces, times past… when among books. When on my knees in the basement of the university library. And I pray – Lord, Jesus Christ, don’t ever let me loose this feeling, this moment. And God Father, everything is in Your hands. I put it there. Let it remain.

On Tuesday I had lunch with Katharina and Oskar. We were supposed to have lunch this week many more times, but she has since fallen ill [don’t worry, comrades, I’m sure it’s not the pig flue] and I’ve been forced to eat lunch alone. Yesterday after lunch a man came up to me on the street in downtown Gothenburg and told me that he liked my style. I didn’t get it and thus asked him: “You like my librarian outfit?” He replied that yes, he thinks I look very good. Suddenly I was suspicious. He continued talking to me; asked me what I do, told me what he does. I grew more suspicious. Only when he asked if I wanted to stop for a cup of coffee and talk more I realized that he was flirting with me. I agreed to have a bottle of juice [since I’d just finished a huge cup of coffee] with him and we ended up talking for an hour and a half about nothing and everything. It was very nice. He’s a cook, owns a restaurant in the country side and invited me to come visit [he gave me the name of his place and my mother duly googled it – the location is as good as it gets, she commented] but I was sadly forced to decline his invite as I’m busy now and will leave the country soon anyway. But it felt good to be flirted with. By a nice, interesting man. For a change.

On Saturday the 5th of September my pretty cousin Renée is getting married to her beloved Josef in the south of Sweden. The whole family is invited – everyone has bought dresses and shoes and planned hairstyles and what speeches to give – and I’m sure it’s going to be a big, fun event. I can’t wait to see my cousin walk down the aisle in the church – to begin the next huge adventure of her life. I can’t but wish her all the best. I think Josef is a great guy [but can any guy ever really be good enough for your cousin? I think not – but he might really be the one to take the cake; he’s funny and a good dancer and has a steady job as a teacher] and I’m sure they’ll be happy.

I’m excited about attending the wedding this weekend. Yet everyday I become more and more happy to be single. Why? Not only do I love meeting myself; I have also realized that in all my past relationships I’ve never been the one the initiate it, but always the one to agree to ‘be together’. Conclusively, I’m not the kind of person to be looking for someone. I’m the kind you’ll have to work to get. I think I even put that [with the addition of ‘to get in the pants of’] in a poem when I was twenty. Sometimes it is shocking – the kind of insight you can have at such an early, fragile point in your life.