6.10 2003

Surprises

Dearest Jenya,

Unbeknownst to me, I have internet access in the English katedra (yes,
the word is the same in Polish) so I’m sending you a short note to say
hello and to thank you for calling me this morning. I will try to send
longer letters by email also in addition to regular post, and I will
write them at home then send. I will call you at 8:00 a.m. this
Saturday on your home line. I have many impressions to share with you,
but the aloneness is very strange after September. I do not wish you to
worry for my health. So I will close by saying I miss you, and I’m am
trying to begin working (reading).

Love,
Kevin

8.10 2003

Currencies

Dearest Jenya,
After reading your letters I managed to copy 3 of 4 of them into my
computer at home. Tomorrow I will try to send this letter. I hope you
can wait for a while before I connect here to the internet, when we can
write more often, as often as you can or wish.

Its getting late in the evening here, towards midnight, and I’m putting
off writing my last course description for tomorrow. Everything is left
to the person teaching the course, and though for two of the ‘Practical
English’ courses, such as I taught at TPU, there are curriculum
guidelines, for the two seminars and an Introduction to American
Culture course for 2nd year students, there is little to go by except
my own experience, which is always in question (for me) when starting
in a new place.

I am full of uneasiness for reasons I can’t identify. The university is
vast, and probably everyone is left to their own devices, whatever
those may be. Everywhere around me is evidence of prosperity, or at
least the appearance of it. Goods and more goods and services,
services.

Very likey the first thing that must be happen for Russia
to ‘Westernize’ (goods, goods, goods, and services!) is for all the
trolley-bus conductresses to be dismissed. They have automatic ticket
machines in the buses here, and no one talks to the drivers. After the
conductresses are dismissed, then the laudresses, for in a world where
even visiting instructors have washing machines in their flat, somebody
somewhere must be made to suffer for it.

After two years in Russia, when the graduate student who helped me
around the bureaucracy for the first few days said they were fixing
something in my flat, and when he said he thought it was the washing
machine (this was before I came to the flat) I thought to myself that
he must be mistaken, and probably meant the refrigerator. But there it
was, the washing machine, and I’ve been afraid to use it yet, for fear
that it doesn’t work.

Paradise? Wherever there is a consumer paradise, there must be social
parasites. That is about what I feel like, as though my position in the
world does not qualify me for a three-room flat with separate kitchen
(five rooms if you count the bathroom). Something must happen that will  take it away from me. Even before you have been able to visit me!

About this, we have really only two months to plan. More important than
telephone rates are all the information needed which I’m sure is
probably a little confusing after the 1st of October change for Russian
citizens travelling to Poland. But I need to know what I must do here.
The invitation may be able to come from me, since I’m working at the
University and have a residential address. There is a small problem
with my visa which I found out about when I went to register at the
City Administration: since I have a multiple-entry visa (which I
requested since I thought I might be going to Tomsk in January–which
it turns out I couldn’t have anyway since classes go until almost until
the end of January, with two week vacation in February), I must cross
the Polish border at the end of every three-month period, and I was
told I will have to cross the border again by December 28th. Probably I
will take a train to either Frankfurt or somewhere in Slovakia or
CHECKoslovakia for a day around the Christmas holidays.

Whether we decide to meet here in Lodz or go to Croatia either way you
should be able to get the plane ticket to Moscow and back well ahead of
time and at a good price. A first-class train ticket would still be
less than airfare, at least to here. If you can’t come to Poland, I can
meet you literally just about anywhere within train distance. But it
would be the least expensive to come here, since there is more than
enough room and you will be able to as alone as you need and want to be.

We should keep talking about January, and I will try to find out
whatever information I need to if I know what that information is. As
always, probably everything is a lot easier than we think. I feel that
I may have made a mistake (in judgment) in my letter by post to you,
and since this will arrive before that letter, I should try to correct
it in advance. The offending passage includes an exclamation mark and
reference to a book, and depending on others, or another (the fear of
dependence), and even writing about it now, I don’t know how to correct
the fault, if there was one, in the expression. I only hope that you
will read it with some understanding in light of what I’ve told you a
little of regarding that–element, dimension, or?–of the past.
Whatever it is. But we should try to talk about this as much as is
possible. Whatever it is that I’m talking about, which isn’t exactly
clear to me right now.

It is clear that I have another course description to write before I
have to choose which among three rooms I’m going to sleep in (I’ve been  rotating, one night in one room, the next night in the second room–in each room I have different dreams). In the dark room I have dark
dreams. In the light room I have light dreams. And in the small room I
have small dreams. If I slept in the kitchen (as you have been known to
do), then I would probably dream about food. Today I ate only yoghurt
in the morning and kasha for dinner. Trying to make it to the end of
the month without spending too much money.

The thought about which makes me stop writing. Really, I keep thinking
everything here is going to disappear. Or maybe this thought is a
displacement of the other thought, that it might be you who disappears.
Please don’t.

Although when I sign my letters as this morning’s email I hear you
saying “Oy Oy Oy” etc. Which is worse in your mind, the sentiment or
the mechanicality (the threat of dutiful affection, the very thought of
which I imagine is unbearable to you)? This by the way is what is wrong
with 9/10ths of everything ever written.
So if I write, simply, as you, Bye, may you hear the emphasis on the
hopefulness that it’s only for a little while?

P.S. Almost two hours later and my syllabus is written complete with
page numbers of the assigned texts!

What else, what else. Every year is like reinventing the wheel.
Wednesday I have four classes: My Vernacular Seminar for 4th Year
students, A Practical Course in Conversation for 3rd Year students, and
two classes in the same subject, Introduction to American Culture (the
syllabus for which I just wrote).

The Philology building is one of the most beautiful on the university
that I’ve seen, though the campus is spread out through the city. I
mentioned, didn’t I, that the city was spared the fate of Warsaw during
the war, and the architecture is astonishing. I like being around very
old buildings. It puts my grey hair in perspective . . .

Oh well,

Love,
Kevin

p.s.s. Tuesday afternoon. Reading all day to day so far. Doesn’t this
sound a little like Mandelstam?

“It is unbearable what knowledge of the past has been allowed to
become, what function of human memory has been disabled out into the
hands of these learned monsters whom people are led to think ‘know.’
They know nothing in not knowing how to reify what they do know. What  is worse, they do not know how to pass over to us the energy implicit  in any high work of the past because they purposely destroy that energy as dangerous to the states for which they work–which it is, for any concrete thing is a danger to rhetoricians and politicians, as
dangerous as a hard coin is to a banker.”

So, about what to do with the 100 ruble note, did I tell you that the
last summer I was in NY I found in a book in the library a 20 Euro
note? Those 20 Euros would help me make it to the end of the month now  (I’m trying to get there with 200 zlotys (about 50 dollars). At the
time, the 20 Euro bill looked like play money, or what Americans
call ‘Monopoly’ money after a popular game. Whether ruble or Euro or
zloty or dollar, what is missing is the hard coin, metals, actual value
(in a world of relative values or value so obscured its quantity–
measure–rises and falls each day.

How can you measure the value of 100 rubles? If the piece of paper
floats among your books, then doesn’t it gain something that is lost
each time we use it in simple exchange, purchasing, use?

This by the same author I’m reading which I may use for a debate topic
for one of my classes:

“To say that in America the goods are the fruits, and the people as the
goods, all glistening but tasteless, accomplishes nothing in itself,
for the overwhelming fact is, that the rest of the world wants but to
be the same. Value is perishing from the earth because no one cares to
fight down to it beneath the glowing surfaces so attractive to all. Der
Weg stirbt.”

With 100 rubles you could buy 15-20 loaves of bread, even Borodinski
(chorni is charni here). But bread is another word. Black cofffee: kava
charni instead of kofe chorni. With 100 rubles you could ride the
Marshutka 20 times. But you would put it between the pages of a book,
reminding you of? As a sign of? What does it mean? This 100 rubles?
Doesn’t it have more dignity compared to the Euro or the Dollar? At
least if the trolley-bus conductresses have anything to say about it?
The Euro or the Dollar does not recognize their existence. But whoever
lives east of the Urals, how could these people not have some concrete,
real, material form of existence?

I still remember vividly one night going to the train station in Chita
and being told I must pay eight rubles instead of four for my suitcase,
since it was taking up another seat (and the bus was empty!). I shook
my head in disbelief and dug another ‘hard coin’ out of my pocket. I
think the bankers of the west are very much afraid of such currency,
and likewise there is none of the trauma associated with ‘making
change’ that you find everywhere in the shops, at least the few times
I’ve gone to the store, there is always plenty of money in the till,
and even once when I was buying a fountain pen (the one that I write
you by post with) the woman apologized for giving me change in small
bills.

Now I have added heavy thoughts to an already heavy letter–and when
you write me with such lightness and wit. I can’t keep up with your
humor, I’ve already warned you.

But soon I hope to write to you an answer to your “something terrible
has come up” letter. Something about writing. Maybe it’s in the passage
I quoted. Even the line written in a notebook, if it is concrete,
threatens rhetoricians of every language. More, I even believe that the
act of staring at a pen, without even picking it up, while one is
reading, is writing.

“One more word about my writing”? (I didn’t use the first person
possessive, you did, my dear).

My dear Zhen . . .
—

8.10 2003

Displaced native

Dear Zhen,

I’m not going to worry right now, you are always gloomy about visas.
But please do try to get more information.

Today I’ve met several people who teach here, and my mood has improved.
One colleague said, after speaking for a while, “But you’re from
England aren’t you?”

(My accent).

So there!

(Missing you).

Kevin

13.10/2004

Re:  remind letter

Dear Zhen,

There is a sweet custom I observe here on the buses, if the bus is
crowded and a boy and a girl are travelling together, the girl sits on
the boy’s lap. This morning on my way here there was such a couple in
front of me, and I thought how much in agony I would be if you were
sitting on my lap. We should have to look for a ‘day room’ immediately!
(Just a slightly silly–fond–note to remind you that I miss you).

Kevin

13.10/2004

Newfoundlands

Dear Zhen,

I’ve attached a short list of English-language schools here, including
only those with websites or fax numbers, there’s a longer list of
schools with local numbers in case these are insufficient.

I’m glad (yes, that word, for happiness?) that you called again, and
with such an idea! A very good one, I think. You are right about visas.
There was a small impromtu party last night for some people who live in
the building to which I was invited, and there I met teachers from
Germany, France, America and England (more specifically, let’s see how
good I am with names: Bergitt from Germany, Katherine from US by way of England, Andrew from Wales, Dominic and David from France, Justine from Australia, Marina from Bulgaria, Frank from Germany by way of Romania, and the other new teacher from the US who also has my first name, but no personality [he left early after being asked by one of the Europeans if he liked Noam Chomsky, not that it was an argument, but there is always this political tension?]. But about visas, everyone talked about visa problems they’d heard about–apparently the rules keep changing, as everywhere. Everyone also seemed to be doing post-doc work or teaching, but in general to be in that gray area after the completion of the PhD but without a permanent position. I met another teacher from Britain, Tim, at my building, and he expressed surprise that I wasn’t here on a fellowship or sabbatical, which is how he said most visitors are able to live here, given the reduced income (for Europeans and Americans …

I seem to remember you saying, “You Americans like your
conveniences …”

Or did you say, “Are fond of …?”

Or more likely, they (we) (I) need such conveniences as washing
machines, which I used today, and my towel and four pair of underwear
and my other black pullover–or sweatshirt (remember I had two and left
the smaller one for you at your dacha?) are now drying on my porch or
balcony or terrace-area, whatever it’s called, not as large as the one
in the flat in Tomsk, but today was the first day in a long time when
there was some sunlight, so I tried to take advantage of it. It will be
nice to have a clean towel, as I didn’t wash it while in Tomsk.

This is simplicity: I can count my clothes (the count has been reduced
since my letter to you from Sheremeteyvo). So far, in addition to food,
I have purchased a pair of scissors, a bottle of glue, a fountain pen,
500 sheets of copy paper, a pocket Polish dictionary, two notebooks,
and a water kettle. From the apartment where the party was when I said
that I had only one pot for cooking I was given another very good pot
and colander, so now I can make both your hated “macaroni” and sauce at the same time. Last night I cooked eggplant and red peppers with onion and garlic, and it was the best thing I’ve cooked so far–your question about what I’m eating probably helped–otherwise I will survive on bread and cheese. But I should really start cooking, as the stores and
markets are full of very fresh fruit and vegetables. Apples are grown
everywhere in Poland, and they are wonderful.

In fact, I’m going to stop this letter to eat one now.

I think I can type a letter and eat an apple at the same time.

Really, though, they are very good apples.

But I should write of more weighty matters. Such as, for example, I
finished reading today the book I was reading yesterday when you
called, Literary Culture and U.S. Imperialism.

From the title, you would think that it would be a book that I would be
enthusiastic about, but quite the contrary. How to mention to you my
criticism? Well, tonight I looked through a text from the Univ. of
California Press that I’d downloaded (one of the books I transferred
from my storage drive those last few days) about the Proletkult
movement in 1920s Russia, and there are contours in common, I think,
between MULTICULTURALISM and PROLETARIAN CULTURE

programs, ideologies, and the book I just finished reading is one of
those influential ones, published by Oxford University Press by some
professor at University of California-Irvine.

So what? You ask?

Something about climate, intellectual climate, both direct and tacit,
at a particular moment in time, and how that climate (the weather in
the schools) is influenced by ideas, often reductive and easy-to-
understand ideas which only look like thinking, like the Sovietization
period and its reduction of literature to an ideological function.

This is exactly what is being dictated in the Literary Culture book, as
though there were a direct correspondence between the Real and the
Imaginary. The resemblance is chilling between many of this author’s
statements and statements in a book published by Moscow Publishers (the State publishing house) that my own writing examined in my “Pacifist” (the manuscript is among my papers in your flat), especially, that authors are directly responsible or answerable for the ideological
implications of their texts. This means, according to this logic, that
authors can be brought to a court of judgement as to whether their
politics (the ideology disguised by their artwork) are right or wrong.

Whose politics? What do politics have to do with culture? During the
20s in Russia one of the greatest errors made was the attempt to define
political positions by culture, to use cultural production for the
representation of politics. I don’t know why I feel so opposed to this
suddenly, but it was my reaction to reading this Literary Culture book,
and a book with a title that I was very happy to find in the library
and eager to read.

So, I read it, and then I became disturbed. Troubled. I’m thinking of
the weather, in the U.S. especially, and how there are definitions that
are being put in place, and which will cast a pall over so much
writing. It is as though intellectuals are so powerful there because of
their class position (even an adjunct lecturer makes a middle-class
salary, not to mention the incomes of what are called the “big guns”
and really the ones who dictate the intellectual environment) that
ideas take on a life of their own, and have an influence out of all
proportion to their actual worth.

What I am saying is that in addition to a very real militaristic threat
from the Right in the U.S., there is (in my mind) a very real threat
arriving from the Left as these ideas are forming and gaining
popularity in the universities. And do you know what this “Left” sounds
like? Just remember the history of cultural control in Russia, which
also came from such a “Left.”

It is the ideology of the representation, without any ability to
understand the complexity of the image.

And so, you see, this afternoon, I slept. Probably for about three
hours, maybe more. I kept waking up and waiting for it to be dark. It
is so quiet here. I am beginning to be able to think. Just a little.
Yes, I do think once in a while. Or, the writing begins to wish for
thought, to work on a problem. Something outside of the demands of the classroom, which I will approach again tomorrow.

The problem? Just how unimaginative history is. This is why it repeats
itself, endlessly. That isn’t a very original idea. Here is a quotation
from the book that I finished reading and which I was reading when you
called:

“We ought to know well enough by this date the dangers of certain kinds
of sympathetic identifications with the racially, sexually, or gendered
other as being ways of appropriating another’s power…. It is thus
easy to forget how identification across social divisions like race,
gender, sexuality, and class can have two very different consequences:
first, the author can subvert such false divisions by establishing a
commonality with the imagined other; second, the author can submerge
the difference of the other by claiming it as the author’s own.”

Sophisticated Lunacharsky, but Lunacharsky all the same. What is the
law being dictated here?

You do not have the right to submerge the difference of the other! You
must respect the difference of the other! Everyone is different, and
these differences must be respected!

At one very horrible place that I worked when I lived in Cleveland, at
a big city newspaper, the slogan on all the coffee cups was: Respecting
Our Differences! (Everyone hated everyone).

Just how outlawish (transgressive) is the imagination no theory of
culture can ever contain, much less control. But such control (of the
representation) will be attempted.

What does the intellectual climate in the U.S. have to do with me here
and now?

Well, if I am here as a kind of transition from teaching composition
and Practical English to teaching American literature and culture, and
if in two-three years I was able to produce a significant study, then I
would be in a position to apply for the kind of job, without total
effacement of my writing life and identity (this is what happens when
teaching the courses I was before leaving the U.S. and in Russia also,
at least at TPU, where I was a language teacher, and the relations
among one’s writing and one’s reading and one’s ideas and one’s
teaching get blurred, if not dissolved), but in what kind of weather?

You like to watch the weather.

Well, it is weather, how ideas circulate and create laws (of
perception). Reading this book that I’ve written to you about, I am
reminded that the weather forecast for Literary Culture in the U.S. is
not very good. Neither from the Left nor the Right. Perhaps I am
influenced by what I’ve been able to tell you happened to me in 1999
when I tried to do what? Belong there? And just the opposite happened.
As for the present, and thinking about the future, what am I doing here
if I have no wish (if the weather, the intellectual climate, does not
permit) to return there?

But there are always very interesting bits and pieces (the debris of
scholarship) in such books.

Here is an example (a paragraph from a letter by Henry Adams to Henry
Cabot Lodge, August 4 1891):

“I am satisfied that America has no future in the Pacific. She can turn
south, indeed, but after all, the west coast of South America offers
very little field. Her best chance is Siberia. Russia will probably go
to pieces; She is rotten and decrepit to the core, and must pass
through bankruptcy, political and moral. If it can be delayed another
twenty-five years, we could Americanize Siberia, and this is the only
possible work that I can see still open on a scale equal to American
means.”

(Adams and Lodge are important ruling-class figures in the history of
U.S. politics). This theme of Americanization has been on the books in
the ruling class of the U.S. for more than a century. It is not
something that is just being dreamt of now. This expansionism will
force collisions with European and Asian markets, and what if Russia
does break up as you have said that you expect it to?

I see nothing in the future except accelerating crises. And I don’t
know where or how to situate myself, as a writer and as a human being.
That is why I mentioned to you about my returning to Tomsk.

It may well be the best place to wait out the weather.

The other possibility, such as we have discussed, that there will be a
nationalist backlash against “englification” and your own position
threatened (not now, not next year, but in five years–and do you
remember your talking about your pension in 20 years? Do we really live
in a world where we can expect anything from 20 years from now?) well,
anything is possible.

It’s just that I was disturbed by ideological lunacy of this
Lunacharsky book, one of many being produced by influential
intellectuals in the U.S.

If there is a formulation to be made, maybe it is this: One must make
use of every opportunity for time and space. For now, is it in Poland?
Two of the returning teachers I spoke to last night after teaching here
one year signed two-year contracts. Suddenly in my mind the possibility
of living and working here for two-three years occurred. (I was also
told that I have one of the best flats in the building).

If we are able to realize our plans for summer (do you remember our
visit to that other office, not the OVIR?), then I think it is
realistic (your favorite word?) to imagine (what a contradiction) our
being able to live here for a while. But you should visit first, and
see for yourself. That is why it would be so good if you can come here
in January, even if as a student.

But of English? What about finishing your PhD abroad? You are more than capable of doing it in English, which would qualify you for many, many universities in Central Europe and beyond. England, U.S., etc.

Most important, the Central European University in Warsaw (like the one
in Budapest) specifically address the needs of Russian intellectuals
pursuing graduate studies. The writing program I applied to at the
Central European University in Budapest stated this explicitly, that I
would be (would have been, unlike this year my application wasn’t
successful–I applied the summer before I went to Tomsk) working with
Russian graduate students writing in English for various PhD programs.

Why don’t you inquire about the possibility of finishing your PhD at
the Central European University in Warsaw. I’m told that half of Lodz
works in Warsaw, where it is much more expensive to live. You could
live in Lodz and travel to Warsaw by train or bus two or three times a
week (it’s only 90 minutes away by bus, and the buses are extrememly
modern and comfortable). All of the public transportation here is very
new, fast and cheap.

If you could conceive of the possibility (the practicality) of doing
what you do now for almost nothing, translating scientific articles,
and turning this into your at least “declared purpose” for finishing
your PhD, with the idea of working as a translator (I remember your
saying that you had no interest in research in your field, but you also
say that you change your mind), then, wouldn’t that give you as much or
more security as the thought of your pension 20 years from now?

These are just suggestions. I don’t know how many such suggestions I
have the right to make without upsetting you.

Have I upset you?

Well, you should know that I have very many intimate thoughts of you
and your word “unreal” is perhaps for me an image, memory, of certain
moments, and if these images are unreal, their fantasy-like character
is strengthened by the physical reality of September. The physical
reality of summer squash and fresh peas with sunflower oil.

Where are you?

P.S.
After rereading this letter, I feel that I’m still making amends for
the letter I sent by post to you, and which I was afraid (am still
afraid) insulted you by imagining you here, as if you were able to just
pack and leave. One can never be too sensitive about borders.

And really, one of my fondest memories of September is the night when
you suddenly wanted to be alone. You don’t know how very much like this I also am. More than anything, I need a room and a desk and a closed door, where I remain for hours, sometimes days. Even if it is just to sleep. Because when I wake up, especially from a nap, then often I
write. Often I need to sleep for a while before writing, after reading.
It is so nice to fall asleep while reading. The ideas germinate. So I
am often very moody and uncommunicative when I am not reading. Because if I am not reading, then I won’t be able to fall asleep, and if I
don’t sleep, then I won’t write. So I become irritable. I have always
been told that I am a very difficult person for this reason, and I
recognized in your wish, however it was expressed, a sign of and
possibility of the acceptance of my own irritability.

That night I read my entire Deleuze reader, the first sustained reading
I’d done since last spring, when I was trying to read Walter Benjamin
in my beloved Obshejitsya (that what it sounds like to my English
ears). In a way, that night of reading was very much a musical prelude
to the reading I am beginning to do now.

Isn’t this a great note to end this letter on? Zhenya, we are both
difficult and irritable!

Oh, and one more thing: You are allowed to keep dogs here. There were
two dogs at the party last night, and the first thing the big dog did
was eat a big piece of very expensive (to my mind) French cheese! I
remembered your story of your last dog, how he had no table manners.
Well, you can have a dog here with no table manners, and no one will
mind. Really, I asked, and several people who live in this building
have dogs.

Now, you know that my favorite dog is a Labrador, but I might be
persuaded towards Newfoundland …

Then, if we had a dog, that would limit our travel to car, so I would
have to get a driver’s license, and we could drive among the European
countries between Greece and England.

Don’t you think it’s HIGH TIME for me to SHUT UP?

15.10/2003

Ice winds

Dear Zhen,

This change of name for you is beginning to feel to me a little like an
effect of September. First, for those first months, you were Evgenia,
then Jenya during the summer, and now, for how long will you be Zhen
before becoming a further variation?

Also, dont you think that it sounds vaguely Chinese?

Ta zhu zai nar. Bu yuan bu yuan.
(She lives there. Not far not far.)
Bu shi xue xiao. Ta, ta de fang jian bu yuan.
(It’s not school. Her, her room is not far).

It’s a quarter after two in the afternoon and I’ve finished preparing
for tomorrow’s classes. There are dishes to wash, but I’d rather write
you.

As an antidote to the Literature and Imperialism book, I read a book on
linguistics last night and this morning, and in this book at least
there were some gestures towards Russian and Russian linguistics. One
paragraph mentioned how in Russian there is a word for light blue and a
word for dark blue, where in English the word blue means both, though
most native speakers associate blue with light blue (we do have azure
and indigo, and a painter would probably know a few more shades of
blue, but the two words for light blue and dark blue are everyday
words, yes?)

I am (fondly) remembering your attention to the change in the color of
my eyes from blue to gray . . .

Still, I’m wondering if this difference between the two languages
regarding the color blue (or the word, blue, since we see the same
color, or do we?), doesn’t suggest how English BLURS features and
distinctions in a perception, and simplifies (reduces) consciousness–
at least in as much as consciousness can be said to be perceptual. The
contradiction may be that English is analytic in its word order
(grammar, syntax), but blurred semantically. If, semantically, it is
true that English has difficulty distinguishing the finer features in a
perception, then it might be concluded that English has some
difficulty, if not great difficulty, in developing a thought. Perhaps
English does not think as much as it classifies and commands into
categories. The perception of reality in English CUTS rather than
ABSORBS. This is why scientific, legal, medical and business
communications across language borders are migrating to English, which
is fated to become the Technical and Administrative global instrument
for intertwined economies. Below this increasing rigidity of reference,
the vernaculars of English will grow increasingly unintelligible to one
another in all their semantic and phonetic variations.

What does this thought have to do with the lovely word, Zhen …

What, says the book I was reading last night, is the lexical relation
between the imperatives, ‘take care’ and ‘watch out’ or ‘be quiet’
and ‘shut up’? The relation is identified between the words rather than
in the individual semantic features of take/care/watch/out or
be/quiet/shut/up.

“Grow,” on the other hand, relates to “joy” as a verb and plus (+) sign:

“Her joy grew by leaps and bounds” when the temperature dropped
(since “drop” is a verb with a minus (-) relation to temperature). But
what if she said, “I shut the temperature up in a drop”?

(If we understand that the temperature is her joy?)

In support of your defense of the dictionary (remember our
disagreement?) Well, two Russian linguists, Zhokovsky (1970, 1984) and
Apresian (1969), “regard the dictionary as the basic foundation for
theoretical linguistics. For them, language is the lexicon, the
inventory of its words and relations and ways of combining them…. The
view of most American linguists is exactly the opposite, that is, the
function of the lexicon is to support the grammar and reduce the length
of lists of exceptions to grammar rules).”

Why? What is the difference between Russian and English that would lead to these opposite viewpoints? The case system? The attention in Russian to word endings? The relatively free word order in a Russian
syntactical unit? Do these two opposing views indicate the abundance of
lexemes in Russian contrasted to the increasingly functional
application of word meanings in English?

By the way, could you try to find a copy of the English-Russian
Synyonym Dictionary (Rozenman et al, 1980)? “It has 400 items drawn
from Webster’s New Dictionary of Synonyms, including only abstract
words–those that have to do with processes, states, properties,
situations, and activities. Thus the focus is on verbs and adjectives
which are, perhaps, the most difficult to define. The synonyms are
presented in groups, and each group is discussed in five sections:
definition, meaning, collocations, grammar, and illustration. A typical
entry might be four pages in length”.

As for my “germinate” in Monday’s letter, I should have read Lakoff and
Johnson’s (1980) “Metaphors We Live By” viz.

Ideas are planted
even in a barren mind
ideas grow from seeds
ideas bud, flower, or die on the vine …

Or,

Ideas are food
cook up an idea
an idea smells fishy
stew over an idea
swallow an idea
(how seminal!)
half-baked idea
(even, one imagines)
the Idea-as-Eggplant

THE COGNITIVE AND SOCIAL DETERMINATIONS OF METAPHOR
THE STRUCTURING OF SEMANTIC SPACE ACROSS LANGUAGES

Wasn’t this, really, the substance of so much of our chatter and banter
at your dacha?

Item: discussing during our walk between cock-a-doodle-doo and coo-coo-
ri-ku?

Item: staring up at the sky and identifying Orion and the Big Dipper
with Mars just about the treetops and the one Shooting Star …

Item: discussing the difference between ‘pig’ and ‘swine’ (svinya) when
buying pork for the cabbage …

Well, according to the book I was reading last night and finished this
morning, “We often act as if we believe at least partially in the
naturalist hypothesis (George Bush calls the verb form of
hypothesis ‘to hypothecate’) that there exists a natural connection
between word form and meaning. We may think that ‘cock-a-doodle-doo’ is the natural word for the crowing of a rooster, but we know that other
languages use other onomatopoeia for this same concept. We may agree
that the Big Dipper is the right term for that constellation and be
surprised that speakers of other languages feel that the word for plow
or great chariot is a better match.”

And, well, “the mnemonist described in Luria (1968) was extremely
sensitive to the sound or words. For him the Russian word for pig,
svinya, was not ‘right.’: ‘Now I ask you, can this really be pig? Svi-n-
ya–it’s so fine, so elegant….”

Do Russians eat another animal than the English PIG? (We also have HOG and SOW and BOAR, all pretty low words except for farmers, who are quite fond of the intelligence of these very dirty animals).

And, and, well, “Wierzbicka (1990) says that the Russian word TOSKA is
a unique blend of melancholy, sadness, and indefinable yearning. The
English word SADNESS does not capture this blend. Sadness may be
translated as GRUST’ or PECHAL’ and a number of other terms in Russian.
So, again, the correspondence in ways these emotional concepts are
lexicalized is quite different.”

Wasn’t this your point Saturday morning (yours) on the phone, when you mentioned that happiness in English means something different
(gladness) and Russian something quite different?

I mention these examples only to give some weight (I know, you are on a
Slim Diet) to our chatter. Sometimes we sound just like a paragraph
from “Vocabulary, Semantics, and Language Education” (Cambridge
University Press, 1995).

Although, to draw the parallel to a close, the authors refer to the
contemporary meaning of LUST as designating “moral depravity.”

I seem to remember using this word in a poem, “lust that is not a
pretty thrust” etc.without any of this meaning (their meaning–really
quite bizarre but typical of the prudishness of language textbook
writers).

For example, they write of the phrases for putting on ones’ clothes,
slip on, put on, pull on, etc. instead of the far more important
(converse/obverse/reverse?) action, to slip off, slip out of, take off,
pull off, pull down, kick off (especially appropriate for jeans!)

Finally, what is the difference between “unmeasurable”
and “immeasurable” GLADNESS when I am with you (because I am English do
I have a claim to any other word, like, maybe, JOY?)

Here: PEACE. What does that mean?

I have no idea. Maybe I should fall asleep for a while and a stalk or
shoot of some plant will poke out of my ears . . .

g e r m i n a t i n g

Perhaps you think I should write you of more serious matters.

Well, “Bogdanov believed that it was possible to enlighten workers
without dominating them.”

And, “For Bogdanov, culture had the function of organizing human
perception and hence shaping action in the world. Because of the
existence of social classes, there could be no unified, common basis to
human perception. It was the proletariat’s task to create its own
ideology, its own way to structure human perception.”

And, well, well,

“When he arrived in Petrograd, Lunacharskii started work on Gorky’s
newspaper, New Life, using this platform to popularize his views on
cultural transformation. He proclaimed that cultural organization
should be the ‘fourth form’ of the working-class movement alongside
political parties, unions and cooperatives. The creation of a central
structure for workers’ cultural societies was more than an
administrative convenience. It was a way to start a new proletarian
movement that alone could insure that culture became a central form of
revolutionary change.”

And, well, well, well,

Lunacharskii: “Cultural-educational work is just as essential as the
other forms of the workers’ movement. In our understanding of it, this
does not mean just adult education and literacy classes. It is the
development of a sensible, harmonious world view.”

So, as a result, such pronouncements develop as

WORKING CLASS PURITY and PURE PROLETARIAN ESSENCE

which, as I mentioned in my last letter, is the direction where
Multiculturalism is headed in the intellectual and arts (cultural)
sphere in the U.S.

They can have it.

No, that’s not an adequate response. What distress me is the thought
that a False Left is developing to impose on the narrative of the
present its own self-interested definitions which hardly do more than
recycle the wrongs of a century ago in a culture and a language they
can’t even begin to be able to perceive, let along comprehend. And,
what is worse, is that the False Left always quite readily is
transformed into the True Right (the ultimate Blur Effect).

I like your words for ‘common’ people and ‘ordinary’ people, like the
ones who live in villages. You have spoken more than once
sympathetically of such simplicity, ordinariness, commonality, when you
are not performing for me feats of pessimism and black humor.

Do you think sometimes that I haven’t the slightest idea of what
Simplicity is?

“Self-made artists and thinkers from the lower classes who had won
their education with great difficulty …”

That, to my mind, is a very nice sentence from the book on the
Proletkult that I’ve also been reading from. Really, that’s all that I
am, someone from the lower classes in a very rich and privileged
country who more or less educated myself. So, I present myself to you
in a somewhat less than benign light. It is not (exactly) lack of self-
confidence.

But there is a measure of humility that is, may I say, germinative? It
sustains me, to remain no one in particular, though I am aware that I
have, as I said to you in your courtyard one late evening, “my
accomplishments.” Where is this thought going? I hardly know where to
end it.

It’s time for you to tell me a story from your childhood, or youth …

Very often I am thinking about the rabbit that refused to be caught for
dinner in Kazakhstan.

Will you even write to me, I wonder, if I keep writing about this or
that book that I’m reading?

Are you still alive?

P.S. The water is set to boil on the stove this morning my morning’s
ration of instant coffee, and I want (want, not like) to write at least
the acknowledgement (to myself, to this letter) that this morning,

15.X.2003

is the day of my son’s birthday, who, somewhere in the world, is 14
years old today.

When bitterness passes, there is only a kind of calm, that to all the
external social and institutional mechanisms which surround us appears
to be indifference.

If there is pain, is there pain? If there is, it is somewhere other
than in my inclination to address it, and pretend to represent it.
(Here we are back to the nothingness at the center of language which we
have agreed on before).

Did I tell you that at his birth I refused (it was not an argument) to
give him any form of my last name in single relation or in the form of
a hypen to his mother’s name? At the time I though only was a terrible
violence, to name a child (the first name is bad enough), but to give
your “paternal” name?

A psychological act of atrocity inflecting genealogy …

It is a great cloud, at least in Anglo-American culture. Your last name
is different, only a little different, adapted, grammatically, to your
gender, yet it remains a marker of difference. Am I agreeing than with
the text I reacted against in Monday’s letter, that markers of
difference need to be sustained? Assimilation, cultural and social
assimilation, not to mention language assimilation, and the discourse
of the dominant and the subaltern, is where the difference-as-marker
standard (criteria) emerges. It is the view from above. From below,
there are only parallel lines of force, shared faultlines of mutual
imitation and appropriation, without any question of power (cultural
power, signifying power) being involved or implicated in the process.
But the discourse from above, which legitimates, even legislates,
problems of representation in a culture, at least insofar as it exists
in an institutional form (the schools, etc) cannot inhabit this
recognition, and so this discourse falls back on terms like hierarchy,
rather than hybridity.

Well, it would appear that I’m ready to teach this morning. How nice it
would be to find myself in a space, an intellectual space, where I did
not have instead to ask the most basic questions. Who is the antagonist
of this story? Who the protagonist? What is the conflict? Does anyone
care to describe the setting? Let’s do a vocabulary exercise!

The irony is that teaching is a form of paternity, so that if I have
emancipated myself, once, from such an oppression (in the family it is
difficult to tell who is oppressing who?) it is only to represent some
other paternal form, such as a school, curriculum, does it ever really
have anything to do with reading and with knowledge?

For the sciences, it offers resources, technologies without which
research would be impossible. But does any kind of signifying in art
have anything to do with school? Why, after all, is culture studied in
the university? One of the curricular accomplishments of the U.S.
university long ago was to separate “politics” from “economics” (in the
European university that was actually once, in the previous century, a
study called “political economy”) and the study of politics itself, in
the U.S., became a discourse about the history of elections, the
mechanisms of elections, and legislative anatomy and history. You can
take a political science course and not one word will be mentioned
about the economy, unless a depression or inflation affects an
incumbent. (It is called, the economy, performance, as though it were a
machine separate from the politics, and this metaphor of the machine is
everywhere).

Item: our conversation about the influence of corporate research grants
on not only directing fields of research in the sciences, but weakening
the integrity of the research itself, so that results are themselves
produced rather than proven, and you recalled meeting someone at a
conference and your surprise at–what–the support, the factual support
(the number of experiments, the controls, the variables) in his
research. That would be called a paucity of research, I believe (I
don’t have a dictionary here). But results, conclusions, papers, are
produced for reasons other than the objectivity of the discipline
itself in the U.S. again because of the enormous amounts of money
involved.

You can prove anything if you have a research grant, and publish it!

All of these sentences of course are a comforting screen for the reason
for adding to this letter this morning anyway, and yes, general social
criticism is comforting as a substitute for memory, and feeling.

There is a wonderful line by the poet Mandelstam translated:

a feeling
blown away
by the ice wind

So one surrenders to the weather. Is it cold where you are? It is
raining again this morning. I am still without an umbrella.

Please be patient regarding these letters. I need to write. They are a
kind of getting ready for writing. So there is a kind of rambling or
meandering effect that occurs, like walking in the woods and talking.

In my letters, I will never leave you at the ravine, since you are over
the next hill somewhere, wondering at all these words and why.

16.10/2003

Dear Zh,

Are you there at this late hour?

Diary? A book is all the more accomplished for being partial, momentary.

Simplicity? When is it finally possible to write about literally
anything at all, accepting anything that happens if it is no longer
possible for anything to stand for anything else.

What happened once was a rupture, and the form of that which had
happened–something that happened in a volatile way–no longer exists,
so much as even imparting a slight sensation of pain.

The wars approach, on a scale and in a form as immeasurable as the
drifting gesture, cooking or collecting wood. The voices, their
collation, glide in relation to one another, across each other.

Silence is a block of space, an interval carved by the sound for the
vocal sphere that cannot be identical to the signature, the inclination
of a life (not “person”). Primitive?

The expressions in a work are their shifting relations across one
another in relation to the momentary determinations they are drawn
from, drawn up from the interior of the impulse into the exterior
contour of a set of circumstances–unpredictable,

My word for the color of Yellow does not designate a landscape.
The Lullaby and the Love Song distribute the native gesture.
The refrain intercedes in the melody, the look of a field in a land.

17.10/2003

Maps

Dear Zhen,

The clock on my laptop says 9:42 p.m. and I didn’t know a while ago
whether or not (couldn’t remember whether or not) my alarm clock went
off this morning (it’s been waking me up at 6:30 everyday, since I
managed to get it set once, and since then no luck) so, tomorrow I need
to wake up at 6:30, but there must have been a reason why I was still
in bed at 9:00 this morning shortly before your call. When the phone
rang I had to turn off the fire on the stove, as I had just lit it to
heat water for my instant coffee.

All the discussion questions written, and the texts read for tomorrow.
Sometimes I think I overprepare, but it’s part of the anxiety of being
in a new place–not knowing what to expect. So I try to expect
everything. The students seem rather conscientious, and when I use
texts from an anthology in the library, they all bring volumes of the
anthology to class. When they are absent, they bring me a note from the
clinic.

Today the sun was in the sky (strange to see!) and my first thought was
to do laundry, since clothes do not dry very well in rainy weather,
then I decided to go the university to send you yesterday’s email and
in view of the weather, I walked. It is the first walk since leaving
you in the ravine. My legs could barely carry me, so heavy on my heart
did weigh the coldness and callousness of that impass in my compassion for one so helpless in the wilderness as Jenya, collector of mineral samples and peril of wild rabbits in the mountains of Kazakhstan.

Today I passed through an open market worthy of any city in Russia east
of the Urals, and the sound of the Polish there even sounded more
Russian (purely imaginary on my part). Walking back, I got rather lost,
and looking at the map when I returned home, I can see that I walked
past where I live by about a kilometre, and suddenly I found myself
walking in the late afternoon and lengthening light on an avenue where
behind every gate was a barking dog. So I took a tram back to the
center of the more familiar part of the city (that part of it I’ve seen
from the bus that takes me to the university) and from there found my
way back to my flat. What should have been a 30 minute walk took my two
hours, but I saw a lot and only panicked a little on the Street of the
Big Barking Dogs.

By panic I mean that I took out a smaller map to try to find out where
I was, only to find that I’d walked beyond the streets that were
represented on the map. I must have been taking very long steps.
Really, it felt good to walk, only rather quiet as you were not walking
beside me and reminding me that we had not eaten anything for the last
half hour. Last night I bought a litre of black grape juice (it is SOK
here also, though this was neither DA, J57 or Maya Cemya, but “Garden.”

The large wholesale grocery store several blocks away is called “Leader
Price.” Walking today, I noticed English Signs everywhere. Surprisingly
though, I heard no one speaking English, despite the presence of a
language school at every major intersection. I kept seeing highway
signs for Gdansk, and thought of the border with Russia–so near there.
How can you be so far away as you sounded this morning?

There are McDonalds and Pizza Huts here, and other familiar name brands on the shelves of the big stores. The relentless march of Capital. I
doubt whether you want to hear about it. But if you were here,
the ‘Americana’ of consumer goods would amuse you. But the age of the
buildings is wonderful to see and be among, including the brick and
stone paving of streets and sidewalks. There is still some reminder of
time, historical time, here, and courtyards and balconies, among other
architectural features I have no vocabulary for.

I found the British Council on a plaza where there was a statue, and
applied for and obtained borrowing privileges, finding a book by Paul
Virilio on cinema and an anthology of culture essays, including a
chapter from Edward Said’s Orientalism, which essays I will use for
some of my classes, and being reminded once again that Poland is on the European hub, and one comes across books with which one is familiar with. (What an ugly sentence). I’m trying to say that I keep coming across books from my cultural horizon, when maybe finding Paul Virilio and Edward Said is a little like eating at McDonalds or Pizza Hut. The Western Hub, or Popular Ideas Club.

You are right about ideas. Somebody once wrote, you can put all the
ideas in the world on the back of a postage stamp. No, wait, here’s the
quote: “all the thots men are capable of can be entered on the back of
a postage stamp.” (Why hasn’t my letter by post reached you yet?)

Could you, please, resend me the two lines by your dear Marina, as my
web mailbox does not support Cyrillic? If you send the lines in an
attached MSWord doc, I’ll be able to read the Russian on my laptop here
in my flat. In fact, if and when you have the time, if you could send
me a line or two in Russian as an attachment, I might grow more
attached to the language they arrive in. You did say (without irony!)
once, only once, that once in a while I speak grammatically correct and
comprehensible Russian.

Now, for my serious thought. Often the thought, more of a sensation,
occurs to me that you write to me in something of a condition of
separation, as you have talked about before, that separation and
distance from your thoughts as they are in Russian, your language, your
heart and mind, and that it must from time to time occur to you, the
thought occur to you, just how far away I am from you in this regard,
word and shades of words, nuance and feeling. How much feeling there
was in your “doragoi” when you spoke on the phone with your friend
about your birthday party, and I remember this word for remarking
(hearing) an inflection in your voice that I did not know in English,
and now I don’t know how to finish this sentence, let alone any thought
that’s attached to it.

I did see one sign on a shop in Polish today which I understood: Tu
kupisz telephona carta. Tu means here, though Tam means there in
Polish, and I do hear people saying “Yest” when I might expect “Zdyest”
so maybe there are two “here”s since there’s Tam and Kuda in Russian.

Delako. You are. I am. You also are: Chuda. (But I’m studying neither
Russian nor Polish, for reason of my classes–my excuse–as well as
this wish to write, and to write I need to read constantly and day in
and day out, for the words to circulate, and some form of a dialogue to
begin with my work (I’ve written about this before as ‘language-being’
and can’t think of another way to identify what it is that drives me
into the page, and it is English, the least and all that I am.

I have a very fond memory of your telling me what your father said,
that my face was the most intelligent that he’d seen in some time. This
memory helps me on days when I’m anxious about teaching and the
materials I’m preparing, as well as meaning for me a simple act of
human kindness towards his daughter as well as towards her visitor.

Bye now, dear, my dear Zh.

20.10/2003

Autumn woods

Dear Zhen,

“We are all probably familiar with Barthes’ examples of /sweater/,
which, in the rhetoric of advertising and fashion, always connotes,
at least, ‘a warm garment’ or ‘keeping warm,’ and thus by further
connotative elaboration, ‘the coming of winter’ or ‘a cold day.’ In
the specialized sub-codes of fashion, /sweater/ may connote ‘a fash-
ionable style of haute-couture,’ or, alternatively, ‘an informal
style of dress.’ But, set against the right background, and
positioned in the romantic sub-code, it may connote a ‘long autumn
walk in the woods.’

Were you aware of the ‘romantic sub-code’ to our long autumn walks?

But I thought you did not care for romantic codes of any type!

Or kind, type and kind and sort sort themselves into types and kinds.

Categories and codes, discourse, unintentional significations. How
can you be sure that another does not interpret ‘a long autumn walk
in the woods’ other than a long autumn walk in the woods?

And how does one interpret the abandonment of another in the ravine?

Not very romantic? Are letters romantic? What, after all, is that,
‘the romantic sub-code,’ the over-intentioned binding of one to
another, so that expectations are constructed, which might even be
extended to the expectation, on my part, that you will read the
entirety of this or any letter?

Today is the most sunlight in many days, no, this sentence needs to be
rebegun:

Today the most sunlight in many days, still, I (or this sentence) IS
without a verb.

I am trying to write to you that today the sun is shining.

Simple, yes?

The sunlight this afternoon will draw me outside, for a walk
(without you).

Early afternoon now, and reading since waking up, reading without
really reading what I am reading, or reading, and writing a little,
or reading and wondering why I am reading what I am reading,

this discipline, study, called “Culture”, and its discourses.

The practice of a discourse lends itself to the conception that
the discourse itself is a form of knowledge, and the consumption
of discourse, academic study.

I am full of such thoughts today that could fit on the back of
a postage stamp.

Or, instead of thoughts, I might write to you that yesterday
I fully comprehended the controls on my washing machine, watching
cycles, several cycles, I put one shirt, a pair of jeans, two pair
of underwear and 8 pair of socks through several washings in my
investigation of the washing machine, since there is no manual,
and the controls are themselves somewhat difficult to understand.

The first time this set of laundry went through the cycle, I turned
on the washing machine, then retired to another room in my spacious
flat (which, by the way, I’ve found out the rent for which–about
500 zloty a month, is deducted from my monthly salary, so my salary
is actually less than I thought, about 500 zloty a week, and since
the latest exchange was 3.7 zloty to the dollar, I guess that means
I’m making about 125 dollars a week, after rent, and for 125 dollars
a month, the apartment is comfortable with not only a washing machine
but also a vacuum cleaner (I paid 100 dollars a month in Tomsk with-
out kitchen,etc)), so, anyway, when I returned to the washing machine,
after hearing that it had stopped, the machine was full of water,
so I had to figure out what controls to push, which occupied me for
the better part of an hour, sitting and watching the machine go
through its cycles, and hoping against hope that the machine would not
break down.

The only other excitement other than your call (I haven’t gone to the
grocery store yet) is that there has been no other excitement.

I’m never sure what the hours devoted to reading can be called.

Time floats, or the mind floats above the page (and my mind, now, only
rather grateful for the time to read, so I hover at several removes
above the page).

I have taken to burning candles late at night, I don’t know why.

As for washing, I should add that I dried my clothes on the radiators
and thought for a moment of the limitations in your own household for
such a convenience (or necessity). There’s a clothesline on my porch
or balcony, whatever it’s called in Russian, but the clothes don’t
dry very well there.

Probably what is most remarkable so far, is simply the fact that in
the classroom, my work in the classroom, involves texts of literature
(and culture, that word again) and the teaching is less painful. At
times last year I felt like a dentist, or stand-up comedian. As if I
was there, in the classroom, to entertain, or to try to make the task
of learning another language less boring or painful. And it is, even
with all this time, it is still difficult for me to practice either
Russian or Polish. But since I have this thought every day, that I
should be studying, or especially with Russian I will lose what
little Russian I have, I will probably start soon.

Now for a word about the telephone and its expense:

You know I will never say that I would rather that you not call,
but after riding the buses with you in Tomsk I know how competitive
you are, and calling me every week (at least these two weeks in a
row) threatens too great an expense. What can we do? As I told you,
after I receive my salary, I will be able to buy some international
phone cards, which I have found out are available here, and if to
share expenses, you wish to call me also, then what I would suggest
is this:

We each call one another once a month, and that way we will speak to
each other once every fortnight. This will allow us to talk about 45
minutes, maybe even an hour, which is more satisfying than 20 minutes
don’t you agree?

I am not asking for you not to call me this Saturday as you promised!

But you are someone accustomed to taking long walks? Isn’t there such
a thing as pacing oneself? Shouldn’t we try to do this, in view of
the uncertainty in the future, regarding January and beyond, and the
uncertainty of expenses, and jobs, etc.?

All of me here exists rather somewhere in September, and I feel like
I am a floating body reading in some indeterminate space,

wherever that space is–I’m never sure about what kind of space the
book itself represents, and the only thought I am sure of at the
moment is that there is no representation, only the image, as if that
in itself were a single comprehensible phenomenon.

I read somewhere or other yesterday or today that the perfect work of
art strives to construct itself as an environment to live in, so that
you (the reader) never want to leave. How many books like that do you
know?

So, no, I don’t imagine my writing as the end of an epoch, though
when I read my own writing, I don’t understand why anyone would ever
want to read anything else.

This kind of self-absorption, as obviously wrong as it is, actually
helps one to write. You must be absorbed in the text you make.

I don’t think that I’ve ever kept a diary, since all the diaries I’ve
ever read use sentences as a means to progress from one thought to
the next.

What is the difference between a thought and a perception?

Does something to be perceived have to be conceptualized?

We are surrounded by objects and people that we never really see,
that never really enter into perception.

For that matter, I’m not sure if that’s not what the work of art
accomplishes, with visual, auditory or linguistic materials:

The raising into the mental space of the reader the form of something
or someone, not as it really is or was, but how that person or object
was perceived.

So that, reading, to read, one surrounds oneself with emanations.
Outlines. Silhouettes. Contours. Shapes.

It’s upsetting to hear how much work, numbing work, you must do
lately. You shouldn’t be going to work six days a week. It’s not
good for you. It’s harmful. It’s routine, which harms ear and eye.

The mind, your lovely mind.

Missing you,
Kevin

*

I’m returning to this letter 3 hours later, after a 2 hour walk in a
nearby park with lakes and dogs and ducks and turning leaves, beech
trees, many couples and families, walking their dogs, and around the
park, large houses in large garden-yards, and walking I found the
same street on which I was lost several days ago, and realized at the
time that I was lost that I was very near my flat. Then I went to the
store, after walking, and bought some food for supper, and I now have
on the stove (only four matches left and it’s a gas stove) chicken in
water with onions and a medley of roots and tubers that are sold to-
gether here, I can make out the carrots and the parsnips, and leeks,
but the others I have no idea what they are. Probably it will take
too long, and I will eat something else (I’ve already eaten a loaf of
soft white bread). The bread is very good here, but not as fresh as
bread in Russia. Some of the houses were burning wood and the smell
woodsmoke reminded me sharply of our days together at your dacha. If
I mention that in the open market I passed by a stall where they were
selling women’s underwear and that I then had a sharp memory and
longing for you, and for removing you from your underwear–would you
be offended? I am terribly hungry for you in a very physical way. Of
course, yes, yes, there is the comfort of holding you in my arms at
the back of the bus, returning to the city in the evening, there is
the comfort of walking in the woods with you, there is the comfort of
cooking and sharing dinner with you, all these, but please allow me
to ackowledge your reference to your bed (really, it is a cot) in
your dacha, and how much I wish we were both in it tonight, even up-
stairs, how much I wish for a wood fire. The pictures I took the one
day are quite beautiful, though I miss very much the photograph you
promised me, as there are many picture frames at the local “hyper”
market, and I would very much enjoy being able to have your photo-
graph in a frame on my desk, which I reminded you of, and do you know
I have very sharp memories of some of the black-and-white photographs
we looked through (the past!) Irina Nikolaevna takes the best
pictures of you, though the one where you are leaning against the
bookshelf in a shawl is very lovely. For someone so pessimistic, you
smile for the camera, which makes me think that when someone does
take your picture, that you know them very well.

Did I tell you that I’ve learned that I get three weeks for winter
break: last week of June and first two weeks of February. Wouldn’t it
really be easiest if I were to come to Tomsk by plane? We should keep
informed about airfares for a round-trip by aeroflot or is there
another airline other than Sibersk that flies into Tomsk? I could
probably manage to make it Tomsk myself from Novosibersk, anyway.
But don’t you think this is the more practical, since I’m the one
with the passport that allows travel? What are the restrictions for
Russians for going to Bulgaria? It’s very close to here, as are many
places, of course, but more than anything I’m thinking of economy,
ours, and trying to think what is easiest. We should not, at any
rate, give up on the wish to be together for three weeks in the
winter. I propose coming to visit you, because then the only pre-
dictable expense is travel, and as you know, it gets very expensive
for hotels, meals, etc., when travelling. If you cannot come here, I
will come to you. Here or there, that’s simplicity, isn’t it? But I
will be with you this winter. I refuse to accept the possibility that
we will not be able to be together–remember, September was really
only three weeks also. And we saw a traffic jam, and felt an earth-
quake, and drank cognac and vermouth with Irina, and ate summer
squash and fresh peas, and I taught you how to say SHUT UP. But isn’t
it interesting, you never tell me to shut up!

I’m not worried about the summer, either. We will adhere to the pro-
cedures, as they say, and if that’s not good enough, we’ll go to the
U.S. the following year. That’s simplicity, also, yes? I have to be-
lieve that I will succeed here, and that I’ll be invited to work here
as long as I want, and that it is a good place to gather one’s
faculties. But you should explore the possibility of doing some kind
of study here, to get the student visa. Environmental Studies would
be the logical area, though there are probably other possibilities
along the theme of what is called “interdisciplinary” degrees–some-
thing that could incorporate, make use of, your specialization. That
is the word everyone uses here. I’m not sure what my specialization
is. Probably poetry. Whatever that is. In discourse, poetry is some-
what devalued, not a rigorous enough method of the search for truth.
The book I was reading this morning said that Einstein proved the
illusoriness of scientific methods, not the methods themselves, but
the composition of the reality being investigated was suddenly thrown
into doubt. I keep thinking, as often as I think of your underwear,
of your comment, “Science cannot develop in isolation.” That is a
brilliant characterization of the impasse that Soviet nuclear re-
search found itself in. Though I know that you hate flattery.

Did I tell you that there’s almost no garbage here? I saw my first
garbage in the woods today. Maybe everyone takes their garbage to
this park. Actually, there’s a garbage chute across the hall from my
flat, so I get to hear people throwing their garbage down (the empty
bottles are particularly loud), and the smell is sometimes rather
strong. I’ve heard of such things before, or seen them in the movies,
the garbage chute, and there was even one novel that I read part of
last year in the British Council, where the narrator was speaking
from the grave after having fallen down the garbage chute when she
was working in a hotel as a cleaning woman. Now I have the garbage
chute, right across from my door, but I still take my garbage to a
dumpster down the street. I don’t know why. It doesn’t seem like
throwing your garbage away if you don’t have to walk very far to do
it.

Such chatter: garbage and matches and food on the stove, after having
forgotten to mention that I haven’t removed the wax from the candle
that I burned to the bottom Friday evening. Isn’t that fascinating?
But I did copy out this passage from one of this weekend’s books that
had the word, “unbeknown,” (alas, not “unbeknownst”, which is really
just adding an Elizabethan era verb ending):

“This solemn farewell to the man behind the camera, the complete
evaporation of visual subjectivity into an ambient technical effect,
a sort of permanent pancinema which, unbeknown to us, turns our most
auditory acts into movie action, into new visual material, undaunted,
undifferentiated vision-fodder, is not so much as we have seen, the
end of an art–whether it ve Klier’s or 70s’ video art, television’s
illegitimate offspring. It is the absolute culmination of the
inexorable march of progress of representational technologies, of
their military, scientific and investigative instrumentalization over
the centuries. With the interception of sight by the sighting device,
a mechanism emerges that no longer has to do with simulation (as in
the traditional arts) but with substitution.”
[Paul Virilio, The Vision Machine]

So much for Vertov.

The substitution is the virtual for the real, and the crashing to-
gether of the symbolic and the imaginary, so that we do not any more
know what is real, but we don’t know how to conceptualize it either.

“We had a mess of wheat for our supper.”

Isnt’ that a beautiful line of writing? I taught for the first text
in my “Allegories of Violence and Violation” seminar an early
captivity narrative, written in 1675, and which is full of such
sentences, and I’ve come across similar language in letters of
colonists at the time, writing close to speech, and sounding much
different from the official ideologists. One wonders if the same
doesn’t hold true for now, also, that the discursive practices and
their currency, their exchange rate, in the Western universities,
doesn’t distort and contort language (at least English), in a way
entirely separate from the life of the language (again, my reference
point is English).

Maybe writing, in any language, has to stick close to experience,
that there has to be some effort to make verbal what is encountered
tangibly and physically, I should say TACTILE, that the writing has
to have the senses in it. A student pointed this out about a story
by Leroi Jones that I taught for my other seminar, along with a story
by James Baldwin, Sonny’s Blues (an old standard in American Lit.),
but the Jones wasn’t, the story was called Screamers, and it was a
sketch, really, of a jazz club in Newark, in the 50s or 60s, and this
student drew attention to the senses, the sensorium, of the writing,
that it wasn’t an essay about the experience (which is how Baldwin’s
story ends, discursively), but an enactment. That and the fact that
my students take notes, bring to class the required reading, with
highlighted passages, suggests to me that they are very serious, and
that the university, or the professors they have, require very hard
work from them. It engages me, and gives me energy. Friday I met a
third year student who mentioned she was translating Jonathan
Williams, and spoke of Pound and Olson. She knew Robert Duncan’s work
(who has been translated in Russia, many years ago), and said that
Charles Reznikoff is a very well known poet in Poland. I had the
first impression that Poland is a translation-culture, and very
oriented towards the West, though my students are (good for them!)
very anti-globalization and tremulous (this is not a word they would
use) about Americanization (which they sometimes say they think is
the same–synonymous–with Globalization). All these nationalist
traps. How to identify the adversary, and the temptation is always
national. Oddly, I’ve never felt like more of an “Americanist.” Zhen,
it’s all I know. I’m not making generalizations about the culture, or
the society, only the literature, and I can’t help not love the lit-
erature, and this feeling gets communicated in my lectures, my
teaching, my questions, so, yes, when you hear my voice, I am happy,
and positive, and oriented, and purposeful. Just because I’m happy,
doesn’t mean that I don’t miss you.

Obviously, as the length of this letter attests, if you were here,
your ears would hurt from my talking and talking.

My happiness? Head under the chair that night, talking in English and Russian, if you can call it talking, more like laughing with words?

Lacan (that Lacan!) apparently once said, ‘to communicate is to
laugh.’

Or reciting poetry head resting between your thighs.

Was it poetry or your underwear I was missing in the market?

Both. Believe me, both. Please let me write you so blithely.

Another word for your lexicon! Have you found the synonym dictionary
yet?

Zhen, I hope you write me a little also when you’re at home. I’ve
seen your Norton Commander WordPerfect Program. It’s perfect for
writing and saving to disk and taking to work and sending to me!

BYE

— 21.10/2003

Back burners

Dear Zhen,

I wrote you a letter late last night, or part of a letter, and it was
rather more, early morning, around 3 am, and now I am up at 8 in the
morning, realizing that I have to go to the university again today, to
read for tomorrow, realizing, now, that I don’t have the texts with me,
one of those frustrations about still getting used to which classes on
which days.

Yes, the stove is more dangerous, and do you know that I had a small
moment of doubt, trying to straighten or fix one of the burners, so I
removed it, cleaned it, tightened it, and when I tried to light it,
there was no fire, where is the gas going I thought in a moment of
panic, until I realized that I had the wrong burner turned on. Panic is
probably too strong of a word, but, yes, it is more dangerous, except
it is more difficult, in my experience, to leave a gas burner on.

How serious we are about types of stoves! (I haven’t used the oven yet.

Now, a word towards (always just a word) about your expression of lack
of confidence, so curious to me, since that is how you have character-
ized your early impression of me (it’s easy to have lack of confidence
in a country where you do not speak the language!) but, you, dear, do
you sometimes try to see yourself as others might see you, and I don’t
mean those others around you and near you (at work, not your mother and father). I am sure they see you as indispensable, but more as a utility
than as someone more capable than they (I am remembering the “cactus”metaphor).

If you began searching on the internet for programs sponsored in part-
icular by the Soros organization, you’ll see that someone with your
language skills and education, that these academics are being sought
for (I don’t want to use the word ‘recruited,’ for what? communication,
I think, most of all, the difficult work of cultural translation, and
communication, most importantly, among institutions, so that your bi-
lingualism, is a great resource to you, and you should (should!)–I
don’t want to give you advice, I don’t want to pretend that I can–but
you have more choices than you give yourself. That’s what I wanted to
say.

The worst choice (I have made a lot of these) is to simply stay put and
stay where you are, only because of what you are doing, have to do, and
what does it give you in return? D’you know a chill passed through me
the other day as well, if you recall that conversation when you told me
about a chill passing through you, that the friendly and even paternal
remark, “Isn’t it possible that you might be leaving us?” can get trans
lated into a phone call to the right person in the right office in the
Biely Doma and you can deliver all the proper documents with all the
proper seals in triplicate and nothing will be done (and for your own
good, according to that logic, for your protection, and to protect as
well the department, the office, the school, etc.) You will laugh, and
say, “I am not so important!” But when someone is viewed as being in-
dispensable, doing work that nobody else would do or could do with the
same efficiency, the more powerful people will do everything in their
power to make sure that you never leave. Does this convey some sense of the chill that passed through you, that a friendly remark communicates
a veiled threat?

And you are afraid of me sometimes? How? Why? Do I write too much? Yes, I chatter and chatter to you, in writing, also believing that letters
even in this dispensable form are important, maybe even sometimes en-
joyable (this letter doesn’t seem to have a lot of enjoyment in it for
you–gas stoves and job threats etc), but I can’t always write with a
sense of humor, I am too worried sometimes. For you. About you. Where
you are, what you are doing, and what you are not able to do. Still as
you would be the first to say, I’m in no position to give you any
advice. That would be to assume the right to a certain kind of power.
You give me a little of this regardless when you write about my
‘throwing you away.’ Are you so disposable? These are dark matters. We
might also write towards the opposite, about travel and when and where
and how, to make it impending, and planned. I have no wish to add fuel
to your pessimism. Did I mention, on the disposability theme, that
there’s a garbage chute across the hall from my flat? As I was writing
the sentence above, someone just threw a lot of empty bottles down the
chute, so literally there was the sound of garbage at the same moment
that I was writing about it. Besides, there is enough garbage along the
river–how do you spell it, it sounds a little like ‘Thames,’–so that
you don’t need to include yourself even metaphorically among the dis-
carded glass and plastic containers and packages.

Walking along the river one of the last days, poking through the thrown
away beer and vodka bottles, I found one paquette that I still have
here and use for shopping, that and my strawberry one, I still have
them, and you told me about the day of the cave, your childhood, with
some certain sense of happiness in the memory, packing and preparing to
leave home, so different from the other and very real story (I’m
thinking of Irina’s son), so that I think of this: there is at least
more pleasure in the imagining (what children do so well, and how you
remembered it, that once the action was finished, and you were actually
in the cave, there was nothing left to imagine, and the game was over,
and it was time to go home), do we forget how to play this way? Isn’t
writing, sometimes, a little like this, especially where humor and
irony, sarcasm, parody, making fun of each other at least just a little
some times, represents a form of playing?

I only worry that some days you are too tired and bored, so that my
dull efforts to play with this expression or that, like the now notor-
ious ravine, fall past you somewhere, and earn your irritation instead.
Worries, worries! To fret. Now I’m fretting that this letter is too
long, and with very little laughter. It’s not my mood. Except that I
know that I have a lot of work to do today that I would rather not do.
That aspect of teaching, rather unlike language teaching, where you
follow strict patterns (lessons), so today I will read stories and
essays interesting to me when I selected them to be read by the class,
but which I could do without, at least today. The reading for teaching
is also, often, more of a duty than pleasure or the exploration that
one would do on their own. I don’t have as much time as it seems, not
at least until I am able to organize several courses and teach the same
materials from one course to the next. I could go on and on about this.
But won’t. I will, however, say good bye for now, missing missing miss
ing YOU.

B Y E
ZHEN,
FROM
M E

—

22.10/2003

Fliency

Dear Zhen,

I’m writing early in the afternoon having just returned from the uni-
versity and your letter.

Fluency, slogans. Teaching last year so intensively, and coming across
this word so often (fluency), from accomplished and articulate faculty,
and coming across it also in books about teaching English (of which
there are an infinite number), “to flow,” “to speak with naturalness,”
and I forget at the moment the other synonyms. Parallel expressions for
comfort level in another language, when, even if the accent is retained
the command of idiom and collocation is such that no one ever draws
attention to this word or that, or pretends to understand when they
don’t (one of my worse habits), as well, of course, as the reverse,
when something the native speaker says is incomprehensible when it is
not simply inaudible. You’ve pointed out a number of times that you
simply don’t understand what I’m saying when I think that I’m speaking
clearly, but the fact is that at a certain level of familiarity and
conversation when conversation is to touch each other with the voice,
that I lapse into carelessness not only of pronunciation, but also of
vocabulary.

But to be fluent ‘for’ me? us? Perhaps the better to understand me at
those moments when I’m no longer capable of making sense, and then of
course it would be better to simply leave me be until I gather my
faculties, as they say (who knows exactly what they mean when they say
whatever it is that they do). Idiom and collocation: slogans without
banners (here the study of the language of advertising reminds how
deeply embedded is the idiom of a language and culture in its represent
ational unconscious (the ad or advert, in England). I tried to teach
the language of advertising a few times last year, without much luck.
Or interest. The referentiality of the language was so ‘interior’ to
itself, and that, also, may be what fluency is, the interior of a
language.

How to we find words for what we are when we are where we so often are not, together, lovingly, when words like kisses and caresses carry some fondness, tenderness, feeling, when so many of the simple words don’t carry any feeling at all, quite the opposite, they carry, convey, the
opposite–absence of feeling, or is that what the language suffers and
is it absence of feeling (sensibility) to even write to you this way?
How much more simpler it is just to be unclothed, and skin to skin. It
is simple, as simple as sunlight on yellowing leaves. The words that
there are to say that this happened or that happened, even those words
that are spoken, unlike these, writing ahead of themselves almost,
fluent, too fluent, as then the language takes over the work of finding
the word for the reality. What was it? What is it? Hypnosis?

I was trying to draw in some depth of feeling to the thought about
fluency. It isn’t always what is to be desired? Doesn’t the search for
a word or conversation about this or that word make in itself another
kind of reality, less solid, less dependent on “supposition” and even
just habit?

It’s strange, but there is a rhetorical fluency and a conversational
fluency. The two don’t always mean the same thing. Or maybe they do.
I don’t know. Really, does the writing one does depend on the language
one speaks?

As for studying in Poland, there is a Center for Social Research that
offers an MA and PhD in English, in cooperation with the University of
Lancaster in England, but as you might guess, the concentration is in
Politics, Economy, Society and Culture.

Scholarship, and cultural criticism. Research, more of the same. There
is an emphasis on quantitative methods (statistics, formal analyses of
data, such as you are familiar with in the physical-natural sciences,
but nothing that I saw that resembled doing work in the Environmental
Sciences.) I don’t even mean to suggest that this interests you, or
should. It doesn’t interest me very much (my interests are few and
extremely narrow), and so it becomes a question of what and how
(how to finish a degree, if you were interested). How can anyone say
what exactly they want from a course of study? Probably the study of
language is the most logical.

When I read essays whose subject is social research (essays which
dignify themselves with such a title), I am often very sincerely con-
flicted as to their truth claims. It seems so transparently a form of
symbolic labor, incredibly over-valued (in the West), and even though
it is conscious of this, this kind of writing and investigation and
research, there is still the difficulty of determining the level of
truth (whatever that is) attained by the discourse. There has probably
never been a more discursive moment in the West as now, at least since
the Enlightenment.

Do you know that when I sat to write–to begin to write–I’ll probably
add more sentences this evening after I’ve finished reading for classes
tomorrow–I wanted to take up your, “I hardly even know you” and write
about myself to you, abusively? I was imagining another voice, giving
you the worst details of my life, to see myself entirely negatively.

Such impulses, are they dangerous? If we agree that nothing good or bad that I might write about myself is even capable of representing the
experience of failure with another human being, or perhaps what is more
disturbing, is my tendency to make everything happen in such a way that
I am always very separate and isolate. The social ‘truism’ that one
should be surrounded by many friends seems suspicious some times, as
probably what is likely is that at those moments in my life when I have
been social, friendly, I only remember (can only remember) moments of
intense boredom, distraction, among some measure of unconscious and
very human cruelty. But if I were to say something offhand, which means
casual, like, other people have never really interested me that much,
would that disturb you?

Or, one learns very early, as a result of cruelty, to mime (imitate)
the appearance of being friendly, just as a way to avoid or evade the
demand placed on the context, the communication, the ‘friendliness’
that has always left me feeling a little overwhelmed, as though I’m in
the presence of something I have no idea how to interpret. Interactions
become hyper-motivated, maybe, so I prefer the formality of the class-
room, but what is called ‘small talk,’ making conversation, unless it
is entirely and especially intimate, escapes me. I don’t know how to do
it. I’d rather read, or watch TV (I’m embarrassed to admit just how
many movies I watched in my room in Tomsk last year, it was like an
addiction, only Channel 21 had some very fine films, and of course you
know that I grew up in the shadows or illuminations of the television.
That was the world, the social and cultural world, where I grew up.
Everything else was “a crowd of authorities.” Maybe that’s how I tend
to view most people, and situations, as “a crowd of authorities.”

I saw one film, set in Albania, dubbed in Russian, twice, and both
times, since it was by chance, was after the movie started, so I don’t
know the title, but in my mind it is one of the most beautiful and
poetic films I’ve ever seen. It begins in the mountains, and ends in
the cities, and the image of the city as a form of dislocation, chaos,
among the wish, the simple wish, to live, and to love someone, and
instead, there is death. You never mention Irina’s son’s name, and I
will never ask you, but there is something about this story, because
it takes place in two regions, that I would like to say is “consonant”
(rhymes) with the Albanian film. How lives or a life can begin or have
such promise, and end instead in the form of the evaporation of all
hope and promise, not to mention betrayal, there is something very
beautiful about that story which I only guess from the tonality of the
Russian that you and Irina Nikolaevna speak. Really those were the only
moments in two years, in her flat, that I came anywhere near the level
of comfort that is needed for a beginner to begin speaking the new
language.

I miss those visits very much, and sense very deeply the shadow of the
loss of her son and your love.

That I should stop writing on this note, as a gesture towards, what,
the limit to what it is possible to know?

Goodbye for now, as where you are among these sentences, who knows?

Except, as for the writerliness of my writing, (an awful word, I almost
changed it, but I can’t think of another), it writes (the writing) to
itself, at least sometimes, I’m sure you sense this, complicated by the
pleasure of being able to send it to you tomorrow, and I’m not sure
that I would write the same way or some much by hand, pen in hand?

At least there is not the sensation of my hands hurting from working
that disturbed me last summer, writing letters with a pen I could
barely hold for the pain in my fingers. So days like this are very
precious, even if they are given to reading that I would rather do
another day, if and when at all.

Do you really enjoy reading such long letters?

*

After reading for a while, two essays for tomorrow’s Intro to American
Culture which I would rather not teach, so how to arrive at the
questions to be asked. Now I’m making tea. While I drink the tea, I’ll
write to you (teapot’s boiling) my teapot whistles when the water’s
ready. What else would you like to know? My (only) coffee/tea cup is
green, soft green, solid green, not dark as in pine-needle green or
the green of the drying needles in your dacha, and yet, not what is
called ‘lime’ green either. It is a solid color, without a pattern,
and quite boring to look at. However, it does hold both tea and coffee
rather well, and now I think I will remove the teabag (how long do you
steep your tea for? Did you know that I have a rather bad habit of re-
using my teabags?) Now, isnt’ that essential information about oneself?

I am drinking Ahmad Tea, English Tea No. 1, which makes me nostalgic
for Tomsk. I only suggested coming there in January for the easiest
solution, so that we don’t worry about whether or not we’ll see one
another. You should come here or close to here, and now is the time to
communicate with a travel agency, or that woman who walked by one
night in the street, who you said always helped you with arranging
vacations for your mother? Somewhere on the Black Sea, Bulgaria or
Georgia, or Slovakia, or Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia (Novi Sad?) Can you
find out some information about Novi Sad? I told you that I met a
teacher from Serbia returning from one year in the U.S., and how
warmly she spoke of Russia and the Russian language. I don’t know how
much to credit, believe, though they are first-person stories, those
stories like Larisa’s (your friend Larisa) about Czechoslavakia and
being told not to speak Russian, or if speaking, to speak very quietly.
When I use Russian words here, everyone understands, more or less, and as I mentioned, the faculty members I’ve met speak with great interest about Russia. All of this being neither here nor there, perhaps, but I do remember your saying that you preferred to go somewhere that you could relax (which is why Turkey was not possible).

Somewhere, anywhere, that you can fly to as part of an arranged trip,
and where I can meet you by train, though the problem is also the time
frame, as far as I understand I get at least one week at the end of
January and then two weeks in February, which I could probably lengthen into more or less the 30 day tourist visa limit if I do come to Tomsk. I’m remembering what you said about having a new boss, and that you will probably only have the month of January, and if I come to Tomsk, we could see each other for a longer period of time. It doesn’t hurt to keep talking about this. The simplest would be if not for me to go
to you in Tomsk, for you to come here to Lodz, and I’m beginning to
sound like the proverbial broken record. More worrying, more fretting.

My tea is half finished, about a third of the way finished, and it’s
time for me to read two short stories about which I will try to be as
brilliant as possible tomorrow for my seminar, though I can’t remember
now what it was that I was going to think about. I’m beginning to lose
patience (then comes boredom) with pedagogical truisms. And it’s only
my third week! Maybe I will try to write to you later about what I
thought there was to think about after I’ve thought about it, if in
fact I’m able to think about it at all.

*

My questions are written for my morning class, facts and figures from
social and cultural life in the U.S. in the 1950s, and I really should
not write much more to this letter, trying your patience?

It is rather quiet and lonely (very grey day and rain, rain) and cold
today, so I keep adding to this letter. Fluency, slogans. How much that
describes teaching also, that one is effective in a foreign environ-
ment due to not only verbal fluency, but fluency as well as to the con-
tent, when so often I feel like I am using not much more than slogans.

If slogans are trite phrases that accept just about any generalization.

A level of abstraction that only the specific, concrete, particular
world of the literary (even when it is memoir, diary, autobiography)
mitigates against, and I have to use that word, mitigate, I can’t think
of another word for it, for the sense of some kind of balancing, my
writing used to be very fond of the word, equilibrium.

One reason why you may enjoy the grammar is the object status of the
language instance: it is scientific, and can be formulated, patterns
(it doesn’t always have to be prescriptive, about rules), but there are
grammatical as well as semantic markers in a language. The two stories
I’m teaching tomorrow for my seminar have very distinct grammars (it’s
also popular nowadays in culture studies to refer to social grammars),
a borrowing from linguistics not at all scientific, and the grammars
in these stories, as much as their settings, have to do with why I
chose them, but it is next to impossible to make the representation
stand still long enough to look at it like that, the way you like,
objectively.
Students instead want to talk about character and plot, all the kinds
of sympathy and identification, and it feels like practicing something
less than what the language offers, or performing an expectation,
theirs, though it was very important to me (and is) when I saw them
taking notes to what I was saying. All this in a way of saying that I
also feel a little unprepared, or underprepared, “rusty.”

It is still raining as on the streets outside there is that sound of
tires on wet roads, though the street is not a busy one, and there is
not a lot of traffic after 6 p.m. Across the street and across from
this building, a new liquor store has opened which stays open until
11 p.m. There are said to be “hooligans” here, football hooligans, such
as I heard about in Moscow, and at the party that I wrote you about
there were stories of confrontations with foreigners, ‘Poland for the
Poles,’ etc. though the offending language was German, two of the
teachers who live here speaking German in a pub.

It is not Siberia. What is Siberia? It’s worth thinking about.
Culturally and socially, as that region Tomsk-Novosibirsk whose
culture you once argued for, or commented on, I don’t remember that it
was an argument, but it would be surprising, wouldn’t it, to hear
someone say, ‘Russia for the Russians’? Probably this is more and more
general everywhere, and I’m only repeating what I heard. As for what
I see (which is always very little) there is only a lot of shops and
goods and services (prosperity) and inexpensive food. But I know nothing
about where I am, and I am sure that I observe even less.

I can observe, however, that I’m writing you to evade other more
pressing demands, such as tomorrow, so I will close this letter with
the hope that I’ll be able to send it as early as possible (around 10
a.m. my time but 3:00 p.m. your time, which explains why the one Mon.
you hadn’t rec’d a letter, since the computer (there’s only one in our
katedra) was being used, so I had to wait until later. That’s why some
times you can expect a letter to arrive late in the evening, mid-after
noon my time, here, on Wednesdays and Fridays at least.

But you may expect my next letter Friday, as I will write you tomorrow
evening and Thursday evening. Missing you with kisses …

B Y E

22.10/2003

Re: phone card

Dear Zhen,

It’s possible that they don’t advertise them because of conflict over
rates. That’s what I was told in the U.S. by the person in the shop
where I bought the phone cards to call you last summer, and why I was
charged by the one phone company for one call. Other than that, I don’t
know very much about them, except that they are available here, and,
yes, Poland-Russia is expensive, comparatively.

I’ll be home tomorrow morning until noon (Thursday). Today’s my long
day and I won’t get home until after 9:00 p.m.

Or maybe you will want to try the card this Saturday?

Also, I will be able to buy some phone cards after my salary at the
beginning of the month.

Kisses
Kevin

(I don’t write longer as I’m at the office etc.)

Bye

24.10/2003

Dark days

Dear Zhen,

[Friday morning note: I shouldn’t even send this, as it’s somewhat
moody and I think I am a little, or getting more and more, depressed,
and I didn’t expect this, but you should know that finding three
letters from you in my mailbox (I haven’t read them yet), cheers me up.
Thank you so much for writing! I write again and send this Monday,
though I hope that we’re able to talk this weekend] . . .

Near midnight and I write you at the end of a long day and after trying
to read one or two essays of scholarship and

no word for it, the feeling, no, there is no feeling, as there is or if
there is the feeling of the absence of ideas

masquerading as ideas, discourse, “discursive practices,” fatigue, my
eyes (exhaustion) and with teaching, that also

without ideas, almost, at times, and filling in the absence with form-
ulae, only they are not for compounds (chemical)

or classificatory (data, measurements, etc) more like that word, your
word, slogans, that a slogan hides under more tired expressions, and I
am tired tonight, and since I know, still for reasons bureaucratic, that
tomorrow I must yet again go to this office and that, so that my day
will begin, I hope, perhaps, it is possible, with a call from you, then
please you should know that today and I had the distinct thought: I miss
Russia.

Big word? Something is missing, or felt a little broken today, careening
around among (between) classes, and boredom, how come I can never get
over my boredom? The “Dull” and it makes me dull. There are moments
when I can no longer stand the sound of my own voice, not for any in-
trinsic reason, but for the percpetion that I can’t stand what I’m
being made to say because of where I am standing, in a classroom.

You will think that I am mindlessly complaining, and maybe it is.

It is also being tired, as you, at the end of a long day, and wishing
(missing) days and afternoons and evenings of feeling otherwise, even,
feeling, such as the simple sensation of saying goodbye to you between
9:30 and 10:00 p.m.

The buses here are not half so interesting, they are too new and too
efficient. I walked along the paved stones of one of the main streets
or avenues or boulevards (there is ulica and then another word which
I can’t remember right now) and all I could see were McDonalds and
Pizza Huts and other reminders of that other world.

So, you will allow me to write tonight that missing you, yes, there
is also the missing of place, edges of houses, the kinds of houses,
streets and sounds, woodsmoke, even in the city, a certain kind of
disordered dirt, casualness or haphazardness, everything makeshift,
patched together, like the buses.

None of that here.
Not that I can tell.
Or see. What is there
other than – other than –

BYE for NOW

Maybe I will add to this tomorrow morning after Ive slept and had
coffee and maybe even after you’ve called, if you can call, and even
if you don’t call, I will try to write a little more a little more
heartening, though you should know there are difficult moments for me
here, away, away, away, and doubts, there are doubts. Worse than that.
Sometimes. Well, tomorrow.

BYE again.

*

Thursday evening. An interesting visit to the passport office today
about
obtaining neither temporary residence nor permanent residence but permit
for residence for a defined period (so that I don’t have to cross the
“frontier” every 90 days. A little like our visit to the office not the
OVIR. Seals and stamps and notarized affadavits. I came away feeling
more displaced than ever. And missing Russia, missing you (I not
associating you with that other word, believe me, it’s only, that I
miss those days at your dacha, very, very much. They are beginning to
recede (or arrive, rise, expand) into condition of dream, dream-like.

Continuing tiredness, despite, before going to the passport office,
a few good hours of good reading, for class tomorrow. I have reading
to do for tonight.

Continuing tiredness, maybe it’s my diet. Maybe it’s your tiredness,
which I wish to share. And do, because I am, for a number of reasons,
tired, becoming very, very tired.

“Then a chariot pulled by leopards. You can’t come into Jerusalem on a
donkey.”
A line from a poem I’m listening to while writing this.

“248 parts of her body” etc. Why 248? Why the inventory? On the bus
this afternoon I was remembering one of the images I took of you with
my camera, your eyes, remembering Mandelstam’s “labial eye” and not
being able to remember whether we talked about this passage. It is the
image of only your eyes, a very beautiful image. I do not look at it
very often, or the memory (is that what they are?) (your eyes?) would
hurt. It hurts anyway. There are moments when I am not even in my right mind, here. Dislocated, disoriented, alone and alone and alone. The
trip to the passport office didn’t help. Where does one belong? I’m
haunted now by the thought that I’ve made a mistake, that I should have
returned to Tomsk. Please let me say this from time to time, it helps
to keep it in front of me, aware of the difficulty of where I am, and
how it is that I came to be here, and what it is that I think I should
be doing here.

I’m sliding again, into some kind of moroseness, so I’ll stop here.

BYE and BYE and BYE once more. Maybe I can add a few more words to this
example of a dislocated letter once more before sending it to you
tomorrow. It hurts, though, to be so far away from you.

Zhen!

—

The same day

Before class

Dear Zhen,

I have about 20 minutes before class so I’m writing a few words on a
Fri afternoon, writing from you, as you, in between unexpected inter-
ruptions, though it’s part of being foreign, outside, that I don’t have
that many unexpected conversations, today’s classes challenging, but
not impossible, and I persaded one class to take interest in a text
social-critical text, about youth cultures, and in my 3rd yr seminar
only three students came (not unlike attendance at TPU) 3 out of 12,
since I probably gave them too much to read, and instead of viewing
the attendance as their problem, I think of it as my problem, since I
spent the better part of yesterday preparing for this one 1 and 1/2 hour
meeting with 3 students. This habit of putting too much work (too much
reading) into a course is typical for me, and a lot of times I feel that
I exert myself too much, too much energy, and for little or no result.
The classroom is a classroom, after all.

As virtual kisses are virtual kisses. I am very on edge (edgy) about
my work permit here, as I have to go to the U.S. embassy in Warsaw to
obtain a pretty standard notarized affidavit concerning financial debts
and criminal record, and the very fact of having to go to the embassy,
in order to be able to work here, is an additional obligation and hard-
ship that I didn’t have to do in Russia, and one more reason for missing
being in Tomsk, especially with the teacher’s invitation this year, that
living in Russia might have become easier for me, and now, instead, for
all of the reasons that I talked about in Sept., I have to deal with
more documents (everything has to be translated in Polish of course) and the anxiety that my application will not be approved and that at the
end of December I’ll find myself without a job or income and no place
to go but back to the U.S. That is the worst that could happen. There
is only one month left to my Russian invitation, and of course, you will
refuse to give me any advice, saying that you don’t wish to influence
whatever it is that I feel I must do. This is becoming more and more of
a difficult issue for me, as I can’t really say whatever that something
is, what it is.

So, we will speak (I hope!) tomorrow or Sunday, and I will write again
this weekend, and I will continue to sound as someone who hasn’t the
slightest idea of their place and prospects in the world. The news about
the Macintosh is very good news, but of course it will be necessary to
find out the cost of the repair, and it is something I can do when I
come to Tomsk in late January-early February or this summer. There was some barely perceptible tension in the passport office when the official saw all my stamps crossing the Russian border, and I was advised to be especially careful about my answers on the residency application as to where I had travelled in the past five years.

Borders, walls. We are living the experience of the division between
worlds. I miss yours extremely, yours and you, dear Jenya.

I will close hoping to hear your voice tomorrow …
—

27.10/2003

Monday’ letter &new mail address

Dear Zhen,

Rain and grey and somewhat cold this afternoon. I’ve just returned from
the hipermarket and eating today for the first time, a roll with a glass
of Chilean red wine (it’s 4:00 p.m.) and a chicken is in the oven, the
first time I’ve tried to use the oven, and an experiment, since I bought
what I thought were aluminum roasting pans, but which, when I opened one, after I returned home, I found that they have openings across the bottom of the pan, and are intended to fit inside a roasting pan to permit
easier cleaning, but, as I have no roasting pan, the chicken is in the
aluminum on the metal plate in the oven (which is itself something of
a pan, not a grill, unlike the oven in the flat in Tomsk), so, I will
find out soon, probably while I’m writing this letter, whether or not
my chicken will roast and not light the stove on fire in its oil–why
is oil a nicer word than grease?

The chicken cost 7.5 zloty, which is exactly 2 dollars, or 60 rubles.
Is that comparable to a chicken in Tomsk? I used to buy on Sundays
a roasted chicken hot off the grill in the Kury Grill on the corner
of the street across which is the 999 Market, for 95 rubles. So 60
rubles for an uncooked chicken seems a little expensive. But I will
have two meals from it, and the bones will make a soup stock. Chicken
is one of my favorites to cook with, and I’m afraid that if you were
so unfortunate as to have to survive on my cooking, that chicken
would be served at least once a week (I hear strange noises in the
kitchen). I also bought potatoes, and I am baking several–skins on–
with the chicken. But mostly I live on bread and apples and cheese
when I don’t cook, and the plain yoghurt is quite good here also.

My reading is suffering for the last few days for lack of concentration
and the selection, stopping by the British Council a few minutes before
they closed and taking home two early 90s books on theory and culture,
which, in the intervening 10 years, reads like so much posturing, about
culture and politics, and doing politics with culture, and I just
simply lose patience with the rhetoric. One of the books was once
(and probably still is) very important, a book called the Cultural
Logic of Late Capitalism by Frederic Jameson, and there is an early
chapter on a painting by Van Gogh, his “Peasant Shoes,” which I
remember reading very closely shortly after the book was published
in 1990. Something about the irradiating explosion of color in
the ‘seeing’ of such an object.

The operation has begun. My kitchen is filling up with smoke, so I just
opened the kitchen windows, and fortunately there’s a door to the kitchen I can close, and neither the cold air nor the smoke will fill up the other
rooms. But what I want a roast chicken for supper!

About culture and politics and the politics of the object. I found
myself longing for familiar objects that I would see in Russia, such as
the buses, the people on them, their faces, clothes, and then the thought
that, without language, one doesn’t really see the objects, at least in
the use of language, it’s such an obvious thought, but one which occurs
to me all the time, that I only always see what my language allows me to
see. But the village-like arrangements of the wooden houses on those
weekends, our walks, the flower gardens and vegetable gardens, potato
fields, cabbage fields, food grown for the year, not just decorative
gardening, there is a powerful visual impression of a landscape, even if
the language-order or perceptual distinction of the objects themselves
escape me. What did I see? In the Jameson book there is also a black-and white photograph of a frame for Tarkovsky’s Nostagia, the Russian farm house inserted into the ruins of an Italian cathedral, and looking at
this photograph, I could recognize the wooden house so clearly, and I
didn’t remember this image at all from the film, which as you may
remember from our conversations, is a very early influence on my image
of what a poet is (I first saw Nostalgia in the mid-to-late 80s, and
then many times when I lived on that farm in Iowa, where there was
a large Tarkovsky collection, oddly, at the local video store, even
Solaris, though I never watched it because of some long-standing lack
of interest in Science Fiction. Why? I think that like the Detective Novel
it was always there in my growing up when I was first going to the big
bookstores and trying to find something to read on my own, and what I
wanted was the most difficult and obscure, so I found Ulysses by James
Joyce and read that when I was in high school and I think, even though
I didn’t understand it, the difficulty was so exciting, that I began with
a kind of hostility to popular or mass entertainment culture which con-
tinues to this day. Even though I watch TV like a true addict when
there’s a television around. I even knew the title of the tv series
your mother was watching that one evening–which should tell you some- thing about how I pass the time when I’m bored. Jameson writes about this box, also, the television, and the simulacra (appearance) of the ex- perience of time, dream-like, and especially when it is a movie, and
best of all, one or two good movies viewed in sequence, that a kind of
active dreaming, or sensation of dreaming, takes over, and this seems
very accurate, that there is something about the visual image, and it’s
screen manifestation, that comes close to what our dreams look like to
us. Reading, on the other hand, is always uniquely reading, always the
encounted with language, even with all the unconscious involved, and yes voices are heard in our dreams, there is an audible content, but the
visual would still seem to be the way that our dreams most speak to us.
Of course, for someone 100 or 200 years ago, before mass media, just
think how different their dreams must have been, probably more auditory, or no?

How does language itself register the impact of technology, the mass
media? What is organicism (I think about this a lot, the idea of organicism after the landscapes, the village-like buildings, the woodsmoke, the small farming, the presence everywhere of the earth, even your hair full of dirt that one evening, when you washed your hair from the icy cold water (I watched you a little from the doorway, washing your hair). The evening was setting in, it was getting cold, and colder, I imaging, the water, and the distant sounds–a bell, or bucket, imaginary voices of neighbors, Who is the foreigner with her?

There are moments when it is possible to stand in a space full of beauty
and only barely is it possible to recognize, it is so difficult to be in
any one moment. To be, to exist, to be standing there, or the being there
exists out of all proportion to the language for the experience after the
moment, the beautiful moment, has passed. So I am remembering right now the moment of watching you wash your hair, in the lengthening shadows of the cold evening, and the woodsmoke rising from the surrounding wooden houses, the dark green of trees, blending into the lines of the hills, and and and and–to keep adding words, it becomes an exercise in language, though we both know we were there, and I’m remembering this moment in particular, not the next moment, the one that caused me such panic. Let’s not remember that moment, or yes, or no, or why, or why not. I’ve thought about it in an earlier letter. Have you?  The hipermarket 10 minutes walk from where I am writing you, if it landed in that village where I watched you washing your air, it would look like a spaceship. There is more science fiction in aisles of goods, and cheap goods, which you don’t have to talk to anyone about, you just push your shopping cart up and down the aisle and fill it with things, objects, goods and then you begin to expect them, and they become the surrounding reality.
I taught a good class on Friday about the nylon stocking and its entry
into Germany in the 1950s, using an essay from another book at the British Council. At the end of the class, I was asking the students to imagine on the desk where I was speaking, a pair of nylon stockings, a Campbell soup can, and I can’t now for some reason remember the other object—something one of the students suggested–but it was an everyday object, such as we are surrounded with all the time, not something extraordinary, or unusual. Do we see only the object? Or does the object have its own dream life, mystery, social meaning? Do we only see what and how we use something, or do we also see according to how we wish for something to be? Just to think about the gazes of shoppers (myself included, here, after coming here from Russia) and the look of longing towards items you cannot afford, and their overstated abundance, flowing over on the shelves. That is the ‘arcade’ effect of the internet also. In the hipermarket there is also flower shops, a hair salon, a Pizza Hut, a bank, and other such places, so that you have only to go to this one location, and there you may buy everything you need and more. I cannot think of a better word than yours, “convenience.” There is more than meets the eye in the concept of such “convenience.” It has something or other to do with losing reality.

[Reading this morning for an hour before going to the university I found
this passage which reminded me of what I was thinking your ‘convenience’ might mean: “the ‘effacement of the traces of production’ from the object itself, from the commodity thereby produced. This sees the matter from the standpoint of the consumer: it suggests the kind of guilt people are freed from if they are able not to remember the work that went into their toys and furnishings. Indeed, the point of having your own object world, and walls and muffled distance or relative silence all around you, is to forget about all those innumerable others for a while; you don’t want to have to think about Third World women every time you pull yourself up to your word processor, or all the other lower-class people with their lower-class lives when you decide to use or consume your other luxury products: it would be like having voices inside your head; indeed, it ‘violates’ the intimate space of your privacy and your extended body. For a society that wants to forget about class, therefore, reification in this consumer-packaging sense is very functional indeed; consumerism as a culture involves much more than this, but this kind of ‘effacement’ is surely the indispensable precondition on which all the rest can be constructed.”

For this particular author, ‘indeed’ operates as a kind of discursive
tick which ensures what is called a ‘critical distance’ to the thought
itself about ‘lower-class lives,’ but I thought it interesting enough to
include in this letter, as an illustration of the ‘consciousness of
convenience’ or ‘consciousness as convenience,’ something I am acutely
aware of here, coming from Tomsk. At your dacha I took photographs of the object world, not knowing exactly why or what I was looking at or for, only I remember the sensation that I was surrounded by objects and an object world very different from those I have known in the past. This
and the thought that one of the extreme difficulties of travelling and
even, wandering, is the loss of all objects and an ‘effaced’ object
world: no books or only a few books, to be able to count scissors,
staples and stapler, how many pens, pencils, pages of paper, etc.,
two cds of music, so that whatever you are surrounded by is really the
ruins or remains of a previous occupant of the space you are only
temporarily occupying. In the photographs, the object world is strangely
muted and warm, haphazard, patterns of cloths–materials–on the wall,
drying grasses from the garden, pots and jars, and the brick itself of
the fireplace–but even in the photographs this object world appears
material, physical, real, by virtue of the usefulness and casualness of
the objects (the ornate clock and the old radio also, and the books
laying around everywhere). What might be thought of as the antithesis
of the object-world of the supermarket, the commodity, and the mental
life attached to these objects. Well, I’ll stop here.]

‘Can consciousness grasp the social meaning of the object’ is probably
something or other like I’ve written in my notebook lately, and to repeat
it here sounds a little horrifying. But that fact remains that if I brought
a pair of nylon stockings and a Campbell soup can my students would see only the object themselves. Are such objects texts? The analysis of the commodity in a situation, such as here, where generally there is still
the intoxication with the surplus of such objects, goods and services,
that no, why are you analyzing something when you should just be happy about it, that it’s available? And cheap! The thought that we are
(everyone, everywhere) at the turning point of cheapness and universal
availability of everyday ordinary goods and services, and just on this
threshold, will arrive just as generally an economic collapse, and the
price of these goods and services will increase and increase with just
as rapidly a decrease in employment–that’s what I imagine sometimes,
trying to think about what is so difficult to think about and not become
intoxicated, walking down the aisles of the hipermarket. Today again
I couldn’t stop watching my washing machine, so thankful that it exists.
Do you remember the woman who would not wash jeans in Tomsk? That this would even be such a different kind of reality, calling around the city to try to find a place that washes clothes, and then, yes, we wash
clothes, but no, we do not wash jeans, etc. So, you mean to suggest,
that most families wash their own clothes by hand? Doesn’t that fact
itself change the notion of what is reality? There is even a dry cleaner
in the hipermarket (you can see that I’m very impressed, as it is the
great event of my day when I go to the hipermarket across the street
from the outlet, “Leader Price.” English, itself, means to the foreign
languages, Products and Services.

The hold of the commodity on consciousness, that was what Benjamin was writing about. The fact that it takes over, and colonizes subjectivity,
so that the commodity is a kind of dream-object, and there is no such
thing as an object in the world that is not a commodity, except maybe still in Russia (my romance of Russia).  I should stop writing soon, as my chicken is nearly done, which commodity has a particularly strong hold on my subjectivity now, at 5:30 or 4:30 p.m. as I’m uncertain as to whether the time changed today (why didn’t you mention it Saturday morning, I can’t believe that so momentous an event as the change in an hour, of an hour, would escape your attention).

Should I feel guilty that we spoke for an hour? Why won’t you tell me the
rates. I’ll tell you the rates here when I find out. It will only help us
to plan, and proportion. I think the more accurate word is Ration, a word
you probably hate, and for good reason.

Have you ever thought about writing simply about the food rations? Or
your boots from Italy?

We should go to Venice for a day, and I will pretend that I am Henry
James.

No, my writings are not the end of an epoch. Are you disappointed? What do you think of all that writing not in Russian?

Have you any idea how important that statement (protest?) you made was to me–that you can’t read anything that’s not written in Russian?

Keep that! Hold on to it! Don’t ever let that fundamental need and bias
transform into anything like a reader’s politeness to another language.
To hold on, hold to, hold closely, passionately, your love of Russian,
there is nothing so very important as this–and this is ‘advice’ that I
can freely give, as I will never inhabit, move among, the interiority of
your Russian. You don’t give it away. You never show me how to say the
simplest, most ordinary word. Have you any idea how important this is?
The language you speak and know is you, it is what you are, and your
English, a gift from your mother and father, both of whom are very wise,
and gentle, and kind, and loving, one can sense this, it cannot be
performed, and they gave you, or encouraged you, started you, with
a skill, and English is a Skill–it is nothing else. But it is a very
important skill at the moment, and one that you might take full advantage of, if you are able to overcome your skepticism towards it.

Maybe that’s where I am in one sense, in the configuration of your
mental life, if my use of English helps to make you a little less
skeptical, distrustful, of this language and those who use it.

As I am using it?

It’s time for supper, and I wish you were here.

B Y E

p.s. I found the letter that I lost in my computer some days ago (last week) so I’m sending it now, amusing, the lapse in time?

Good morning Zhen,

It’s a few minutes before 3:00 in the morning and I should be going to sleep and yet wanting to write a few words, having been working (or almost, I think, obsessing, over this and that ‘tick’ or ‘bug’ in my computer, in which there had gathered quite a few, so much so that the simplest programs were beginning to hang, and even when I shut the computer off, it would’nt shut down, and now in the early morning, most of the problems appear to be fixed, though I had to uninstall the adobe program your rabbit-hunting friend helped me to install, maybe the program was too much for my laptop, I don’t know)–today I copied
from a cd almost a gigabyte of sound files, recordings of poets modern and more contemporary, and that, too, has made me a little, more than a little, thoughtful. More and more confirmed, yes, that the book doesn’t interest me as a form anymore, there’s so much possible in the way of recording and performance, and it’s even comforting feeling as though working in such a form or format is many years distant for me.

Now, I rec’d your letter today, and while I was obsessing over the machine, many words and phrases came back to me of yours. But I don’t wish, really I don’t, to give you advice, since I don’t have any ground or position to occupythat would give me the right to do so. But I keep wanting to repeat to you that you have so many choices, etc., and there’s no reason to feel that your tied to the wheel of the process, the institution, where you are. But that’s all, enough, for now. I felt a little self-conscious after sending you the url. And also, surprised at your mentioning ‘lack of self confidence,’ which is what you’ve reminded me so often was your early impression of me. Or maybe we are arriving at a perception that for one reason or another, we share some features of character? I wouldn’t wish anyone to have my own doubts and uncertainties, maybe they are fears, anxiety, the not-knowing, not-knowing. But it surprises me to hear from you that you are sometimes afraid of me. Why? I didn’t hear any nervousness in your voice when you called and afterwards wrote about your nerves. Do you think that I look for adventures? Then again, I realize with this rhythm slowly developing here, that I cannot work almost every day as you. And I never take for
granted your writing to me in English, that’s why I asked for you to include such lines of poetry as occur to you when writing, the way they would when we spoke, would speak, in conversation, around Tomsk.

Well, I wanted to write a few words before going to sleep. Now it’s 3:00 in the morning and even a few minutes past, so I am going to try to lie down for a while. It’s not nerves. At least I don’t think so. Just a little over mental stimulation. I will add some more to this letter tomorrow, as I don’t think that I’ll be going to the university until Wednesday. Yes, the gas stove is a danger (and I’d make a joke about the convenience, in the event that one’s life becomes unbearable–but it wouldn’t be much of one, remembering Irina’s son.

So, please understand that I have had many such stoves in my life, and respect well the nearness of flammable materials, though you might be amused to hear that there is one burner a little tilted, it doesn’t set right on the stove, so one day I was trying to fix it, and when I held the match to the openings, there was no result, and I felt a little nervous, until I realized that I had turned the gas to another burner on. A gas stove is really better for cooking.

You have more control over the gradation, degree, of heat.

My candle has almost burned completely down, so I’m going to blow it out and say goodnight, for now.

The same day

Brief question

Dear Zhen,

Could you answer a brief translation question?

Would “For the Translator” (as a dedication) be

Za or Dlya Perevodchik?

I have your two letters and will read them this evening and write tonight.

Today I learned that a high-speed internet access (ASDN) is available for 150 zloty a month, about 40-50 dollars.

Do you think it’s worth it? I would be online all the time, and could answer more quickly, and yet, it is still this virtual sense to it, the written (electronic) words much less than the actual voice, so if you think the expense would be better spent on phone cards, please tell me what you think.

Kisses,

bye

28.10/2003

Closing words

Dear Zhen

Did you know that “closure” is an important word in critical theory and
its effort to understand what imaginary writing is? Well, I kept
finding myself wishing all morning that I’d had the chance to say “bye”
today, so I’m writing instead. A busy day, but with lots of sun. I’ll
write tomorrow. Thank you for calling me. Thank you.

29.10/2003

“Obligatory”

Dear Zhen,

[p.s. Just before sending, my first class went very well. I’m not sure

where all my nerves are coming from, about teaching, why it seems

so difficult, anyway. Hope you have a good day today. Kisses– ]

What is the difference between obligatory and caring for someone, anyone,
you? Who write so beautifully, tonally, about your place in the world. There
is a wicked word in English, oblige, a distant relative of obligation. I’m
writing you this morning, at 6:00 in the morning (my first class at 9:00)
because I was too tired to write you last night, falling asleep near mid-
night, reading, for tomorrow.

It is not obligatory, but it is to care, so I write to you sometimes, and
perhaps you sense this, not only for myself, for the sake of writing,
which feels quite good sometimes, actually, but I write even when I have
nothing to say, no news to tell you, writing the same way as I would talk
were we in the same room, the same city, the same time and place. It is
also selfish, as I wish by such writing to earn your writing too, as it
feels very good to receive a letter from you, even when the print is
electronic, light and not ink.

I have found a currant fruit juice which I like very much, as it looks like
wine, and it is amusing to remember your dislike of the currant jam in my flat in Tomsk. I am probably not drinking enough water, as I feel somewhat dehydrated and even low in energy sometimes, which may also be a sign of the difficulty of still, getting my classes in order, organized in such a way that I don’t have to think about them all the time. There is also the need to go to Warsaw early next week (then I will have something to write to you about!) and anxiety attached to the thought of a disrupted pattern, which is what I depend on in order to even to begin to be able to think, write, work, as it’s called, probably in every language. Writing dignifies itself by appropriating a word from those for whom writing remains
a mystery.

(I’m going to the kitchen to see if my water’s ready for coffee).

Tomorrow, if my salary is ready, I will buy a coffee grinder and machine? is that the only word for it? it’s not a coffee pot. What is it called? Suddenly the idea is strange, but I badly need fresh coffee. I’ve been told contradictory information about where and how of my salary, whether I need to pick it up myself the first time in person from the university bank, or whether it will be deposited to my account here. So tomorrow afternoon I will go to the bank to inquire about whether there is any money in it, and if there isn’t then I’ll have to cash yet again another 100 dollar bill, which is becoming worth less and less. One week I lost 100 zloty (about 28-30 dollars) fromwaiting to cash money, waiting until I needed it, as now, instead of waiting for the highest rate.

So, yes, I’m teaching without salary, and gradually spending all of my
money, and next week I must go to another city to obtain documents to allow myself to stay here where my salary has not arrived yet. If all of this sounds like complaining, well, yes, that is what it is. The freedom not to be disturbed, to have more or less the same pattern every day, so that one knows what to expect, and if that is what it means to be prepared, so that those moments of departure from the ordinary, and from expectation (to be able to be surprised, brought near to the perception of people and things and events in a light other than that in which they appear day to day—that is what reading can be, when it is not knowledge, or the appearance of knowledge.

You writing very kindly about me, almost that I wish to believe it, when
I recognize the tone you adopt when writing about yourself as one that I
inhabit, and perhaps even depend on: the perception of one’s own inability as much as this might be wished to be otherwise, is, or at least it has been for me, one of those conflicts where poetry comes from, whether in the reading or writing–is there any difference?–that the need for language, this need for language, comes from the experience of not-knowing, of doubt, especially doubt of oneself and one’s life and the temporality (the dimension of time) in every day, day-to-day rhythms and perceptions, emotions, all that might called the movement across the space of one day to the next. This is hardly ever for me associated with mastery, or even skill. And there is a lot of uncertainty, so that the space one knows, the space where one lives, is always conflicted by the doubt about its contingency–fragility, vulnerability. Nothing human ever happens in any language which does not know fragility and vulnerability (doubt about its very existence in the world).

Lately it feels to me that this experience of time as the experience of
a temporary arrangement of very physical facts like food and sleep, being able to go to the market, and having a place to sleep, that this thought takes over the ability to have more reflective thoughts, since reflection itself depends on at least a form of consistency. Expectations that one day will more or less resemble the next. Within each day as well, I’ve been noticing, there are what might be called insights into an emerging thought, those things if they are things which occur to one while reading (that is supposed to be one of the great discoveries, that mental life is in itself material), begin to take on the condition of a “concern,” or noticable preoccupation. This is when I feel that a new direction in my ‘work,’ my ‘writing,’ is beginning to develop, though I have to make a strong effort not to read my notes and to leave my notebook alone. It is not the refusal to read what one has written, but recognizing that patterns of ‘concern’ assemble by themselves, and that if the reader/writer recognizes too soon what they are thinking about, then strategies develop to channel the writing, the thinking, into a recognizable form, which almost always means a form that the writer has used before. But what I am noticing while reading has something to do with the historical status (the low status) of the simplest tasks, menial or manual labor, and how not only is it not represented (the representation itself is a problem, given how it was ideologized everywhere, not only in the USSR), but the problem the text itself has with such a content. It is not only a descriptive problem, how to see it (this is what the camera supposedly does, though the only cameras that see this process are cameras installed by employers), but the thought that this is when the writing becomes conflicted, the representation even when it is confident becomes conflicted, because it is moving across a space of perception about which there is such refusal to think about and experience in reading, in imagination, in any cultural moment.

Two examples are a scene in a well-known slave narrative by Frederick
Douglass (it is part of the curriculum of every American Studies program) where, after the ‘obligatory’ scenes of punishment, there is a story told of an ox cart getting away from him and almost killing him, and the story is told with such accuracy, and detail, though it belongs to another world and order of experience, the world of ox cart drivers, that it has a double status in the text, so that the reader is manipulated into reading into the horror of slavery the horror of having to drive an ox cart, and the text
actually reinforces the perception that there must be slaves, even when
the author believes that he is actually writing about the opposite. Or,
he is writing about his own individual, personal, arrival at ‘freedom,’
but participating at the same time in creating an experience, the
representation of an experience, which reminds the reader that the world
of the oxen and the people who tend them, is ‘other,’ to use a fashionable
world, unknown and unknowable. In the sense that there is no knowledge
there, and this is the division which culture and the accomplishments of
culture are condemned to. I’ve forgotten the other example.

Today I teach a story, “Life in the Iron Mills,” which my writing almost
begins with, and I read it yesterday with such pleasure, that it reminds
me of my own private anthology of texts which themselves made me want to write, so I think that today may actually be an enjoyable day teaching. The most I can say from one letter to the next is that I hope your own day is kind to you, without too many humiliations, and that I believe in your ability to make the best of even the worst situation, such as that we find ourselves in right now, not knowing what or how this or that may actually happen, how it is going to happen, but believing in the eventuality that we will see each other again, and be with each other again, if not next week, or even tomorrow, but sooner than the word ‘eventually’ means, which is why people say, in English, ‘sooner or later.’ I really don’t like this expression. It is too casual. Soon, soon, (skora, skora), it is wished to be, and in the wishing, the experience of each day’s time as in the form of a horizon where almost nothing can be seen, that is the space or time of each time where I am now.

b y e

31.10/2003

All Souls Day

Dear Zhen,

[A note before sending: I take back what I say below about the difference
between Russian and Polish students. Today is the day before a holiday
(All Souls Day) and there’s not a soul in the building, neither teachers
nor students. Only one student came to my morning class, and that is be-
cause his parents are coming here to Lodz to visit him. Isn’t it trad-
itional in Russia for holidays for students to travel home to visit their
family?]

P.s. Did I tell you that I miss you?

Thursday morning, no classes, a syllabus due tomorrow, which I must write
this morning, and my alarm rings (buzz is the better word) at 5:30 in the
morning now, since it took me so long to set it in the first place, I am
afraid that if I try to reset it that the alarm won’t work at all, so now
I wake up at 5:30 instead of 6:30, except that I always go right back to
sleep, as I did this morning, and when I woke up later to grey light and
rain, the sound of the rain, I can always tell when its raining by the
sound of the tires of the cars on the road outside the window, and one
look at my alarm clock, on the desk beside the sofa, not bed, where I’ve
been sleeping lately, and the clock said 9:00, and it seemed strange that
I had slept another three hours, very deep sleep, probably helped by the
rain–does rain like snow help one sleep?–and when I had made my coffee
and turned on computer to write the syllabus which refuses to be written
the clock on my computer said 9:15 after I’d already been awake for an
hour (I lay in bed for half an hour after looking at the clock for the
first time, do you do this sometimes?) Who knows what one thinks about
in these moments, they seem to me almost purely animal like. Sometimes
(especially in the past two weeks) I review in my mind the events of the
day before, and try to ask if anything went wrong, with a view to accusing
or implicating myself, well, not that bad, but looking for faults, my
faults, what did I do wrong?

The problem of being a foreigner is that no one will tell you if you
have committed a fault, either since you can’t read the cues, the sub
texts, in exchanges, conversational and otherwise, and in Polish as
Russian culture, there is unwillingness to be anything other than polite
towards guests. So I don’t really know how my teaching’s going. I’m
making a few mistakes based on over-eagerness simply to teach literature
rather than practical English (it is a practical English syllabus which
I have to write today) and so I assign too much reading, when the
reading level of the third and fourth year students is probably not that
much greater than students of English in Russia. I’ve told them to just
read what they can, that the texts have been selected to expose them
to a variety of writers, still it is psychological to try to read a text
in a language you believe you know and then for it to be impossible to
read. So this is my criticism of myself so far, teaching.

Wanting to do too much (overreaching).

You write frankly and directly about expenses, and I respect this greatly.
We will never, for as long as we are separated by countries, and unless
I found myself in the U.S., the luxury of the phone card system that I used
last summer. Whether or not you regard this as a danger, the emotional
distance, the separation from one another’s voices, and the extreme time
limit imposed (10 minutes is almost worse than not talking at all), I will
simply leave as a question mark. Less than worried by such thoughts, I am
often thinking (yes, sometimes I think) that the imposed silence, the
separation our voices are undergoing, now, after September, and before,
the luxury of the U.S. phone cards, helps for the time to pass by more
quickly, and sometimes we can write to each other thoughts that we might
not express in speaking to one another.

You write about yourself much differently than you present yourself in
conversation. Whether this is positive or negative, again I will leave to
you as a question mark. Sometimes I imagine you may feel vaguely dis-
satisfied after writing, with thoughts half-expressed not only as they
must always be, since this is the nature of writing itself, but also
always the translation, the movement between the two languages, which
I never forget, even when I do forget to mention it or draw attention to
it–what–the astounding fact that you are writing me in English when all
your thoughts, your being, your perception, your mind, happens in Russian.
So I always read your letters as carefully thought about gifts to me.
For my part, yes, when I suggest that you write at home, it seems obvious
that I am trying to draw you into a correspondence, a form of writing
a little different than the message, Hello, this is what is happening
right now in this moment, Bye, etc., but it must be difficult as well,
the imperceptible (for me) separation from ones subjectivity and then
the language that must be written in for the sake of someone writing
in the second language. So you write very kindly about my apparent
knowledge and learning (whatever it is) when it is the fact that I am
writing in my native language, and really the books that I mention are
more or less so much academic junk, but it’s what’s available here,
and a part of my education as (I can’t finish this sentence, “as” I
have no idea what I’m educated to be: you should remember that I am
more than anything what is called, Self-educated, and my ability to
remain aware of current trends and fashions in the Western and especially
U.S. universities is reduced from travelling and lack of internet access.
That is why the permanent connect is so important to me, despite it’s
expense, it is more of an opportunity to read widely, in a very
scattered way, especially in those moments of boredom and distraction,
so the world of the online practically emanates with the representations
of the Western world (really, it is almost druglike, hypnotic), and
without it, disconnected from it, is a little like being in the dark.
Another teacher, from Germany, visited me for half an hour two nights
ago, and I found myself asking simply about the news, and was startled
to learn that Polish military had troops in Iraq. Part of the Nato
configuration, I suppose, and I didn’t know, and still don’t know,
whether or not it is true. If it is, if there is increased cooperation
with the U.S. militarily, then that would support perception about
tightening borders with Russia. But all of these matters are very
dark and obscure, and for the moment I would rather read about literature.

Simple, yes, simplicity, why do you think I like Reznikoff so much?
It was a gift he had, a gift of perception, and personal humility.
Just this morning I was arranging my proliferating copies of materials
and found the Reznikoff poems you had copied for me, and noticed the
different sizes of the text on some of the backsides of the sheets,
and there, the thought, how much you worked on making the copies, and
the care that you took to make the copies, and so this morning began
after I was able to drag myself out of bed with the thought of you,
collating my copies of the poems by Reznikoff.

I need to work on my Practical English Syllabus, so I’ll say b y e
for the moment, and will probably return to this letter this evening
after all my tasks for tomorrow are completed (I always write out
a number of questions to pose for my class, and this is a strange
form of writing, forcing the thought to express itself in the form
of a question, and sometimes I actually like it quite a lot, since
so much writing about ideas expresses itself declaratively, and how
to write about ideas, how for the writing for itself to be thought,
how can it become this without asking?)

When you say to me kind comments about my letters to you, the thought
of your kindness returns to me, and this is a kindness which you often
refuse to acknowledge in conversation, but I would like to propose that
it is part of your character. You who claim that you have such a bad
character. Walking home yesterday evening in the hour-later darkness,
I thought of the word “cactus” that had been said to you, about you,
and thought with amusement how sharp your words must be sometimes to
your colleagues. In English, we say that words are sharp or barbed.
I have never heard the word “cactus” applied to someone’s words. But
the idea that a conversation with you or a meeting in which you take
part, for your male colleagues, is like walking through a cactus patch
(why it is not a field I don’t know, except that cabbage is also said
to grow in a patch)–what would you rather be, cabbage or cactus?
I think cactus, razor-sharp needles that are good for the colleague,
like acupuncture. So the next time someone jokes about you this way,
and compares you to a cactus, you may tell them that you are only
practicing an ancient Chinese healing art, and for as much discomfort
as your words may cause, they are good for one to whom they cause
pain.

But you should know that I’m not experiencing any aches and pains
from sleeping in my three beds, except for the pain of loneliness,
so I don’t think I need any acupuncture treatment. But I will leave
you to judge for yourself. I’m glad that you enjoy my long letters.
They are another form of the character-trait you say when I was lying
under the chair, talking to the air, and most of all, making you
laugh. I thought about this also, yesterday, in one of my imaginary
dialogues with you, Does anyone else you know or have known make you
laugh as much as I do? Though I am probably more amusing in person,
than in writing, as in writing a kind of self-seriousness so often
takes over, from more than anything the habit of many years of writing.

Enough for now. I’ll return to this letter this evening.

b y e

p.s. It’s getting towards 9:00 p.m. and I still have Benito Cereno to
read, the smell of burnt potatoes lingering in the kitchen as I left them
on the stove too long and the water they were boiling in, peeled this
time, after taking the trouble to peel the potatoes I burned them–
though they weren’t burnt too badly, a little like roasted, but the
pan has an inch thick burn on the bottom and it’s a thin tin pan, tho
this doesn’t make it any less expensive if I did ruin it. There’s a
drawback to the fact that the kitchen and my reading-writing room both
have doors, which I keep closed for the heat, but I forget about what’s
going on in the kitchen while I’m trying to finish this or that in the
next room. The door’s prevent the sound or the smell of autonomous
cookings going on on the gas stove.

But I thought that I’d write you about a thought that I’d had, writing
my syllabi: That I can’t do the same activities with the students here
as in Russia, since here the students tend to be more withdrawn, and into
themselves, more subjective, more self-conscious, and though they are
much more polite and respectful than students in the U.S., they resemble
their role models (U.S. students) in their condition of self-consciousness,
and they resist, and express discomfort, when I try to do activities
which are performative, and these were the favorites of students at
Tomsk and in Chita. The difference is evidence of socialization (this
term meant in the sense of what goes on in the classroom, I don’t mean
the other meaning, or do I?), and the willingness on the part of the
students in Russia to perform and to inhabit a three-dimensional space
seems to me to indicate a certain psychological health that is missing
here, as so many places. It’s not that my students are quiet here, but
when they speak they address me, student to teacher, or individual to
individual, and they do not speak as members of a group.

Think about the fact, for instance, of your still continuing friendships
with your classmates from your youth and childhood. I think this is
quite rare in the Western societies. Why do you think it is? What do
you think is different about Russian culture? I don’t mean this abstractly
but as an experience that I’m having here, that my students are more
individualist or consumerist and it “obliges” me to try different
teaching strategies. Worst of all, I can’t play with them, and students
are very playful in Russia, amused by all kinds of language games and
imaginary roles.

On the other hand, the students talk more here spontaneously about
alienation, social outcasts, subculture, etc. There’s a pull in me to
recognize this ‘attitude’ and feel more at home, more like in the U.S.,
and then I start comparing to the last two years, and wondering if there
are other social effects of extreme hardship and poverty spread across
a population, and I’m not writing about this lightly, remembering your
cautioning about the absence of any and all safety in the Russian society.
When someone falls, they are unable without a miracle to raise themselves
again. So one does not move, if they are not falling, not for fear of
change, rather from recognition that there is no recovering from falling.

Am I beginning to understand you?

The same day

RE: Closing words

Dear Zhen,

Ten minutes is an eternity in the world of email. Is it worth the
thought, wondering where else our mail is going?

I don’t think so. But ten minutes! After we were disconnected I sat
on the sofa amid deafening silence, and the impulse was to call you
back, but practicality won, and so I sat in the silence.

I will be able to call you soon with an intl card from here.

Did I tell you that I miss you?

Did you tell me you were patient?

I am waiting for you (with kisses).

> Do you know that it takes ten minutes for your e-mail to come here?
> Sorry, i did not know that “the card” do not inform you about the end
of
> your time. Bye

The same day

All Soul’s Day

Dear Zhen,

No one in my 3rd Year Seminar either, but I have my notes from last night’s
reading, so that I’d pass them on to you–more as an example of how I spend
my time, than assuming any interest on your part in the author, though do you
remember our conversation about Melville? Actually, there’s an anthology from
the Soviet period, published in late 60s or early 70s, which includes Benito
Cereno with Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown,” Poe’s “Fall of the
House of Usher,” and Washington Irving’s “Legend of Sleepy Hollow”–a kind of
ghost compendium, that anthology. Why is American literature so full of ghosts?

I’d planned to give a kind of plot summary, and ask broader questions at the
end.

BENITO CERENO (1856) “in the belittered Ghetto”

1. In a remote bay off the coast of South America 1799 a wandering ship
is sighted by the unsuspecting eye of the captain of a small merchant ship.
Captain Delano is “a man of such simplicity as to be incapable of satire or
irony.”

2. What is this ship in distress? “–a Spanish merchantman (a converted
warship) of the first class, carrying Negro slaves, amongst other valuable
freight, from one colonial port to another.”

3. The ‘good captain’ Delano, upon the boarding the ship in distress,
meets among the general disorder, the slave ship’s captain, Benito Cereno:
“His mind appeared unstrung … with nervous suffering almost worn to a
skeleton.”

4. Then, almost immediately, Benito Cereno’s “servant,” Babo, who
appears to Delano to be less than a slave than “devoted companion.”

5. The story of the disaster on the ship is told by Benito Cereno
under the watchful eye (“unwilling to leave him unsupported”) of Babo.

6. The issue of the ownership of the slaves is asked by Delano.
“On board this ship?” echoed the Spaniard. Then, with horrified gestures,
as directed against some spectre …”

7. Artufal enters: “he says he was king in his own land.”

8. Sequence of scenes which heighten the tension between what Delano
sees on board the ship and what is actually going on: “standing with eye
directed forward toward that handful of sailors–suddenly he thought that
some of them returned the glance and with a sort of meaning. He rubbed his
eyes, and looked again; but again seemed to see the same thing.”

9. The four points of doubt: 1) the Spanish boy assaulted with a knife
by the slave boy; 2) the treatment of Artufal by Cereno; 3) the assault of
another sailor by two of the slaves; 4) the submission of the captain to
everyone on board the ship.

10. The “knot” thrown to Delano by the old sailor: What are SIGNS?

11. Babo shaves Cereno: “first blood.”

12. The luncheon and refused invitation by Cereno to visit Delano’s ship.

13. The turn in the plot: “with mask torn away.”

14. The battle.

15. The deposition (slavery as institution, legal form, history as
Symbolic Law).

What is a spectre? “Something of the effect of enchantment. The ship seems
unreal; these strange costumes, gestures, and faces, but a shadowy tableau
just emerged from the deep, which directly must receive back what it gave.”

Well, I don’t know if these few notes will encourage you to read Benito
Cereno, though I would be curious as to whether it has ever been translated
into Russian.

My comparison of Melville to Tolstoy–I think it’s accurate.

b y e

f o r n o w

z h e n !

The same day

Phone1

Dear Zhen,

Could you take a look at this url when you have a moment and compare
the price of .70 zloty per minute for calling a fixed phone line in
Russia (your home phone, not your mobile). Is it a better price?

http://phone1.warsawvoice.pl/index.php

Also, would you mind continuing to write to me at this address?

I’ll explain why later. It will be a long weekend without news
from you, words, and do you know, “gasmask” is the title of one
of the poems I wrote in Tomsk, though there is more there about
the cameraman who was killed in Iraq.
bye for now kisses

3.11/2003

Amidexterity

Dear Zhen,

I’ve been wading yesterday and today among the pages of a big book I
found in the university library, “Media and Cultural Studies: Keyworks”
(2001), which begins with part of an essay by Marx and Engels, “The Ruling Class
and the Ruling Idea” (from the German Ideology, I believe) and I mention
this, as odious (and I do believe that’s the most fitting word, for you,
thinking of your reaction to even the names, whatever they mean, Marx
and Engels) as it must sound (to you), but what’s interesting to me is that
the book identifies itself as a textbook, intended for classroom use, in
media studies, so one can easily conclude that there’s a familiarity, or
fitting character, of at least the intersection between culture and political
economy as reflected in the work of Marx & Engels, for cultural studies in the
West.

But, the passage from an essay elsewhere in the book is one that I
wanted to quote in full (and which I’d been reading for yesterday and today):

“Today’s neighborhood supermarket is in many respects a mundane version
of the historical theme park. Indeed [that ‘indeed’ again, do all academics
use this word?], the supermarket is something of a postmodern museum of
the third world, whose displays of exotic fruits and vegetables, such as
bread- fruit, cactus apples, passion fruit, star fruit, and horn melons often
include museum-like inscriptions, such as this one from a Santa Diego
supermarket: ‘Cherimoya, prized by the Incas, now grown in Santa
Barbara.’ Where the supermarket most closely replicates the historical theme park
is in its presentation of labor. The current practice in many supermarkets
is to put a theatrical form of production on display, while the real work
that goes into maintaining the store and serving the customers is either
hidden from view or made to appear trivial because of deskilling. The work of
pricing the merchandise, stocking the shelves, cleaning the store, and
preparing the meat and produce for sale is accomplished by a largely in-
visible workforce, whose members labor behind the scene in a backroom
warehouse, or at night after the store is closed. The work of managing,
which includes decisions over purchases and personnel, is conducted by a
number of upper-level employees whose photos sometimes decorate the
store’s service counter, but who are seldom seen by shoppers. The work of
checking, which in a bygone era would have anchored the customer’s apprehension of
work in the supermarket, had today been greatly undermined by the
installation of computerized scanners that weigh and price the commodities and
often speak to the customer. The supermarket checker has been deskilled
to the point of becoming a human robotoid extension of the checkout
system.

As if to compensate for the marginalization and in some cases the
erasure, of productive labor, the supermarket offers an array of theatrical
labors, whose importance has more to do with the spectacle they create than the
actual services they render. Most supermarkets today offer in-store
bakeries, deli-counters, florist shops, and gourmet food sections. These
are staffed by a corps of store personnel whose uniforms are more
theatrical that practical. Often, the employees’ pert hats and aprons
mimic the colors and patterns of the store’s interior decor, making the
supermarket something of a stage for sales and the costumed employees
the actors enacting service. If we take the supermarket as the place where
we most commonly come into contact with the fetishized commodities of
daily life, then all the strategies developed by the supermarket to
render service personal, to make it visible, redound in a theatricality
whose effect is to create the appearance of use value in the commodities
we buy. This is most clearly the case when one of the costumed employees
stands mid-aisle, blocking shopping cart traffic, and commences to
operate one of the store’s peanut-butter mills, and pineapple corers.
The employee who husks and cores pineapples to produce those Dole-like
rings does so with a single thrust of a chrome-plate lever. The
performance brings the image of work and a wholesome product into the shopping area.

This is an instance where labor is truly rendered as performance, and
hence, a commodity–customers consume the spectacle of work whether or not they
actually buy the pineapples. Such spectacle stands in the place of any
reference to the hundreds of laborers who cultivated, harvested, packed,
shipped, and marketed the pineapple. Their erasure from the commodity
form is the basis of its fetishism. The impossibility of retrieving their
labor in the supermarket setting condemns the attempt to create use values to
spectacle.” [Susan Willis, “Unwrapping Use Value”].

This kind of text is a lot different, don’t you think, than the IELTS
essays?

What immediately fascinated me about this passage, and why I quoted it
at such length, is in association with the passage I wrote to you about
last week from the book by Frederick Douglass, where he writes about
losing control of the ox cart.

What I was thinking at the time was that the passage was more
complicated than it appeared, and its effect was ‘spectacular’ after the sense of
the passage above. The everyday ordinary action of handling a team of oxen
(what today would be the same as driving a truck–in fact the Teamsters
Union took its name from livestock handlers, drivers of teams of horses
and oxen, so that any reading of the passage of the ox cart would not be
reading the passage at all without this overlay, the history of the
Teamsters Union in the U.S., anyway, what is happening in that passage is a
complex image, where work itself, the work of the teamster, whether ‘free-born’
or ‘slave’, dissolves into the narration of slavery, and the Slave
Narrative itself performs the double function of not only exposing the conditions
of the institution, the slave institution, for an Abolitionist audience,
but delivers to this audience an image of oppression inseparable from
the horror of manual labor itself.

In another text, “Life in the Iron Mills,” which I taught for another
seminar the following week, there is an amazing proto-socialist statue
made out of waste materials in a steel mill by the ‘light-bringer’ hero
of the short story, a steelworker, who creates a monstrosity and
caricature of the 19th century museum nude, and none of my students missed the
resemblance to Soviet-era monuments to Mr. and Mrs. Manual Laborer.
Laughingly, I might add. I forgot to remind them that the May 1 Holiday
originated from the labor movement in the U.S. But I did talk a little
about the idealization of these statues, the idealization they
represented, but the resistance was so strong to any reference at all to the factory
world, the industrial world, as to anything other than a sphere
(political) that was gladly gone, just as though it had disappeared overnight!

Another way of viewing the quoted passage is my thought, really only an
impression, sensation, not a serious thought, that were anything like
the ‘Hipermarket’ of E.Leclerc to appear in Tomsk, people would crowd around
it like a spaceship. It really does come from another world. On the
other hand, what is really silly about Willis’ essay, is that fact that she’s
absorbed in the descriptive process of her own text, and cannot even
begin to say something so “mundane” (her word) as the fact that the visibility
of workers in the supermarket, however deskilled they are, increases
their potential for solidarity with farm laborers, who are invisible, there’s
no doubt about that, but in one way however trivial the work of the
deskilled
supermarket employees are, according to Willis, who writes about them
like someone shopping for a Gucci handbag, or used to shopping for such
items, they puncture the symbolic bubble where it is preferred to imagine that
food comes from outer space, or at least falls from the trees of its own
accord.

You will think, perhaps, that I’m reacting to this passage on the basis
of my own experience, and you are right. Even last summer, not to mention
other instances of the same. Performance? The stage of labor? But labor cannot
be staged. Maybe I’m missing the point. Of the quotation. But it is read
by me with a sort of shock of recognition, remembering, how many hours
one has worked in such places, so that even today I cannot go to E.Leclerc
without knowing pretty much how the work is organized, and being
somewhat in familiar surroundings. Maybe that’s what makes writing itself, or
thinking at all, so unfamiliar. It’s not what I know. I really only know how to
put cans and packages of food on a shelf. Of course, that’s not true. But
there’s something so basic to the experience of manual labor, and it is so
despised, and the person who does this work is so despised as well, that it puts
in the most troubling and untenable perspective any other kind of work,
such as so-called ‘cultural work,’ whatever status it is supposed to occupy.
In this way, I’ve never really taken writing very seriously. It’s just
not work to me, nor is teaching. That is far more performative, much more
like acting, both the roles of the student and teacher, and the core
inauthenticity at the center of every classroom (obedience to the institution), and so
the writing about the performace of labor and ‘use-value’ in the
supermarket in a textbook designed for the Idea Supermarket strikes me as just a
little ironic.

But I feel like I’m slowly finding my way to some place, some developing
concern, about whatever it is that Manual Labor is, it can’t be seen.
If we could see people making bricks, would it change anything? Isn’t
that the mistake that Vertov made?

Today has been so industrially grey and mist hanging heavily in the air,
I went for a short walk late afternoon (it is early evening now) and
warm, yes, the weather is quite warm, one hardly needs a jacket, but such
density of grey and the trees bare all but bare now, raw silhouettes against an
iron-like sky.

You are kind and good to call me for even a few minutes, and your voice
has the material element of being here, practically in the room, beside
me, and I hope that you do not mind too much my laughter. It is simply
quite wonderful to hear your voice and you will hear mine soon this
week, at the end of this week.

The next time I write (or maybe not the next time, but this week,
sometime, you should be hearing from me a sort of salary song, providing I receive
my salary. I made a mistake when I told you I lost 100 zloty in waiting
for exhange, it was only 10 zloty. Not very much. Everything seems
exaggerated to me sometimes, and I’m not very good with numbers.

You will think also that this is not a very intimate letter, but really
lately it is rather difficult for me not to be impatient with the books
that I am reading, so that this detail or that, when it strikes my
attention, it seems worthwhile to write about. I hope you don’t mind reading such
sentences.

I may add more to this letter tomorrow morning, but I’m going to stop
writing for now, and at least contemplate cooking my Sunday chicken.


b
y

e


p.s. So that I don’t forget to mention it, I’m attaching a text from an
online magazine that I like quite a lot, from www.sarai.net a web publishing
project in India. Apart from the interest of the text itself, the difference
between reading electronic materials and traditional ‘books,’ (compared to the
utter boringness of the IELST texts) if you were interested in translating
such articles, I’m sure there’s a place for them in web publications in
Moscow or Petersburg. It’s just a thought I had, for those moments, you know,
when you’re not doing anything. (I’m not trying to imagine something for you
to do!) Or am I? Really, I just thought the article was interesting, and that
you might like reading it also.

p.s.s. How unobservant I am, I just noticed this morning that the desk
in the room that I hardly ever use except to sleep in when it’s too cold
to sleep in the room with the single bed, the desk is designed for someone who
is ‘left-handed,’ so dear Jenya, you see, there is a desk here waiting
for you. It occurred to me this morning that maybe it is a sign, a very
positive sign, about the future. Don’t mind me. The sun is shining today
after two very dreary and dark grey raining days, despite the happiness
your phone call occasioned early Saturday.

I miss you.

The same day

I had a good intention

Dear Zhen,

I had just now had the good intention of sending you the attached text
from www.sarai.net (I’m rmembering your fondness for India) and forgot,
so I’m sending it now. Yes, tomorrow I will have an adventure. I’ll
write
again when I get back in the evening, and send you a letter Wednesday.

Bye now. More of my virtual kisses.

5.11/2003

Warsaw

Dear Zhen,

I have only a few minutes before going to the university this morning
I’m
going a little earlier than usual as I have to make some copies of an
assignment for my 9:00 a.m. class but when I tried to write you
yesterday
after getting back from Warsaw in the afternoon, mid-afternoon, the
network
was down, so I wanted to write you that everything went very well, and
it
actually took only 10 minutes to obtain the affidavit that I need
(American
efficiency?) and then I returned, though I had some curiosity about
where
the Russian embassy is, and from the other embassies that were in the
neighborhood, I think they are all more or less in the same location, so
getting a visa, simply going to the consulate in Warsaw, would not be
a problem for me, a two-hour train ride (there’s not an hour’s
difference
by the way) and then 20 minute walk, and the train ticket only costs
about $15.00 both ways, and it costs about the same to take the bus
to the airport, where I wish I was going, to fly anywhere you were.

Well, so much for wishes. They are like virtual kisses. I saw a lot in
Warsaw when I walked to the U.S. consulate, a stylish nightclub called
“Anarchy” one block from the U.S. embassy (symbolic?–not the anarchy
itself, but the stylization of it) and many restaurants and coffee shops
and boutiques (salons, what they are called in Russian) for speciality
items–what do you think about Spaceship Commodity landing in Russia?
I am thinking about a process somewhat different than the expansion of
the availability of goods. It is how they are distributed and imaged in
the society, and the social character of shopping for them. But everyone
needs a lot of money for this spaceship to land. It is difficult to
tell, when visiting Warsaw, whether the people who live there exist
in that nebulous zone of ‘European living standards’ (the brief visual
evidence suggests this is so) or whether a new luxury-consuming class
is being imposed. In the underpass (a walkway going underground)
I heard a man in a business suit speaking English on a cell phone
about setting up a meeting and this and that–pure business speak.
But the experience of my first five minutes in Warsaw being that I
heard someone speaking Business English into a cellphone is very
suggestive about the transformation of Poland and other countries in
Central Europe.

There is no going back to a past nobody remembers anything good about,
according to my students (the past as nostalgia condition for parents
and especially grandparents) but what is arriving in its place? I found
a book from England on Soviet-era cinema, and as I begin to read it
I think I will ask you the titles of some movies, if you don’t mind
writing about them?

Now, dear Zhenya, it is time for me to be a responsible teacher. Please
don’t mind my writing you so quickly. Thursday evening I will write you
a longer letter, and send it on Friday, so by your Friday evening you
should have another letter from me. With (virtual) (imaginary) kisses.
You may consider my virtual-imaginary kisses and promises of future
physical, kisses.

b

y


e
z

h

—

6.11/2003

Hedgehog?

Dear Zhen,

Today I go to the passport office with my documents to apply for what
appears to be the first step in a residency process needed in order to
be employed here. It is called something like, Residency Permit for a
Limited Time (the length of my contract). That is the benefit of a two
year contract: you don’t have to leave the country for two years. Of
course, leaving the country is not a problem here, as the borders are
so close, but as far as I understand the Residency Permit for a Definite
Period of Time is needed for being able to continue to work here and
receive a salary. Today I will also find out whether or not I did in
fact receive a salary–a subject of great interest to me at the moment.

By all means, yes, if Poland could be your first choice as to travel
this winter, so I would encourage you to investigate the possibility
you mentioned in your letter. I would propose that we simply plan on
sharing the costs of your getting here, as we did in Tomsk for me (the
flat that you found for me). Once you are here, there would be no need
to spend any money, so whatever the cost is in arranging to travel here
and then divide that in two, and to my mind this is the most sensible
approach and one that will not make your winter vacation more hardship
that what you really need, to get away from your job for a month and to
be somewhere that you can relax, and I can promise you very good meals
which of course you will observe and comment on the slice of the onion
and the thickness of the broth. (I miss very much your emendations to
what is always for me something of a distraction, the kitchen). Last
night I made a beef soup with vegetables from some part of the cow’s
bones and even though I put in the vegetables a little too soon (before
skimming the fat that rises to the surface–actually it is called scum
in English–a terrible word, often used to refer to people, “social
scum” etc.) and then after it was ready I realized that either potatoes
or noodles would have been a very good thing to eat with it, and of
course I had neither potatoes or noodles, and had not even thought of
them. That is what I mean by my ‘distraction.’

If you were able to come to Poland the trip would be so easy: fly to
Moscow, connect to Warsaw the same morning (there’s plenty of time if
there’s two hours between flights, though 500 rubles for a taxi is
probably not your cup of tea). But you shouldn’t have to stay overnight
at the Sheremetyevo Hotel. The airport in Warsaw is small and friendly,
and I would be there to meet you, and we would walk about 100 steps
and taking a comfortable bus, the Polski Express, which runs every two
hours, to Lodz, for five dollars, and after an hour and a half we would
be in Lodz, and in another half an hour on Bus 57 we would be across
the street from my flat, where there is your very own room waiting for
you. Actually, you have your choice of two rooms: one with a door and
one without. Both rooms have a bed, desk, and cabinet, and a window.
But you would have privacy in addition to my company, and I think this
is a good combination. For one month, it is difficult to imagine the
need to be alone, but it is essential, and I feel more comfortable
about suggesting to you that if you came to Lodz you would enjoy the
luxury of not having to do anything except read and sleep. The private
room means that you could sleep quite late in the morning without my
waking you up. I was able to reset my deskclock so now the alarm rings
at 6:30 every morning, and I rather like the schedule, as that is when
the day is first getting light. That was strange for me in Tomsk, how
in winter the extreme brevity of the day disconnected me from my own
time-rhythms, and it seemed as though I was always waking up in the
deep dark, when it was sometimes as late as 8:00 in the morning. But
the light is sharper in Tomsk, even in winter, and there seems to be
more all around grey here, and what little writing I’ve done the color
grey has entered and is beginning to be a recurring thought. (One does
really think a color, among other items, that thought is not always
conceptual, and maybe this is why geology is something you translate
without difficulty, because there are direct lines between the words,
where, when one begins to think about the colors and tones and weights
in the words of the language that the one writing has grown up in, all
these elements are subconscious, and are not readily accessible to the
practical task of writing.

This morning I actually have time for a second cup of coffee.

It is not a thought about color, but going to the kitchen to heat the
water I thought how, perceptually, visually, you would feel quite at
home here (unlike travelling in the U.S.), since everyone (or, most)
live in the large apartment blocks as in Russia, though there are very
nice private homes with garden-yards, and though it will be closed in
winter, there is a place where people garden and next to it is a cafe
where in the late afternoon I often see friends and neighbors drinking
a beer (Polish beer is light, like German beer, and the only dark beer
I’ve found so far is Guiness–your favorite). The only great difference
are the Supermarkets, and I think that if you were to visit this would
be the place that you would go, within walking distance, and on week-
ends at the end of almost every aisle there is someone with a sample of
bread or fish or cheese–you could have a meal just by taking a sample
(though they would probably not give you the second and third and fourth
helpings which make you so happy). Two things I remember about your
mother: one her remark on the morning before your birthday, when you
asked about your birthday present, “Have you forgotten how old you are?”
and two, her asking you if you had not eaten too much when you visited
me. I like this idea very much, that when you are visiting me, you are
always eating. It is a sign of health and happiness. (And also that you
are in the company of someone who can cook for you as well as she can).
Unfortunately, as the stuffed peppers proved, I can’t cook anything like
your mother, but you were very kind to show such a strong appetite for
our dinners. As you can see, I like food very much also, and it is
probably the worst part of living alone, that there is almost no
pleasure
in a good dinner, as though this meal especially were meant to be
shared.

Well, I must leave in 15 minutes to walk to the flat of the translator
of my birth certificate, the last document that I need and then I will
meet at 10:00 with the student who is helping me here, where we complete
the residency application (it needs to be submitted in Polish) and after
that I will go to the bank (the application fee is 70-100 dollars) and
after that to the Passport Office, and by mid-afternoon I should be
done,
after which I will go to the Institute Anglyski and try to send to you
this letter, which you will probably not read until tomorrow morning.

I am looking forward to the day when your photograph arrives, though it
is possible that you will arrive before your photograph.

Do I dare to call you, My Hedgehog? (I don’t think so).

You will remain my Zhen
and sometimes Jenya (for those formal occasions)
and for the documents, Evgenia.
Have you any other names?


b


y


e

12.11/2003

Nov.11

Dear Zhen,

Early morning on the second day of the holiday that I don’t know what
holiday it is for or of or about. The larger stores do not close, as
in the U.S., but there is a noticeable decrease is the numbers of people
walking around, mostly they are walking their dogs, without appearance
of going to work (there is a posture and facial expression, universal,
for those going to work, don’t you think?)

Saturday I bought a coffee machine, which appears to have been made
in Germany, though the warranty address is in Spain. So I begin this
my second day with decent coffee, at last. There is probably no greater
division in the world than that between a cup of instant and ‘brewed’
coffee. Here, especially, at the shop counters, you can get a kava
mielona, which is some kind of coffee dust I’ve never seen before, as
the grounds float both on the top and stay at the bottom of the drink.
Your dacha coffee by comparison is worthy of any coffee emporium in
the coffee-saturated West. Let it be one luxury which is allowed to us.

To date, I have bought, in addition to this coffee machine (for less
than the Swiss one in Tomsk, as it, also, only makes one cup), a pair
of speakers for my computer, and a teapot: these are the only additions
to my flat. Now that I have the coffee machine, I notice that I do not
use the teapot, but once in a while (once in a very infrequent while)
I do make tea. Here, as in Russia, when students say they don’t like
something, they say, “it’s not my cup of tea.” This phrase must be
taught in first-year English classes everywhere. Very likely, it’s one
of those ‘holds’ in a confusion of sounds that one grasps to and begins
to figure out the sound-logic of the new language. I should think more
about learning languages, as I remain mired in my own.

After yesterday’s struggle with the washing machine, I don’t know now
when is the next time I will try to wash my clothes. I hope that this
does not become an unending cycle of now, it works, now, it doesn’t,
and I was really depending on this washing machine to impress you in
January if you are able to come here. The stove (gas stove!), fridge,
chairs and desks, etc., you have seen before, they are no different
than such items everywhere, but the washing machine–and now, I’m afraid
that it doesn’t work as well as I thought (refuses, actually, to empty
the water) and since the door to the machine is in front, the water
must be emptied before one can retrieve one’s clothes. I struggled for
most of the mid-afternoon through one cycle to the next, trying to
convince the machine to empty the water and give me back my shirts,
and finally I had to siphon the water into the shower stall beside
the washing machine. I was so exhausted (mentally as well as physically)
(the trauma of the recognition that my washing machine was not perfect
and then concern, as I have said, that now I have nothing to impress
you about my achievement in life (and a washing machine is a great
achievement in life) and fears that I would be cast out on the streets
wandering in search of what is called in the U.S. a laundromat (there
are machines there for the public and you put coins into them and
suddenly I cannot remember, are there even machines for soft drinks
in Tomsk? Surely they are, but how offensive they must be to the
women who work in the market stalls, which, now that I think of it,
always reminded me, those small stalls, open even on the coldest days,
of a form of human vending machine. I think there are even now machines
which speak after they have delivered their item.) Yes, laundromats.
With washer and dryer both, it reduces the time for cleaning clothes
to about 20 minutes for washing and 15-20 minutes for drying. Such
machines, of course, depend on people having a different set of clothes
for each day, so that at the end of one week or two weeks, there are
a lot of clothes to be washed. It was a point of cultural difference
at the hostel last year in Tomsk, where it seemed, at least the men,
had only the shirt and pants they wore and then another pair, since,
when I would take my laundry to the hostel manager (about 10 kilos,
jeans, socks, shirts etc.) she would comment on how heavy the weight,
and I could see much smaller bags behind the counter. This logic of
the garment would extend to the phenomenon of the travelling baggage,
as one almost feels obscene to travel with such a large suitcase as
my (now, one, but then, two!) bags–impossible to explain that this
is all one owns–the suitcase itself is such a display of ownership.
Impossible to explain that I have no items, no precious objects, no
souvenirs, nothing but what weighs under 35 kg.

So, now I have a coffee pot, teapot, and computer speakers: do you
think I am becoming bourgeois? Even, a counter-revolutionary? As you
can tell, I’ve been reading from the Soviet Cinema book, really only
for the essays by the Russian scholars, as I was interested in comparing
how they write to their counterparts in the Media and Society book,
which I was beginning to get impatient with, as the quotation I sent
you from Professor Willis about shopping in grocery stores–the
subjectivity in such a critical method is no different than in the
19th century someone going to the Equator zones in Africa or South
America and observing the Natives. That is what is sense in such a
passage, the Natives being observed in their masks of smiling faces
(a symptom which Russian workers do not suffer from, I remember very
few people taking the effort to smile, and as you remarked, the
climate becomes such, every day, when just to buy a small breakfast
roll is a struggle with someone who wishes to spit at you, even if
it is only words that they spit). Well, as my adventure last summer
may have suggested to you, I am one such Native, and though I have
somehow managed to escape, so that the one great accomplishment in
my life (in addition to my now not so trustworthy washing machine)
is the fact that I don’t have to go to work every morning when I
wake up–impossible to underestimate the necessity of this, as it is
where all essential laziness begins, true idleness, the Dull that I
am so fond of and about which you have written to me such understanding
words–my mind you know the Dull as well as me!–very simply, one
cannot know Sharpness, Energy, Seizures of Perception, without the
Dull, since the Dull is never Duty (the reading one does for one’s
classes, or worse, grading papers–so why do you grade papers, because
it appears in this crazy world people who grade papers don’t have to
get up every morning and go to work, so I grade papers, which, even
if it is dutiful, and interferes with the serious work of my Dull,
which I cannot practice when I am being responsible (you remember,
yes, the irony of your phrase, ‘My dear responsible teacher,’ yes,
I believe you were mocking me! As all responsibility which interferes
with the Dull should be mocked!

My mind this is very good coffee. The caffeine is authentic. At least
it is persuading me to write a little carelessly to you, who pause
over the words, ‘persuaded’ and ‘seduced.’ They are very close
synonyms. The first one is used for arguments, as in, “I was persuaded
by the logic of the argument” and the second is used, well, after the
sense of the book by Baudrillard–what was the Russian translation.
You recognized it immediately, with a slightly imperceptible but now
that I think about it, distinct chuckle. (To chuckle is a kind of
knowing laugh, and though from the sound of the word itself, at least
in English, it should be the sound that a chicken makes, it cannot
really be said that chickens chuckle). But there was a distinct laugh
(a short laugh, an amused laugh, a knowing laugh, but all the same,
laughter, yours, at this word in Russian, and does it really appear
to you that I have ever seduced you? I hope that I have persuaded you
to come to Poland in January to watch me struggle with my washing
machine. When I first began speaking with you in the office that you
have just now been returned to, you appeared to me to be someone
impossible to seduce, so to my memory at least, I do not remember one
flirtatious moment. Instead (and may I try to be serious?) you spoke,
we spoke, very seriously, and this was for me a form of seduction,
as I looked forward Mondays and Thursdays to an hour when I was able
to be serious, and even, sometimes, to be taken seriously, and as I
remember, I began to grow especially fond of your–how shall I say–
expressions, impatiences, really criticisms of English, as how often
you would draw attention to the division between what you were
thinking and the words that were available in English to express
the thought. I miss very much your office and those hours, late
winter, and by May we were joking, but for the first two months,
February and March, we almost did not joke at all. Do you have this
memory also? What in English would be called, ‘dead seriousness.’
From that earlier, distant history, I hate the feeling on my face
after I’ve been smiling, and when I am alone again, the smile is
gone, but not the tension in the face, and I think you know, and
I think you saw very early, that I do not care very much to smile,
and you did not make me smile, quite the opposite. Laughter is
another matter altogether. Well, it is time for a second cup of coffee.

And it is time that I should try to answer your question about the
distinction between the ‘virtual’ and the ‘imaginary.’

As a kind of shorthand, abbreviation, I think often that I know what
someone is writing about in an essay, when I read distinctions being
made between the Real, the Symbolic and the Imaginary (Lacan’s
categories).
Though it is from reading Slavoj Zizek, especially, where I’ve been
able to make sense, to have a sense, of the distinctions among these.
Very simply, the Real is what one simply does not have access to. It
is there, as the very condition of anyone’s existence, but it can
hardly be said to have a language. Think of the pain which prevents
you from sleeping sometimes. This bodily, physical pain (your biology)
would be what is Real, but how is it possible for you to say to anyone
else how you feel? There is the need to represent it, the pain, and
so one uses a language, so that the experience becomes Symbolic for
another, and they can understand. How much can they understand? Do
they know what it is like to lose a night’s sleep? Do they know what
the hours are like, especially those hours between 3:00 and 5:00 a.m.,
when the entire world appears to be sleeping or resting in a common
grave. As for the Imaginary, it isn’t easy to write a few simple words
about the Imaginary. That construction resulting from desire, driven
by desire, the wish for something to be true, and it is the active
state of the wishing-for which now especially tends to get attached
to the dream object, and commodities are presented as such
dream-objects.
Again, as abbreviation, the Imaginary as Dream World. It is easy enough
to feel a kind of hypnosis, trance, walking down aisles of goods,
and especially if you have the ability to purchase them, but there
is also the quite disciplined dreaming represented by an art form,
and for me Poetry has been this kind of dreaming, and you learn only
with effort and the achievement of skill how to make a Symbolic Object
from your Imaginary, so that there’s a relationship here. Writers
also talk about collective imaginaries, which is where, for example,
one might think of the cinema, and the very strict controls over
the cinema in the Soviet period (even projectors were registered)
and compare this to the chaos of the computer screen, and the mass
hypnosis potential in this instrument. It’s from the development and
increasing sophisticated technology where the concept, virtuality,
arrives, and really I think it means a kind of parallel world, not
so obviously imagined, but equally symbolic. Can you experience real
biological pain in the condition of virtuality? One statement I’ve
read is that ‘no one dies in cyberspace,’ and if this is so, then there
is no ontology, at least no biological horizon, in the virtual sphere.

These are not very satisfactory definitions, and it is interesting to
me that, trying to explain them, I’m recalled to how easy it is to
draw an equal sign between Imaginary and Virtual. If I write to you
that I am kissing you (and more) in words, then the depth at which
these words, and your ability to imagine my kisses, depends on the
experience of these kisses, would not appear to have anything to do
with the virtual, the condition of being virtual. Even though the next
time we kiss (January!) will not be the same as September, since you
will be in Lodz, not Tomsk, travelling and not at home, and so in
a different state, condition, of perception, isn’t it possible that
for orientation–the importance of knowing where one is–you will
remember that morning of our kisses the first morning, in Tomsk, after
returning from the airport in Novosibirsk? Is it even possible to
suggest that it is the memory of September which makes possible the
imagination of January? If this were virtual, one’s sense of three-
dimensional space would be different or not exist at all (for example,
this flat is not so very different from the flat in Tomsk), and one
depends on these resemblances for orientation, for the sensation of
knowing more or less where one is, and equally, your sense of who I am
(and all you need to do to confirm this is call, which is one way of
thinking about our use of the telephone, both last summer and now,
that it is a method of keeping our voices within range of one another,
so that we do not have to only imagine one another, though I have
this strong sense of imagining you even when speaking with you, as
much as your voice exists, all that is inflected by the difference
between ‘here’ and ‘there’), but the fact is that you more or less
know who I am, as, here, often, I look at where I am, the three-
dimensional space, the living space, imagining your presence, where
you would be in such a space and how you would feel in such a space
(my guess is that you need to be surrounded by books, as this is
what I saw in your flat in Tomsk, as one could hardly conclude that
it was the single narrow bed (cot) on which you sleep, or the window
and was there even a desk? I don’t remember a desk. Where do you dream?)
You read in bed, but it is sometimes nice to have a comfortable bed
in which to read and to dream. That is the Imaginary, one’s Reading.
There is not always an opening into this Imaginary. That is part of
the Dull, isn’t it, the sensation of the infinite Boredom of Books?
I don’t know how to solve this problem, as I only know that reading
and dreaming as Work must be avoided at all cost. Too many people
read in order to work. Too many books are turned into so much work.

When we enjoy an active awareness of our Imaginary, then everything
we read seems to correspond to our needs, and belongs somewhere, as
some part of the evolving and intensifying of consciousness and the
means by which that consciousness is sounded (and for someone who writes
it is with words that one sounds out the ontology of everyday life),
otherwise there is only repetition, and one day seems the same as the
next, and there is no sense of variation, or change. You alluded to
this in your letter, the one that arrived by post. I don’t understand
those parts of your letter where you blame yourself, or write of
yourself
as someone who had so many choices. It is an achievement to survive.
Haven’t you survived rather well? And isn’t the experience of the first
waves of dissatisfaction (to be uneasy, a little disturbed, troubled,
by the absence of an intensity in the imaginary, those memories of
reading, and the active state of dreaming that one’s reading creates),
a sign of something new? Something different? Something more charged
with energy? Life energy, “the ecology of the imagination” is the
wonderful phrase I read in one of the essays by the Russian scholars.
The imagination, anyone’s imagination, is not a light switch. You
can’t turn your imagination On and Off like a computer. It is an
environment, not only the biological body, but the surrounding world-
space, everyday demands, and the element of autonomy (independence).
When are you free? When do you feel really free? Wherever that is,
then that is where your Imagination is waiting.

I don’t know whether I make you feel any more free, as I could hardly
state with any degree of conviction that I exist in a state of freedom,
and sometimes it feels that my relationship to my reading at this
moment is rather unfree, restricted (limited, narrowed) by the doubt,
the uncertainty, of my ability to read in the way that is necessary for
my writing, when now so much of the time I am reading for what I am
able to say about someone else’s writing–and it is necessary to be
selfish here, so that I would say that to the extent that someone can
be utterly self-absorbed, what to all the world appears to be selfish,
is where the space is found to live in one’s imaginary. That is why
rooms with windows and doors are so important. You need to be alone.
I have always been most afraid of people who do not need to be alone.
And so you see I live in this extreme condition of being alone. Here,
in the being alone, I am able to investigate the Dull. For I believe
that it is the encounter (and struggle) with the Dull that all writing,
all good and true writing, comes from. Even the Dull does not appear
whenever you wish for it.

Why do I not wish to stop writing this letter? Is it then that I must
turn to other tasks, reading, and reading not for myself, for my
imaginary, but for tomorrow, for the classroom? If only you knew how
little I have been able to be responsible in my life, I think you would
be somewhat suspicious of me. You should be suspicious at least of
someone who lives so much alone. Should you be suspicious? Here I am
hoping that you will come to visit me in January, not with suspicion
in your heart, but the simple wish to get away from your work and to
relax somewhere (here) and with someone (me) whom you know well and
whose company you enjoy?

In January, if you are here, I will keep my Dull in a cabinet, one of
the cabinets with keys. My Dull will be locked away, and I will only
take it out after you are gone again, returning to the sphere of
authority of the university, which I cannot help but wonder does not
produce for you your Dull. Here’s a passage from the Soviet Cinema
book:

“Directors found it difficult to make interesting films about workers
and tended to avoid them. Seventeen films took place on collective
farms…. A Soviet person who received all his or her information from
movies might have thought that life in the countryside was a round of
never-ending dancing and singing. Directors, and presumably audiences,
liked exotic locales and a large number of films were made about the
exploits of explorers, geologists and pilots. Between 1938 and 1940
alone there were eight films that had pilots as heroes.”

I saw once one of the films from this period or maybe a little later
about a team of geologists mapping mineral deposits and the
‘existential’
force of nature as destruction (only one of the geologists survives,
rafting down a river in the ice and snow, collapsed, and indigenous
people find him), and how–with such a setting, to place (to write)
the story of the rabbit you could not catch, to make a mock Socialist
epic from this–what would such a story involve?

I mention this as something to think about, as something that occurs
to me when reading this book about the movies that were made under
such strict controls (producers and others lost their lives in 37-38).
Stalin watched every film, often making direct changes in the scripts
and even, titles. It is not the historical figure of Stalin that
interests
me, but the notion of the Dictator or Despot (Mass Murderer, though,
actually, after Hollywood, the term Mass Murderer is something of a
joke,
something more like, Administrator of the Mass Grave), as someone who
cannot distinguish the difference between reality and the film. Here
the concept of the virtual would refer? The sleepless vigilance over
the sign production, suggestive of the tyranny of the virtual over the
real, what was called Social Reality in those days, and what Social
Realism was decreed to represent, as the only legitmate representation.
There has probably never been a stricter formula for writers and others
to have to follow. Unless the oral story-telling tradition is an equally
restrictive formula. But this idea that you can control what thoughts
circulate by managing how signs are made (the very idea that thoughts
circulate this way depends on a very mechanical conception of the
imagination), is extremely suggestive for me at this point.

The figure of Stalin is unavailable to me, unreal. The name is really
an empty sign. Zizek in one of his books tells the story of two trains
meeting after the defeat in Russia, on one train wounded soldiers and
on the other train, the Leader. Suddenly, at arm’s length, across the
space of parallel train tracks, the Symbolic and the Real stood face to
face: in a single abrupt and angry gesture, the Leader pulled down the
shade of his compartment. Zizek tells this anecdote as something of a
modern-day Parable of the Cave (Plato), reality and illusion and is all
reality illusory etc., since what is telling is the sudden shock of
the sight of the very real soldiers, and not the symbolism of military
defeat, maps and statistics.

What is available to me is the experience of a certain threshold of
absolute power, and the sensation of being the object of this form of
exercise of power (the experience of surveillance, and it is often
written about in the on-line world as pranks that technicians play on
one another, what might be called monitoring pranks, though when and
where the prank becomes something else, something more sinister, is
hard to say. Very simply, one becomes very fearful of one’s telephone.
Once, in Cleveland, after I’d finished writing a poem, and published
it online, I got a phone call with the recorded message, “Get another
message.” This collapse or breaking apart of the division between the
Imaginary (the poem) and the Social Real in the (forced) awareness that
someone is calling you. From such an example of typical communications
among writers in the U.S. (seriously, there are essays written about
wire-tapping and phone cracking among the hi-tech intelligentsia) you
can understand what a relief it is and how good it feels to have normal
conversations with you even at the distance between Russia and Poland.
Maybe it is not ‘typical,’ to exert this form of power, but I know that
it had a definite effect on me, and to some extent I am still ‘living’
the effect of events that happened ‘in the wires,’ so to speak, several
years ago. They were not simply imaginary, though even to speak of
them opens one to the charge of ‘imagining,’ and this is the particular
power of electronic surveillance: it does not give its victim the
accusation, as there is nowhere to point except the machine. No one
forced you to use the telephone or to connect to the internet, so what
grounds of accusation are there? Isn’t it also the effect, the design,
of surveillance to create in its object the imagination of being
monitored? The living space as one which becomes constructed on the
grounds of infinite suspicion. I interpret the sensitivity to this
in the Russian scholar’s phrase, “ecology of the imagination.”

Maybe you should be thankful that there are not so many holiday mornings
where I drink two cups of fresh coffee and write to you endlessly about
this and that. But you should know that I understood very seriously your
talking about the experience you’d had once, that late evening in June,
when we were talking, and I won’t repeat for you the words that you said
or worse, how I heard them, except that I remember that you said that
you
keep a journal, and that this is not something many people who believe
they know you and have known you since childhood know about you. Why did
you tell it to me except for the fact that I had spoken rather self-
consciously about my own writing? So I write to you about writing, and
really that what all these letters are about, and I invite you to
sometimes
think of your writing, and I promise you that one thinks about one’s
writing especially in those times when one is not writing at all.
Writing
is very patient. It waits and waits for just the right moment. What is
most important is for one not to forget that once, even if just once,
there was the wish, to write, then that is enough, more than enough.

The wish to write is like that candle in Tarkovsky’s “Nostalgia.”

The wind keeps blowing it out, and we are drowning, surrounded by the
water of others’ voices.

If I write to you about writing, it is only to hold the candle for you,
to you, to remind you of the candle.

You said to me once that once you trembled in the presence of a thought
that did not belong to you, and I remember the trembling in your voice
when you told me this.

I do not remember it now to say to you it is something you should do.
There is nothing that you need to do, and you would feel this very
strongly if you lived with me, since I am someone who most of the time
does nothing at all, except worry about the fact that they are doing
nothing.

I remember your trembling only as the expression of having once wished
something, and such wishes are more important (and sacred) than all the
washing machines in the world.


b
y
e


p.s. Mid-afternoon and I’m being a responsible teacher, reading for
tomorrow. What do I mean by trying to imagine Stalin? If I were to work
on a project, Stalin is Coming (or, after the title of a Russian film,
Stalin is Still With Us? [the question mark was added by the film review
board] [Tofik Shakhverdiev, Stalin s nami?, 1989], or, alternatively, or
in combination, We Cannot Live Like This [Stanislav Govorukhin, Tak
zhit’
nel’zya, 1990], such a project would explore, critically, the problem of
the Representation and the Image. Here is a quotation from an essay I
was
hoping to use for my Intro to American Culture class tomorrow:

“One key source of constructions of dominant masculinity is the movie
industry, which has introduced into the culture a seemingly endless
stream
of violent male icons…. These cultural heroes rose to prominence in an
era, the mid-to-late 1970s into the 1980s, in which working-class White
males had to contend with increasing economic instability and
dislocation,
the perception of gains by people of color at the expense of the White
working class, and a women’s movement that overtly challenged male
hegemony. In the face of these pressures, then, it is not surprising
that White men (especially but not exclusively working-class) would
latch
onto big, muscular, violent men as cinematic heroes.”

The logic here, though more implicit, does not differ at all from the
representational logic operating on the image-system of Social Realism,
and in an earlier letter I may even have quoted a passage from a
well-known
contemporary theorist, Frederic Jameson, that there is something of a
‘return of the repressed’ in the return of naturalism and demands for
the
representation in U.S. society and culture. A demand that comes from
somewhere previous to modernism. The idea that a representation causes
a reaction, that images induce behavior. Such ideas ignore the
complexity
of the relationship between the Real, the Symbolic, and the Imaginary.
Social Realism wasn’t even about realism, whatever that is, but
stylizing
(making a formula for) an official interpretation of reality.

I wrote to you in another letter about John Carlos Rowe’s Literature and
U.S. Imperialism, and it is with a similar sense of the impending
‘Stalinism’
(which by the way is absent from the book about Soviet-era Cinema,
neither the Anglo nor the Russian scholars have any language for
Stalinism
as a class phenomenon, as a social and institutional force which
expresses
the demons of ‘brain workers,’ whether they are so-called educators
(pedagogues) or technocrats: the working class is idealized as a result
as
part of an unleashing of a system of representation, though the working
class itself would never express itself in such a way. (I should add to
the
‘brain-workers’ the intelligentsia itself, at least that layer of an
educated
strata that works with culture and cultural representations.) Do I have
any ideas about how the working class might express itself? Who knows
and who cares. It’s not something that’s happening now, at least not
yet.
Chance are, it won’t happen at all. Isn’t that what the historical
Stalinism was about? I wrote in an essay about Zizek and Swift that
forced collectivism was class terror waged by the government against
the countryside and intended to strike fear into an already defeated
working class.

The very important cultural work to be done at this moment in history
is to stand for the multilayered image (what was once called Allegory)
and the irreducible complexity of the representation. These are fine
sounding words. What do I mean? That I’m trying to find my way towards
the conception of a critical work capable of articulating the danger of
the assertion of the transparency of the representation and the emptying
out of the artwork into a political content. I don’t have anything near
a framework yet, the kind of outline or scaffolding one builds in order
to begin work on the structure itself, only intuitions, and those kinds
of
intuitions that one relies on as a form of self-preservation (it might
even
be called ‘class instinct’). Whether or not I’m even capable of such a
work, that is where doubt and uncertainty enter. Is the alternative only
a careful and studied silence? Fascism (Nationalism) is easy to fight
against in comparison. But this other looming form (which the book about
Soviet-era cinema is so confident belongs to the past) of totalitarian
controls and the legislation of what belongs and what does not belong to
a globally administered culture of competing nationalisms is coming.

Why should I care? Why should this be a project that I might begin work
on? Shouldn’t I care about the ‘ecology of the imagination’ and the
cultural environment where my writings might or might not belong?

Also, there were two quotations from another essay which I removed from
this letter, though I’m going to use the essay for my 5th year class on
Friday–why did I remove them from this letter? Did the quotations
threaten our language of ‘kisses’ (virtual or otherwise) somehow by
cheapening or degrading the being-together, which the ‘virtual kiss’
offers
(like a small gift offers) as a token of remembrance? There are words
that are used to humiliate (“humiliated” is the word you have used
before,
and with some hesitation), so, yes, that it is the intended or
unintended
violence of the writing in that essay which would humiliate sensuality
and desire itself, sanitizing everything and everyone into some unstated
image of a very Kantian ‘Good’ and ‘Beautiful.’

There is probably nothing more Kantian than Social Realism.

The idealization of Value. But how do you even know what I’m talking
about if I don’t give you the quotations?

p.s.s.

Do you like these lines? They’re from a poem I’m teaching tomorrow.

A cool of books
will sometimes lead the mind to libraries
of a hot afternoon, if books can be found
cool to the sense to lead the mind away.

For there is a wind or ghost of a wind
in all books echoing the life
there, a high wind that fills the tubes
of the ear until we think we hear a wind,
actual .
to lead the mind away.

Drawn from the streets we break off
our minds’ seclusion and are taken up by
the books’ winds, seeking, seeking
down the wind
until we are unaware which is the wind and
which the wind’s power over us .
to lead the mind away

and there grows in the mind
a scent, it may be, of locust blossoms
whose perfume is itself a wind moving
to lead the mind away

through which, below the cataract
soon to be dry
the river whirls and eddys
first recollected.

Spent from wandering the useless
streets these months, faces folded against
him like clover at nightfall, something
has brought him back to his own
mind .

in which a falls unseen
tumbles and rights itself
and refalls–and does not cease, falling
and refalling with a roar, a reverberation
not of the falls but of its rumor
unabated
…

Books will give rest sometimes against
the uproar of water falling
and righting itself to refall filling
the mind with its reverberation
shaking stone.

13.11.03

Re: lost in time

Dear Zhen,

Today I went to the passport office by myslef without translator and
succeeded in submitting the last document needed for my temporary
residency permit to be processed. I felt quite good about it afterwards
as I was nervous about going by myself, one of those constant reminders
of the many small tensions in living among a language one does not
speak. I’ll write a longer letter (maybe tonight) about now-notorious
letter of recommendation (you do enjoy having fun at my expense!) and I
do not blame you, not at all. That is your phrase, “not at all.” Do you
miss me? “No, not at all.” (Slight smile at the corners of Jenya’s
always very serious face). I’m writing this at the office and don’t
wish to take up too much time (and I now have internet connection at
home so I will try to send you short letters to greet you in the
morning when you arrive to work.

bye now

(let’s look for a good watch for you in Lodz when you are here?)

14.11.03

Lysheha

Dear Zhen,

Later today, Thursday, actually evening, and instead of preparing for
tomorrow’s classes I’m writing you, though I won’t write for long. It’s
a different feeling, being able to write you and send my letter to you
immediately, even though you won’t read it until tomorrow morning. Why
don’t you have a connection at home? Yes the slow speed. But it would be
nice to write you in the evenings, when the cost of the internet is
less.

Tonight I made something quite good to eat by accident. Eggplant (which
as you know is always good no matter what you do with it) with beef
cubes, but with a sauce that I went to the store for (I also needed
water for my coffee, which I am drinking cup after cup of) and which
turned out to be a sweet sauce, so that the eggplant dish almost tasted
like something you would get in a Chinese restaurant. It’s very pleasant
to cook something for yourself that you haven’t tasted before.

I’m sending you some poems that I downloaded from www.
poetryinternational.org
in Ukrainian. Hoping that you might enjoy the distraction. If you like
these,
I can send more poems from different countries. There are a number of
poets
from Israel, as I remember.

Now, for letter of recommendation, it is both comic and sad. I think it
is
something that you should always use against me. I did admit it, and I
don’t think it’s to my credit that I did. But I don’t know what else to
say about it. This is something that has followed me around in my life
in very strange ways, and it is a strange custom in the U.S. (such a
letter
is always, always, always used for professional jobs, especially
teaching).
So I have very funny memories about some of them. When I was very young,
and needed to change schools because of the cost, a professor wrote a
letter
of recommendation for me and I still remember his words, “I regret that
finanicial exigencies have” etc. etc. (I didn’t have the least idea what
“exigencies” meant but it did seem a nice way to say that our university
can’t support such poor people, and I got a one-year scholarship from
that
letter (I had another one-year scholarship in my second-year of college
too, and one of my teachers then made a great show of writing letters of
recommendation for me to famous universities (I was attending something
less than the equivalent of a pedagogical institute, almost a trade
school) and then much later when I went to San Francisco without asking
there was a poet who likewise made a great show of writing me a letter
of recommendation, which I didn’t know what to do with, as I wasn’t
applying to teach anywhere, but it was a way of showing that she was
“generous.” Then after I separated from my wife, she also wrote me a
letter of recommendation, probably one of the best ones, though I don’t
know what kind of position it would have qualified me for. I think it
was more like a way of say how sorry she felt for what had become of me.
Finally, did I tell you that it was no easy task to get Nadezhda
Shalomova
to write me a letter? Probably it was that letter that helped get me the
job here.

What can you conclude from all this useless information? That I am
always
in need of recommendation letters! Oh no, I am always in need of a new
job! Why am I leaving the old job? Isn’t this rather curious, don’t you
think, my dear Cactus?

Yes, you are Cactus, not Hedgehog. There is an animal that combines
both features of Hedgehog and Cactus, though I forget what it’s name is.
As soon as I remember, I will call you it. I will call you the name for
it. Porcupine?

Well, I certainly was looking for letters of recommendation in Tomsk.
That is why I worked so hard, and, after all, we did meet (the pretext,
the famous pretext!) as employer and employee (I am such a devoted
employee). Still, I didn’t quite know what to make of you, as you were
apparently a person of some authority, and yet you did not make yourself
appear important at all. I remember your telling me how you were
working a lot, in this building and that, and we made an appointment,
which I forgot.

What do you think of all these signs? I think they are very funny.

Maybe it’s important for many meaningless and semi-meaningless things
to happen. You can’t interpret an epic into every small detail.

Always, you know, I don’t what to be bothered. Like I don’t want to
be bothered with classes tomorrow, though I will go to them, and
pretend that I am interested.

Teaching is like theater: you pretend that ideas are important, as
you pretend that people have a future. It is possible to feel quite
cynical about all this (and I believe you are rather cynical). It is
always a good feeling, knowing I cannot appeal to your “humanity”
though you have a lot of humanity, you just refuse to talk in such
abstractions.

I wish I could have dinner with you and Irina Nikolaevna tomorrow.

You who live so very near the threshold of all that is human and real.
In the sense of authentic (troublesome word). It means something that
means something. Anything! I took back my book on Stalin and the Cinema.
It was rather depressing. I checked out a textbook instead (more
depressing). But it was from a place in England called Open University
which looks interesting. Everything is interesting! How interesting!
Are you interested in my interesting! Please be interested …

SHUT UP Jenya laughs, my face underneath the chair staring into the
chair.

Well, these words won’t make you laugh, but I am in a better mood about
teaching tomorrow, and I’ll probably give another hour or two to
making sure that I have some questions to ask.

If you like the Ukrainian poems, let me know.



b



y



e



P.S. I just found out that through this mailer I can’t attach the folder
with the poems by the Ukrainian poet. I’ll try to find another way to
send them to you.

14.11.03

Ukrainian poetry address

Dear Zhen,

It’s rather a lot easier to simply send you the url for the poetry
I was going to send you. If you like it, let me know, and I’ll look
for other poems

http://ukraine.poetryinternational.org/

Of course, there are no Russian pages (yet).

b
y
e

14.11.03

Between classes

Dear Zhen,

Just a note between classes on Friday a few minutes before noon. Hoping
that you’ll have a chance to read these few words before the weekend.
If you had a weekend address then I could write to you then but maybe I
would not have anything to write about though isn’t that better
sometimes?

Today’s classes went very well, and I almost lost sleep (sleeping extra
hours) instead of preparing, feeling unprepared, without notes, and
then the improvisation results in a very happy class, to tell from
student reactions, that they enjoy the class, participate, interact,
and thank me at the end of the class. For me, I experience it as I said
as performance, and so before the performance there is almost agonizing
about how well I do not feel, about teaching, which must sound to you
like complaining, then I go into class and go off on an improvisation,
involving others in the construction of a discourse about this and
that, realy about a lot of things, using both literature and popular
culture.

I enjoy teaching this way, but the strain on my nerves before the class
is difficult.

Some day, some distant and happy day, I will have materials and a
location from which to speak, and I will feel less this demand to put
everything together at the last moment.

Hope you don’t mind hearing from me.

“Not at all.”

b
y
e


14.11.03

After classes

Zoo, or Letters Not about Love
Introduction and translation by Richard Sheldon
Russian Literature Series
October 2001
164 pages, 5.5 x 8.5
$11.95, paperback, 1-56478-311-1

SPECIAL SALE–any 100 Dalkey titles for $500
While living in exile in Berlin, Viktor Shklovsky fell in love with
Elsa Triolet (the “Alya” of this novel). Shklovsky was in the habit of
sending Elsa several letters a day, a situation she accepted under one
condition: he was forbidden to write about love. Zoo, or Letters Not
about Love is an epistolary novel born of this constraint, and although
the brilliant and playful letters contained here cover everything from
observations about contemporary German and Russian life to theories of
art and literature, nonetheless every one of them is indirectly
dedicated to the one topic they are all required to avoid: their
author’s own unrequited love.

A leading theoretician of Russian Formalism, Viktor Shklovsky was a
major influence on the development of contemporary Russian literature,
criticism, and film theory. Several of his books have been translated
into English, including Third Factory, Sentimental Journey, and Theory
of Prose.

“Zoo is more than a moving evocation of the pain of exile and
unrequited love . . . it is also rich with literary history.”–New
Leader

“Zoo, or Letters Not about Love is a work of gossip, allusion and
esoteric reference, with devices–some typographical–which Shklovsky
borrowed from Sterne, whom he much admired.”–John Bayley, Listener

“The animals of the nearby zoo are symbols of his fellow émigrés,
captured and far from home. Telephones and automobiles–relatively new
inventions in 1922–appear and reappear as magical agents of good and
evil. This quasi-novel is a bizarre and brilliant book.”–Charles
Simmons, New York Times

“Zoo is an excellent example of experimentation with the narrative in
the 1920s. . . . The style is futurist, for it turns the mechanical
world into an emblem of longing and frustrated love.”–Library Journal

“Shklovsky revitalizes the traditional epistolary novel.”

—

Zhen! I thought you might enjoy what Russian literature (or ads for
Russian Literature) sound like in English. There’s more in the
attached doc. Hope to speak to you read you hear from you as soon
as humanly possible! Jenya! Where are you! What are you doing!

b


y


e

15.11.03

But see etc.

Dear Zhen,

I don’t even know if I should be writing you, I’ve just finished eating
another accident in the kitchen, this one better than the night before.

This time I cooked chicken bones (always I save the bones from the
chicken after I’ve roasted it) and cooked it with an onion and herbs
(thyme, oregano, papryka, pepper, salt) and then added macoroni (should
I add, your ‘hated macoroni?’ and then, when putting it in bowl, I
added yoghurt, plain yoghurt, which gives effect like smetana, and it
was so delicious I ate four bowls, and now I feel like falling asleep.

What was it that I was going to write to you about?

Well, first, thank you for mentioning your father. I forget to remember
myself to him in my letters to you. Perhaps you will think that I am
only being ‘ceremonious,’ but it was really nice to speak with him in
your flat that night, and for reasons that I cannot even begin to tell
you now, though you mentioned yourself in one of our conversations that
he was from peasant family, and if someone from farm family in Iowa
earned his respect for even a moment, then I am very happy to have met
him, and it feels very good your mentioning that he enjoys the coffee
apparatus from Belgium, or was it Switzerland or France?

Oh, Europe has so many apparatuses …

Coffee, though, what could be more important than coffee?

I had so many serious things to write to you about and they all
evaporated in the chicken-pasta-fake-smetana!

But you know very well this effect (taste) when the smetana meets the
broth, and how it appears first in the spoon, and then to the taste of
the tongue …

Yes, I thought today, as soon as I see Jenya, our first words will be,
“Let’s get something to eat!”

Appetite is worth dying for.

I am very hungry all around and I don’t wish to irritate you with bad
attempts at humor so please forget all mention of Porcupine etc.

There are some very beautiful poems at that Ukrainian website, though.
But if I suggested which ones, then I would be playing (to my mind) an
unbearable role towards you. We find what we want and what we need to
find. No one can direct us. It is not to direct to you that I even
mention such things. Only to gesture towards, the infinite gesturing
towards …

I hope that you are able to read these few meaningless words in the
morning, your Saturday morning.

I hope that you like me sometimes.

b


y



e


P.s.

I like the last stanza of the “Culture” poem. As blind as I am in my
English.

15.11.03

Wild face hours

Dear Zhen,

Late night or early morning revellers voices outside my window
awoke me whether or not from a dream I do not know, but a glance
at the time reminded me of my calling you early on a Saturday
and there was this sudden, sharp wish to speak to you, to hear
your voice. I will content myself with writing you, hoping that
you go to the office when I should be hoping that you do not need
to go to the office today. There is one (among many) (disturbing)
paradoxes of affection: I should wish for you not to need to
work, but if you go to work, you will read my words to you, and
a need of mine (to communicate to you) will be contented, while
you are having to be somewhere that you would rather not be. I
imagine you the cold winter day at your dacha last week, going
to where (how can I say where?)–there, those books upstairs and
downstairs, laying around quite lazily and in a state of abandon
aching to be read. How welcome it is to read in the half-waking
half-dreaming mind when a book almost puts itself into your
hands. Does one dream with electronics? Is it whimsy to send
you pages from that other textual world? What is the word in
Russian for half-waking half dreaming reading mind? People who
write about cinema write about its dream-like character, that
the combination of the visual and the verbal reproduce more
closely than textuality the dream condition, even the deep
dark night dream. Discussions often turn to how subjectivity
is produced, conditioned, distributed: so when as this morning
5th year students in my presentation class spoke about films
they spoke about films that I either knew or knew of just from
being in and around the culture, mass culture, U.S. culture,
that part of it anyway in the form of the broadcast, and it
makes me wonder whether we are all dreaming the same dream?
How an illusion is constructed, perhaps.

There is more to your comment, then, I’m thinking, about
what films we would watch were we to have that simple luxury
of passing the time of day together, that it is one of the
reminders of space of reference between us, even that portion
of the reference which we do not take very seriously (like
film watching, which we have never done, and I wonder whether
it is a little like going for a walk? On Independence Day
here, November 11, late in the evening I watched a Polish
movie that I saw many years ago, in English called Ashes &
Diamonds, and maybe it was the book on Soviet-era cinema
that I was reading from during the same week, but there is
a scene in the movie (set in 1945 or 46) with an icon-portrait
of Stalin in the street with tanks rolling down that street,
and I mention it now because I didn’t remember this split-
second scene, shot, frame, though I’ve seen the movie at
least twice before. Was it a cultural-historical reference
which I could not notice until travelling? I don’t know.
Are Hollywood movies another form of tank? How does an
economy get imposed–by force or by consent? What exactly
are we consenting to when we enter body and soul into
the circulation of the commodity?

Maybe I have not mentioned it before, but it was with some
emotion that I spoke briefly with your father (your mention
of the coffee apparatus reminds me of this) as you had told
me about, a little about, his social origins (does it mean
anything if one comes from the peasantry or the intelligentsia?)
Certainly this question has haunted me for most of that part
of my life when I was consciously making cultural objects
motivated by the wish to belong in a culture. Sometimes it is
so simple as having a job, and that is why I joke about the
recommendation letter, though I’m not sure that we’re laughing
at the same joke. Sometimes I think you are laughing at my
perception of you as an important person (and just how
important you are you will find out if you ever have any
intention of leaving–so many people depend on you there) and
my perception of you, after our first interview, as someone
who was vaguely ‘Western’ (whatever that means, but one should
try to define it sometimes, else it remains unconscious and
assumed), compared to most everyone else I worked with at
either Building 7 or the Main Building.

Maybe this is even what I tried to say that accidental afternoon
standing with you in the downpour, when I drew attention to
how alert you were to the double-meaning (was it an irony? you
are extremely alert to ironies) about the word, around the words,
“pretext.” What is the motivation for a conversation? I remember
now something or other, standing there, in the rain, said about
the danger of entering into such conversations, or at least that
moment in the conversation when there is a mutual acknowledgment
and recognition of the pretext, and that really what one does
in effect is to expose themselves, to disclose a vulnerability,
even a weakness, to someone who is becoming a trusted companion
in conversation (that moment when we can think aloud and express
our impressions and wishes almost as they are happening, and
as so often happens, perhaps, directly in response and influenced
by the other. Is it that influence which is dangerous?

Porcupines are not enough, nor the wild face, if that is so.
The most appropriate animal-shape for me to assume would be the
armadillo (is there a word for this animal in your dictionary?)
The armadillo and the porcupine are something like fellow-travellers
(a word from the ‘red’ party period in U.S. political history)
and they both have a curious relation to the forest where they
live. I choose the armadillo as I wish to assure you that I have
very thick skin, and do not wish to take away from you your
treasured sting. Is it sting? Is that the right word? There
should be a stronger word, and there are probably a number of
words, in Russian. And just what is there curious relation to
the forest? Well, I was always seeing them on my rambles in
childhood from almost out of the corner of my eye, late at
night or early in the morning (even late in my life I would
walk in the woods at all hours, sometimes in the pouring rain
and in the deep winter, in snow, have I told you this?) though
there were no porcupines and armadillos in the midwest, only
deer and many kinds of birds, a fox or two, and coyotes that
one could hear but which I never saw, even walking here in the
woods nearby I saw a deer at the edge of a clearing, moving
very quickly, but in Florida, in the Everglades, what used to
be anyway something of a kind of woods, or it had that wildness
(all of this or most of this gone now, and that is one reason
why I wrote so much and spoke so much about my shock at the
mansions that had been build in the place of environment that
I had known and which you can imagine from one of the photos
that I sent you, the photo from the mid-60s (my childhood).
So armadillos and porcupines are familiar to me from this time
in my life, they are real, not imaginary creatures, unlike,
for example, a lion or giraffe or elephant, which I have only
seen at zoos.

Where you are, there can be seen hawks in the sky, and that
bird from the fairy tales? The large one with the blue wings?
Maybe we should look to the sky for words for ourselves instead
of the underbrush (where the porcupine and the armadillo live).
Once one begins to break up the word porcupine, it’s almost
impossible to avoid associations with that other rather maligned
creature of the farmyard which we’ve written about before, one
wonders where these words come from. Is the porcupine in folk
history some kind of pig-wearing-pine-needles? The armadillo
must be named after its armor (really it looks like a kind of
Spanish conquistador on four short legs). Honestly, I think that
I always must have had difficulty with the name “Proserpine”
when I began to read literature, as every time I saw the name
I’m sure that I thought of “Porcupine.” (I’m still not sure
even today whether the final “e” is pronounced, nor even who
this figure was? Is she the wife of Pluto in the Underworld story?
If you are in fact, not Cassandra (such surprising things you
say sometimes, “I am not Cassandra”–really, what were you
thinking? Would you be willing to assume the name in place of
the name of Porcupine, of Proserpine? The reason why I ask
is that I believe that I’ve been getting ready for some time
now to visit the Underworld (why not? Ulysses does, though
it’s strange, this figure is more concrete to me as Odysseus,
where, for the moment anyway, I can only remember Pluto and
Proserpine and not their “Greek” (how can they be called
“Greek” names you interrupt, when you’re not writing them
in Cyrillic?) names, Lord of the Underworld? Pluto? It’s also
the name of a dog in a Disney cartoon. Or maybe that dog’s
name was Plato. But what I was trying to say is that it’s
getting time to visit the Underworld, where the dead poets
speak (so to speak). They don’t really speak. One only
imagines them speaking. So if you wish to be Proserpine
and not Porcupine, you should know that I distinguish very
little difference between the two, since I don’t really know
whether I learned more about poetry from walking all the
time in the woods or from reading books.

What is curious is that when you study poetry in the schools
you become self-conscious about other forms of study, even
very simply the study of colors, and sounds, and rhythms,
all these things we are reminded of during a walk in the forest
with or without the ravine, where we are left standing without
a guiding hand, and for a while anyway it is almost convincing,
that the footnote at the bottom of the page about who Proserpine
was is more important than what a Porcupine is and what it looks
like and how it behaves. It is funny when you mention skunk,
I have only a very strong memory of just how bad my dog smelled
and how I had to use ketchup to get the smell off after getting
too close. I have a very specific memory of skunk, and there
is a very terrible poem which everyone who studies poetry in
the university is almost obligated to read, called “Skunk Hour.”
When I heard Brodsky read in 1977 he dedicated a poem to the
author of “Skunk Hour.” Which is more important, my memory of
knowing how to remove the terrible smell from my dog by rubbing
ketchup all over the fur (everyone who lives in the country
has ‘skunk stories’ about their dogs coming home with the
skunk all over them–really an unbearable smell), or my memory
of the poem which uses this word? Which memory is more important
for the writing of poetry?

To take the example a little further (I am still thinking of
the honor of meeting your father, whom I knew from you to be
from peasant family, and not as the author of the textbook on
mining), the poet who wrote the poem “Skunk Hour” was from
the Boston aristocracy (there are such distinctions in the U.S.
though they always sound a bit bizarre), and I think he was
abusing this poor animal by making such a use of it in his
title. The way the animal appears is as a convenient sign
for mental state, thought, emotion, whatever words we attach
to our subjectivity, and the problem is that we need words
to attach somewhere, as without language we have no subjectivity
(maybe that is what is so disturbing about the proliferation
of the visual sign, that a form of communication is more and
more being constructed which severely restricts language),
and I don’t mean to suggest that writers cannot put animals
in their poems, but I think that if you come from the country
that you have a little more respect for the being of animals
(not going so far as to attribute to them a subjectivity).
The animal in “Skunk Hour” appears like a kind of tame pet
and not a wild face. I wonder whether you have in Siberia
what is called a Wolverine in northern U.S. near Canada.
It is related to the skunk at the armadillo is related to
the porcupine. I find myself rather wishing that the poet
who wrote “Skunk Hour” had met with a Wolverine instead.
Would you like to be a Wolverine? They have very wild faces
and extremely sharp teeth. It is a pity, but so many of
these creatures have become little more than emblems or
tattoos as the forest disappears from view in a culture.
I cannot write “wolverine” without thinking of the name
of a college football team. How meanings to words, word
associations, circulate in one’s mind. There is some humor
in this, all these signs that mean nothing, but there
really are animals and human beings and forests and cities
(an ecology, environment) and one wishes sometimes to write
in such a way that the writing itself exists alongside
the life-world, as an environment, a verbal environment,
not to be passively consumed as when watching a film, but
existing somewhere, in a specific and well-made and
designed space, waiting to be read, at some distant time.

Dear Jenya, you should know that I am quite capable of
the wild face, and I think that is why sometimes I am so
much alone, that I tend to live alone, because when one
is alone, there is always time to compose the wild face
into a face more appropriate for social roles such as
teaching. Do you sometimes go to your dacha for the wild
face? Do you sometimes surprise yourself at a glance in
the mirror and–there you are–who is that? I think sometimes
that you do (or else why are those books or poetry laying
around so carelessly). If you do not wish to have the wild
face, then you will only read when you read to work (I
mention this problem a lot as it is a great problem for
a poet, how to know not to read as simply an excuse to
work or to convince oneself that one is working, and writers
who seek an activation of their work have to struggle with
this in particular, though really I think every writer
struggles with the thought, “I should be working but I
don’t believe in poetry as work.” (All the time in English
writers refer to their writing as their “work.”) By the
way, is “zatrudnenie” or “zatrudnaya” translated as ‘making
difficult’? My mind I would think “hard work” is what it
means, yes?

Do you think that reading poetry should be hard work? This
is a difference I notice between the poems at the international
poetry website and the poetry from my orientation in Anglo-
American modernism or postmodernism. There is a kind of lyrical
ease in the Ukranian and Slovenian and Crotian poems I’ve
read recently missing from a lot of poetry written in the U.S.
including a lot of my own poetry. You wrote that “Recent
Events” struck you as colder than the poems that you heard
me read in Tomsk. It is a curious word to use, “cold,” for one
who lives in Siberia! In the second book I was beginning to
write with a greater ease, without worrying so much about
form and folding in layers of reference (the coldness, even
‘cruelty’ so you have said, of “Tedium Drum”), and this
discovery of spontaneity is important for anyone’s writing.
Your hand simply starts moving all the time, and words and
words and words start getting written, and the forms emerge
in the process of writing without a lot of thought or effort.

I often wonder whether writing into the electronic space,
the computer, changes this somewhat. I even wonder if we are
two different people when we write to each other by handwriting
than we write in this space. Always, there is this thought
about the space where one writes, and there is a distinction,
a difference, between the space where one works, the space
where one lives, and the space where one really lives (I’m
remembering those letters last summer written in your dacha).
I’m not saying that one letter is essentially different from
another, between Office and Home and Dacha, but that we are
different persons according to the spaces where we are. I can
only bring myself to write you the shortest notes at the
computer at the office, the public space, though maybe you
prefer such notes to these long walks in the woods of I don’t
know what, writing especially now, late at night nearing
morning, when I woke up wishing to speak to you. This wish
reminds me that it is important to decide between Porcupine
and Proserpine, as it is important for me to remind you that
I sometimes wear quite a wild face, and I don’t have any
relatives to remember not to bite. (Bite is often used as
a synonym for sting, so that the cold wind is said to bite,
or there is a biting wind–bitter cold–though whether the
winter winds ever leave teethmarks, I’ve never read this in
English. I never told you that last summer when you told
me you had gone to the dentist I was worried whether I had
chipped your tooth from our last kiss goodbye. (I remember
the wish to at least take one of your teeth with me to
remember you by, and now I must content myself with your
very smiiling and polite (not wild) face given to the camera
of Irina Nikolaevna. I would prefer to have one of your
teeth on my desk, so that I might place it in my mouth and
dream of you. Do you have such dreams? I should stop here,
or at least begin writing you by hand. The electronics has
a strange effect on the words for such thoughts. But really,
I was a little worried that I had chipped one of your teeth
and I was too embarrassed to ask you. Do you remember that
moment of the wild face? Then? You said that you were–
afraid? frightened?–what word would you use? “It frightens
me.” Does Proserpine frighten you, my dear Jenya who is
not Cassandra? Do you know that whenever you say that you
are simple, that I do not believe you at all? But what
could be simpler than walking in the woods and longing for
the moment’s glance at one of the creatures that live there?
Why does it feel so good when we feel ourselves among other
animals in the forest? (I always feel as though I am walking
in someone else’s property–and I wonder if that sensation
can be translated, as apparently you do not worry about
fences when you go for a walk in the woods around Tomsk.
Why does all that land belong to anyone who wants to walk
there whenever they wish? You know, don’t you, that I come
from and am partly shaped by a social space (environment)
where everything, literally everything, is ‘real estate.’
Do you know that the land, even the word in English for
the land, looks a little differently when it is not such
real estate?

I think this last question is ending in an unclosed parentheses,
so it is high time for me to shut up. Sometimes I wish that
when you receive such long letters from me, that they amuse
you in another way from my efforts to be whimsical or teasing.
At least still you do not mind hearing from me. Have you ever
said how many times during a single day that I should or
should not write you. Do you enjoy such a correspondent?
Do you hear the person you know in the words that person writes?
I think that I always write now “bye” at the end of the letter
to repeat your phone ‘goodbye’ as this is something that you
are better able to do than me. Also, maybe if we say ‘bye’
enough times, it will mean that it will never really happen.
Or that it is a kind of virtual ‘bye,’ and in reality we
never quite know when such a word is actually completed in
an action.

p.s.
Do you know it is a sign of your kindness? That you refuse
the offer of a gift from me by reminding me of another gift?
And you are someone who wakes up at dawn on her birthday and
takes the bus home to see what surprise is waiting for her.
Maybe there is a kind of ‘right’ to give gifts that has to
be earned after many years. Do you think so?

b
y e

18.11.03

Re: Wild face hours

Dear Zhen,
I just realized, reading yesterday, that Zhen and Zhenodtel have at
least a surface resemblance, perhaps more than a porcupine, though I’m
glad that you actually have seen one of these creatures. I’m not sure
what their eating habits are, but I keep forgetting that you don’t eat
soup, though didn’t we have soup one day at your flat? If you prefer, I
will feed you sunflower seeds and breadcrumbs like the proverbial child
in the forest, while of course I eat my own (fiiiiiii) cooking.
Today has been a day, at least the afternoon, devoted to my classes, as
I have a number of essays to grade for Wednesday. Sunday and this
morning I worked on my website, which you might be interested to take a
look at
hypobololemaioi.com
of course, and I would like to ask you a special favor (which please
refuse if it is too much). Attached to this letter are two files and
rather large ones, of a Russian translation of an essay about my poetry
that I wrote in Chita for a magazine published at the university there.
What I would like to ask is that sometime, anytime, sooner or later, if
you might transcribe into a MSWord file the Russian text. What I would
like to do is make an image file from a typed version, since the image
from the scan of the printed text makes for more illegibility. Could you
do this for me, the transcription? What do you think?
I wish that I felt like joking, but I’ve been a little too busy for
that, or at least “teacherly” today, and working on my own website
always unpleasantly reminds me that at one time or another I’ve written
a lot of poems. It’s actually easy to forget this on a day to day basis.
I spoke at some length the other day with one of the American teachers
who’s been here for some time (five years) and has a position of some
responsibility at my department. He said that the head of my department
and the university in general favors returning lecturers, partly because
in the past so many people came here for only one year on a scholarship
(like a Fullbright) or sabbatical, but for the continuity and
smooth-running of classes, what works best are returning teachers, which
is why a two-year contract is possible. This made me feel good, and a
little hopeful about the future. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to
work here in Poland or in Bulgaria or Czechoslavkia (although I’ve been
told there’s 40,000 Americans living in Prague at the moment, though I
can hardly believe there are so many), at least somewhere with a more or
less secure job or at least profession and to return to Tomsk in the
summers? Of course such wishfulness depends somewhat on your willingness
to be with me during the “academic year” and not working in Tomsk, and
as you say so often, you refuse to speculate on the future, even to
imagine the future, which such wishes express, the confidence in the
future.
My thoughts about the “Porcupine question” is that if this summer is
unsuccessful, then there is always the U.S., which you should be able to
visit without a problem. But let’s hope for this summer, with the
understanding (mine) that bureaucracy is unpredictable.
Please find out as soon as you can about the possibility of your coming
to Lodz in January. I have some reason to believe that because of my
application for temporary residence, I might have trouble getting back
into Poland if I cross the border before a decision is made in Warsaw on
my application. From what I understand, the temporary residence is the
first step towards permanent residence (an employment identification
number, which is a little like our social security number in the U.S.)
My classes are going very well, and I imagine some days that I am even a
rather competent teacher. This letter sounds horribly officious, but I’m
writing at the end of a rather long day, and I wish I was one of the
birds on the casement of the window singing for their sunflower seeds.
Have you had any Salo lately? That’s what you’ll get instead of soup
(but I shouldn’t joke about this).
Eggplants are plentiful here, and this is what I’m going to make for
dinner this evening. Wishing that you were here to make fun of my
cooking. What else can you make fun of? You can make fun of everything,
if you wish. Even this letter. Bye now.

18.11.03

Thank you for the diaries

Dear Zhen,

I just downloaded the Kafka files and at first (I wasn’t noticing how
long it was taking as I was trying to cook dinner without watching
over anything cooking) and then when I opened them realized you had
sent me the entire book, or nearly. Thank you! I don’t have anything
by Kafka in my files, and though of course I’ve read The Castle and
The Trial and even taught (just a little) The Metamorphosis when I
was in Chita, I have never read the diaries.

Since you like promises, (maybe because you are cynical, I think
you enjoy the reminding) I will promise to read them this weekend
and write more to you about them. Do you think there is also some
thing to be learned (not to read for learning anything, which is
study) but maybe demonstrated by example, about the “garrulity” of
the diary, its talkativeness, the self-absorption that has to be
practiced as a condition to making any writing happen at all.

You have to write about everything and anything. Really, writing
is a lot like talking to oneself (which is maybe where the wild
face comes from, and you laugh a little, at my writing about it,
but there really is such a state, and how you feel about it for
yourself–not only what others think about you–but how you think
about yourself, whether you think you are “losing it” (losing
control, the kind of control we practice by getting up every day
and doing the same thing, especially those things that hold no
interest for us) and writing is pretty much the enactment of this
losing it, losing control, writing for the writing itself (and
I don’t mean art for art’s sake, which is more about making art
that’s perfect, and which refers only to itself, i.e. the
symbolists like Blok–though I shouldn’t use a Russian writer
as an example, since I know so little of them, even by way
of translation), but just the materiality of writing, getting
into the habit of putting everything down on paper that you
can think of, and especially, not caring whether or not it
makes sense or is beautiful or anything.

For myself, I’ve never thought much about the fabula of
narrative writing, story telling, and I always liked Kafka
(in a way that I’ve never cared for Borges, a Spanish
writer very influenced I think by Kafka) for the brittleness
of the imagined space–there’s no attempt to create the
descriptive illusion of the classical realist novel.

This is where it’s easy to convince oneself that it’s no
use writing, that it’s impossible to create the great and
vast imaginative and imagined spaces that exist in all the
literatures, and that it’s really good and useful to read
writers’ diaries to see how writing is just so much talking
aloud.

Another thing is that once this habit gets set in place,
and writing is as much a habit as anything else, or to use
a better word, a preoccupation, a structured form of day-
dreaming, and also a dialogue with other writers, I mean that
there are times when, writing, you do believe that you are
in communication with other writers, and I think what I mean
by this is that after you write you read (and after you read
you write, etc) but you begin to see the writing of another
(the remote and forbidding “author”) as just something and
especially the way that was something was done, and you begin
to understand HOW it was done, made, written, without worrying
so much whether you understand. This need to understand some
thing is not very useful, and maybe that’s why this is mostly
what is taught at school, especially at the university level.

You know you have a lot to be thankful for (about literature).
If you had studied it as you once wanted to, formally and at
the university, your love for it might have been damaged.

Yes, you do appear to me as someone who loves literature.

Is it so bad to say this? Well, maybe only Russian literature.
I was surprised that you even found (or had a copy of) the
English translation.

One more word about this: Everything is important. No detail
that one writes about is too insignificant. Why is it that
that one’s life never appears to be worth writing about?

Do you think that you have had such a typical life? The
difficulty (“zatrudnenie” itself!) is standing outside one’s
life, and writing does this. But a terrible obstacle is the
belief that there’s nothing to write about, and then once
you do start writing, and really grow fond of writing, like
it’s what you want to do all the time, and then you want to
know if what you are writing belongs anywhere in the world,
and where and how this can be known–it is the fabula of all
doubt.

There is probably no greater unhappiness than writing.

But when you are writing, then there is something like being,
and movement, and energy, and alertness (even food tastes
better), and listening to one’s senses, all of them, and
writing itself becomes less and less mysterious, these are
a few thoughts anyway upon opening the texts that you sent.

More, I promise to write to you more about them, soon.

You read. You read Russian. You read Russian literature.
You read in translation. You read and you read and you read.

Don’t forget how important this is. I say this because I forget
all the time. Until I am reminded, as by your “attachments”
today.

I miss you.

18.11.03

attachements

Dear Zhen,

It’s either late or night or early morning and I wanted to thank you
again for the Kafka texts. Why? Well, you’re reading it in Russian
and I don’t think you have the English nearby (we say, “on hand”)
as in, lying around your library, as I think the only books in English
in your library, apart from English language textbooks, are books
that have entered one way or another from – well – the one writing
you now – that person, that ‘English-speaking’ person. So you must
have looked for the texts, the Kafka texts, somewhere, for me.

It is a very nice surprise and my favorite gift. For me?

So I’m sending you the files I mentioned in my earlier letter,
the image files of the essay I wrote translated into Russian.

Please let me know sometime about the transcription?

Of course you will write to me tomorrow, not about that, but about
anything, like the birds and the sunflower seeds?

b
y

19.11.03

Reznikoff&Tomsk flies

Dear Zhen,

Well, I was preparing tonight for teaching a lot of poems by the beloved
Charles Reznikoff tomorrow and I find this poem:

XVIII

The flies are
flying about
and about
the middle of the room–
jerkily
in geometrical figures:
what are they trying to prove–
my guardian angels?

I have said good morning to the man at the door,
good morning to the man polishing the stairs.
Seated in my arm-chair,
on a cushion,
I, the shepherd, stare at my flock–
ten flies.
I came penniless
and found only a few,
never bothered my head about them,
did not pay them,
neither gave them to eat or to drink
nor even spoke to them,
and, look!
I shall cross the Jordan with at least twelve flies,
maybe, twelve times twelve:
how unworthy am I
of all this generosity!

I have become poor, it seems:
my flies are gone–except one
flying jerkily
about the room.
You do not buzz, my fly:
deep in thought, no doubt.
That is well,
I, too, am learning how to be silent,
and have learnt long ago how to be alone.

THE WEST WINDOW

The fly throws the large shadow
this morning, early morning, dark
in the window in the plain wood sill.

The fly I would kill if I could.

This distraction, an insect’s
motion around the lightbulb
and its sound, distraction also.

On the walls of the farmhouse in summer
flies swarmed in the heat swathes,
the magnet the afternoon sun.

He wouldn’t hurt a fly
is used for someone
incapable of injury
(usually guilty)

From time to time the dishtowel dazes the fly
and it disappears,

only to return to the lightbulb
this morning, my object of study.

The eyes stare at the lightbulb
and for a moment the screen blurs.

The fly is still for that moment,
quiet. The morning must be quiet

for one with nerves or, nervousness?
When the fly is dead, then thought.
This morning’s coffee is already cold.

Daylight. In the room with the window
in the white wood sill there is no fly.

Will the morning come quiet there,
and what thought waits in the wings?

Do you see/hear any resemblance? CR’s poem is five lines longer. But this is
how you remember poems and poets. If anyone had asked me, I would have said
that I thought I was trying to sound like Z. Herbert (a Polish poet that I
read many years ago in translation) when it was the Russian-Jewish poet that
I was echoing!

Write me a few words when you can, dear, and thank you for your willingness
to transcribe the essay. How does it sound in Russian? I don’t know how I
will use the doc file, perhaps it is possible to convert it into a pdf, do
you have the Adobe Acrobat distiller on any of the machines around your
office, to make pdfs with Cyrillic? Either that, or scan the doc file, at 72
dpi, and then I’ll make a text-image from it. What do you think?

B
Y
E

p.s. please don’t mind the strange email addresses. I’m experimenting with
an Outlook Express (6) mailer that I just downloaded yesterday evening.

19.11.03

Reznikoff

Dear Zhen,

I had such a good seminar today, teaching Reznikoff, that I’m a little
overwhelmed. I didn’t expect the response. There has been such
ambivalence about the other materials. Maybe it helped that there was a
selection of poems transl. in Polish, and several of the students read
out loud lines from the Polish, and I had several short audio
recordings also, and then the Holocaust poems–something very close to
everyone here, and I forgot about it (though I was reminded by you in a
way with your humor about your bones, all of them), and even the fact
that CR is second-generation Russian, torn away from Russia by the
oppression of the Jews under Tsarism–oh, to be torn away from Russia.
What is that. This perception, though, that he was “recognizable,” and
suddenly there was emotional involvement, energy, moving words being
spoken. He is really an amazing poet to me, for this strange
“translative” power. Do you feel it also when you read him?

None of my writing has any of this. Maybe it is the writing I want to
do. To write so that the writing is like rain.

If you are upset with my asking you about the transcription, it’s only
that I was to include access to some Russian words (translation) on my
website, but I don’t know how. The easiest would be to download the pdf
file in Russian, or make an image-file of the text. But they are very
large and hard to download. So really if you only read it, maybe that
is all the transcription I am asking for. They are my words, but
translated into Russian. Do I sound different to you? In Russian,
translated into Russian? Today I understand more than ever this
boundary, one that we operate within all the time, all my words in
English to you.

I hope that you are okay today. Bye.

20.11.03

My morning, your afternoon

Dear Zhen,

Today I slept two hours past my alarm at 6:30 which would amuse
you were you to hear it, the ‘tune’ that it plays it something
like the Russian Anthem, if there is such a thing. Is there?

When I fell back to sleep, a terrible dream. I will write to
you about it by post.

Yesterday I had quite a nice chat with the head of my dept.,
and this after a colleague had come to my class as my class
was leaving, and one of the students stopped by the desk where
we were standing, saying, “good class.”

This was the class that I taught with Reznikoff. So intense
that in the afternoon, after I wrote you, my Conversation class
fell flat.

This is the tyranny of teaching, that it enters our moods.
Affects us. How well does your rule work for you? My weeks
seem to be conforming to a rhythm where Wednesday and Fridays
are periods of nerves, there’s no better word than that,
followed by five days (really only four days) of relative
calm. Partly it’s being in a new place, new country, new
language, partly it’s the challenge of teaching literature
and culture to more advanced students, and partly (partly!)
it is my strong wish to read and write for my own writing.

How can I thank you for the transcription? I cannot treat
my own work with such efficiency. Did the writing say more
to you about the book you wrote me about, making it seem
a little less ‘cold’? I’m very curious about the impression
the sound of my writing made on you in translation.

But this is not a demand that you answer this question.
I hope that my letters communicate to you very few demands.
Or then, if I do not make demands, does it appear to you
that I am incapable of asserting myself? Do I appear to
you as weak? Powerless. This is the position that I look
for from which to write. Pow-er-less-ness. Ridiculous,
aren’t they, these word-endings in English?

There are two kinds of coffee in my cupboard. One is
more expensive than the other. The more expensive coffee
leaves less of an oily aftertaste. Your tastes? I think
that you drink only the best coffees, yes, Jenya?

Do you know that when I call you ‘Jenya’ now I feel that
it is a formal marker? All the many meetings that you
were to me “Evgenia.” When I see your picture, which
keeps me company here, it is on a shelf at eye-level
so when I stand or walk around the room (which I do
when I’m reading) I look towards you, at you, why?

There’s something mysterious here, as I know that it
is not you, not even an image of you (your own image
of you), but a person and a face that you gave to
Irina Nikolaevna, so that I feel that I am looking
at you smiling at here, and I am sitting at the table,
saying a few words in your language. Do you know that
I have moments of intensely missing Tomsk? Russia?

I worry that it is just a sentiment. I’m not sure
what is felt in travel. You have travelled a lot.
Do you know this problem? The worst is how you feel
you are perceived.

As you can tell I don’t have much of a sense of humor
in the morning, maybe afternoon walks are my best
time of day. By nightfall, what happens at nightfall?
I’ve written about it before, but the image of you
in the marshutka, because the surrounding dark was so
absolute, without streetlights, so the light in the
marschutka, surrounding you, as often there were so
few people that late at night (so late? only 9-10
in the evening?) is like a photograph in my mind.

Do you know that you gave me very nice smiles at such
moments?

This is another meaning for our goodbyes? They are
only very temporary goodbyes.

I will say so now, with the reminder that it makes me
feel very good to be able to write you a few words
as my day begins, and that these words enter a sphere
of the possibility that there may be a time when our
days are more closely shared.

Do you ever have bad dreams? Or are you so protected
(surrounded) (enclosed) (warmed) by the familiarity
and solidity of your mother and father that there is
no fear? Do you never feel fear? I mean life-threatening
fear. That someone is going to take your life away
from you? This is, after all, why you would leave so
early, the unpredictability of the streets after nightfall.
One night you thought you were followed. And yet you
often walk home from your office in darkness, after night
fall.

But this is only one form of fear, and simple to confront.
It is a far deeper ‘apprehension,’ even ‘dread’ (a very
19th century word, what is the Russian for it?)–no, are
there other words? What is, literally, fear of everything?
Yesterday, in class, one of the students telling a story
that her parents had told her from their childhood, the
war, and a house where three Russians had been murdered,
and nobody in the village went near the house, and the
bodies decomposed, without burial.

Isn’t there the seed of an allegory about Russian art
in such a story? It was told with great simplicity and
lack of self-consciousness, as a way of talking about the
material in the Reznikoff poems, which the class, at
least the readers in the class, read as an Eastern European.

Some days I feel that I am only just beginning to arrive
in Russia and Eastern Europe. It takes years for the
imagination to catch up with one’s experience. You cannot
write about events as they are happening around you. To
you. That is where memory comes in. And when a memory
enters the room as it did yesterday, which is not my
cultural memory, but to which I am connected by you,
with you, through you (what humor in your words about
your bones–that sudden and abrupt and wit at the memory
of being reduced to so much soap by sentimentalists,
and the Nazis were above all, sentimentalists, there
is a movie, Fotormotor, which one of the students had
seen and was able to summarize for the class, about one
of the SS enthusiasts also a photography enthusiast
taking pictures to document the success of the Warsaw
social experiment. The terrible contradiction is that
the photographs by this enthusiast, this passionate
believer in his sentiments about country and people
and making the world a better place, which according to
the sentiments of his time (and ours) required partitioning
and cleansing, strict borders (walls which turned into
ovens)–how can one even write about cooking or, even,
a ‘gas’ oven if the memory refuses to go away–another
sense of your insistence to get rid of the gas stove?

So that if one begins to live from within a historical
memory (which is what culture is about?) that there is
a form of dread at being reminded? Or is culture about
erasing all traces of the past. The extent of the
success of this erasing, is that the past will repeat
itself with all the more revenge that it was forgotten.

Well, you see that I have written myself into a state
of agitation, which is what is often happening to me
as I am reading. Do you know what I wish? Long summer
evenings of reading through the night at your dacha,
knowing that you are upstairs, reading. What summers
it is possible that there might be. I am often afraid,
a condition of permanent anxiety, about my future,
about my ability to work (not my ability, but the fact
that there might not be a position for me, or that my
workplace will keep changing, when I know that it is
one demand of my personality, my person, that day to
day be predictable and familiar, so that one does not
have to think about it at all, as it is only then that
one is able to think about one’s reading, to really
give in to the imagination of the page, on the page.

Or maybe I am writing to you too much about my doubts
and uncertainties, and even perhaps you do not share
my perception of the summer, summers, if you do not
mind my associating hopefulness with you and with the
place where you are. All those flower gardens we wallked
past, simplicity, simplicity. So you see I hear such
meanings when you write about how simple you are.

It is high time for me to shut up. I shouldn’t write
about ‘you’ when you are so kind as to write to me.

b
y

e

20.11.03

My evening your lunch

if you have lunches:
http://www.mostovi.co.yu/arhiva/98/111/111_22.HTM

Can you read it? She is from Moscow, yes?

No, I am not ‘normal’ (the wild face) and
Yes, or No, I once wished to be ‘powerful’
and I continue to suffer the consequences
of that wish (to dare to publish a book!)
That is what power is, publishing books.
But it is quite another thing to write one.
Your letter strangely moving to me this
evening, at the university, looking for
‘life’ out there, on the internet, and
I found this website of Yugolsavian writers
(Octobi) and just before leaving for the
university this afternoon, I had looked
for some information about Croatia, since
I don’t want to give up that possibility
either, if you can’t come to Poland. My
mind I think you want to get away for two
or three weeks.

And do you know, I bought an international
phone card for 50 zloty (about 15 dollars)
I don’t know how long it will last, but
I should call you at your home phone, only
I would prefer to call you either 4 or 5 a.m.
my time (9 or 10 a.m. your time) at home,
would Sat or Sun be the better morning, day?
Could you let me know tomorrow? If I call you
at this time I will have slept instead of
trying to stay awake as I did last time,
and it would be a pleasure to speak with you
with a cup of coffee in my hands and you,
I think it is not too late in the day for you,
maybe you will be drinking coffee also?

Please accept a small kiss from me.

20.11.03

My morning your afternoon

That would make her 10 years older than Collobert.

Do you know any more about her life, Tsvetyaeva?

21.11.03

Yes Poland

Dear Zhen,

Yes! Poland! And for 28 days! YEs! yES! (Tak tak tak …)

Now, you have not told me when you wish for me to call, tomorrow or
Sunday morning. Is 9:00 a.m. okay at your flat? Please let me know?

And thank you for the article on M.T. I will research other entries
from the same source. Did you get the url from the Yugoslave magazine?
My mind the Serbian looks closer to Russian than Polish. Can you read
it? One of my students mentioned that there had been a language-law
which changed the alphabet in Serbia from cyrillic to western, is this
true?

How many questions I ask you!

I have just finished two successful classes, with students leaving in
high spirits, and saying goodbye. I have one more class today, than
free weekend, which I will devote to Kafka’s diaries, your gift from
typical Russian youth in Siberia reading English for pleasure. Really,
you live in an amazing country, do sometime you forget this?

b
y

e

24.11.03

Sunday evening

Dear Zhen,

What do you think of a line (in a song) like:

“The doggone girl is mine?” (‘Fotomotor’ sentimentalism?)

It came on the radio as I’m beginning to write what I thought
would be a letter about Kafka’s diaries.

I’m not quite sure about the relation between “doggone” and “dog”
(complicated by the fact that recently I was reading yet another
‘introduction’ to Saussure, which used this sign, “dog,” to remind
–explain–the double-side of the sign, like a coin, the text said,
two sides of the same coin, the signifier and the signified, and
the necessity of remembering just how arbitrary (nothing) all words
are). But I didn’t want to write about that, since the use of ‘dog’
is such a typical example of pulling any old word out of the hat to
show that it means nothing. Yet those are very real (stray) dogs
that you stop by the store to find food for on your walk home from
work. Do you see them lately? The signifier and the signifiant?
Maybe that’s what we should call them. Do you ever ask yourself why
it was always two dogs, never one? Do dogs know something that we
don’t?

Maybe I don’t want to write about the ‘Diary’ at all, except that
I think its the most important text by Kafka that I’ve ever read,
the Castle and the Trial and some of the stories so much classical
performances, i.e. ‘great literature,’ and then suddenly to be in
the presence of Writing-as-Writing, which does not spare the author,
and yet has almost nothing to do with the fictive construct that is
that ‘person,’ all the multiple layers of the fictive that are going
on there, in the diaries, and all the time it is a discipline used
to keep writing when there is the perception that one is not writing
at all. That and the reminder, which one always forgets, about the
thickness and weight of the surrounding culture, the environment,
which surrounds every work of literature, so all the glimpses into
the theater life and the lectures, performances, the venues where
one interacted and really, blended, with the world in which one was
alive for that moment.

The personal and the fictive, the range of distancing devices, as
though multiple ways not so much as looking at one’s life but of
making the view of the moment as varied and contradictory as possible,
including the image and the anecdote (the story, and meeting and
knowing people who could tell good stories), in addition to all
the shapes and shades of persons who pass across one’s days like
hallucinations–all this is there. It is really a great work of
writing which belongs to the history of all writing. Joyce wrote
nothing like it. He could not be so sincere. And there is sincerity
in this Diary, and do you know that Kafka casts a shadow like
Shakespeare across Poland? All I have to do is mention the name,
Kafka, and there is a visibile shift of interest. “Great Writer.”
“Ours.” I’ve been told that the room in the flat where he wrote
has been preserved, and that you can visit it in Prague, and that
it is alarmingly, disconcertingly, small. Like an attic room. Or
prison cell. Certainly his writing is cellular. And do you think
that the diary, especially, because of the form, is also just a
little feminine? I’m thinking of all the powerlessness (my word!)
in the writing, and the gigantic shadow of Goethe, there are so
many perceptions, many of them absolutely riveting, about Goethe,
and not since reading Benjamin have I read so many ways of writing
against a Monument.

It is writing, pure and simple. To read such a book a little at a
time, not as a novel, but almost as a book to fall asleep by, why,
it would be impossible not to be influenced by it, and to write,
to approach one’s own writing, this way, as recording, and above
all, the simple will to write, no matter how ordinary and common
the details. Masterpieces are boring. I am more invited and made
to feel at home in someone’s writing the more that it is struggling
with the very fact whether or not it is actually writing or not.

So am I simply thanking you for sending me the files? I have some
passages that I’m sending with this letter, about two pages, which
I would like to ask whether you would look up the Russian and send
the Russian to me–they are moments that I thought sounded especially
‘other’ to me, and I would love to concentrate on the Russian trans-
lations, to try to see the text through this language.

It is, of course, also, a Great Jewish Work. One senses the
vastness of the dream of Zion at this period, as criitcal as
Kafka is towards Zionism. I think he hears it all around him, the
nationalism, and sees through it’s prejudice, ‘colonization in
Palestine,’ etc. All the references to Russia and Jewish life
there remind (it is the world the Beloved Reznikoff comes from)
of the culture, village culture, vanished now, of a century ago,
and I’m not sentimentalizing the pogroms!

Just wondering whether this is something you might feel …

Thinking, as I was reading, that our sense of ‘boundary,’ of
identity, intensifies when we are charged (accused) of that
identity, so that, for example, if you remember what in English
would be called, ‘Jew baiting’ when you were a child, being marked
out and identified, taunted, ‘hated,’ and how does one respond?
“Oh, yes, I will become all the more that which you are not and
of which you are so fearful …” Though there is the element of
the artificial (how does one feel that which is nowhere around
where the life is, the daily life?) yet, I had to laugh, as I was
reading, as I mentioned on the phone, there’s a comment somewhere
about the ‘Jewish fluency’ and impatience of hesitant speech, in
English, the word might be “volubility,” and the many times you
apologized for your inability to stop talking, when it is so much
your Signature, so much You, that sometimes it is the absolute
silence of the space where I live now that I can hear you talking
and talking and talking until, well, SHUT UP!

Jenya, do you think that I shall ever be able to tell you to
SHUT UP without us both falling down laughing! Isn’t that to
accomplish something human, and warm? (And of course, I didn’t
tell you this, only ‘suggested’ it, rather indirectly, as I recall?)
Enough of that. As you can see, I cannot SHUT UP when writing,
and sometimes I hope that the writing amuses you, and sometimes
I think that it does. When we live under the same roof I think
you will also be amused by the hours spent before the computer,
trying to accomplish what are, for me, impossible tasks. There’s
something missing in my brain. I can’t follow the simplest
instructions.
Maybe it’s because they’re telling me what to do. So I spend hours
reading texts called, “Thomas Hood’s Linux on a ThinkPad 600E”
which is another kind of journal, and I’m quite fascinated and
even moved by the objective logic of the processes, and the record
of making a machine work, which happens to be the same as my machine.
So I read a lot about my machine, and miss my machine in Tomsk,
which, after trying to get the modem to work on my IBM, I realize
is quite a good machine, and do you think you could find out how
much it would cost to fix the screen? Maybe I can give you the
money in January to give to the technicians and they can fix it
in the spring? It’s just a thought. I never had to worry about my
modem when I had that laptop. The problem, so I have learned, is
that there’s not a real modem in my Microsoft Software–only software
(a modem is hardware, and expensive–which is one reason why
Macintosh computers are so expensive, the hardware they come with)
so I have to try to find work-arounds, and since there are so
many models, even my machine, which belongs to the 2645 series
of IBM laptops, because there were so many made, has distinctly
different ‘makes’ and requirements, so one has to swim among a lot
of specifications, to make sure that your finding the right answer.

The best comment I found was that getting the modem to work on
a machine like mine is such a headache that it actually teaches you
how to ‘hack.’ The irony is that modems are becoming more and more
obsolete, as broadband networking becomes more and more accessible
so that there aren’t so many websites with solutions to the problem
to find and to learn from. So you can laugh at my many hours in
front of the screen, trying to get this and that to work, and yet,
on the other hand, I’m quite happy with my website, as it’s code
is very clean and simple compared to a lot of websites that I come
across, since all my code is (almost) hand-written. Maybe ten years
from now I will write a kind of program, though what I dream about
is simply being able to incorporate multi-media into the linguistic
production, using sound and image and movement in a visual-auditory
environment, one that can co-habit both the installation space and
the computer screen, and I shouldn’t even call this a dream, as it
is seriously what I expect of the years to come. This overwhelming
need for a studio, for recording and visualizing. So everything
happens very slowly, and I am content to learn a little at a time.
This is only my second computer, and it has only been about four
years that I even began to work on one. And yet my website is
entirely my own construction (and conception). It’s very intuitive
sometimes, especially when working with images. And yet, I know
absolutely nothing about it.

So don’t laugh at me when I tell you I’ve been up all night!

Though you can laugh at me all you wish, your laughter has such
a good sense of humor about it.

Now, I’m going to wait until you write me, which I hope is very
soon. Isn’t it nice to know that I can get a phone card and call
you for an hour? Probably once a week is too much, but at least
now I have in my mind that I can call you every two weeks for an
hour, and it makes me feel not so far away.

I think I’ve forgotten to say a lot about just how moving to me
were Kafka’s diaries. Thank you again for sending to me, them.

b
y
e

!

24.11.03

Yes Croatia

Dear Zhen,

Yes, Croatia.

I looked up in some travel info that I’ve got in my computer and
no, I don’t need a visa, but since you need a visa, is it possible
that any of the countries in the former Yugoslavia would be possible?
Some of them are closer than others, Slovakia for example, shares a
border with Poland. Montengro? We should compare prices, both for
your flight, and for the two/three weeks? I will do my best to find
out this week when classes end in January. As in Russia, when I ask,
there is always a vague answer, as though classes have never ended
in January before. But I believe it is mid-January. I will let you
now as soon as I can.

You shouldn’t come here if it is stressful, and I entirely agree
with you, from what I have seen at the airports, even though Warsaw
appeared to me to be friendly, it is difficult to travel if you are
carrying a Russian passport and single and female. It would be the
height of insensitivity for me to pretend otherwise, or to try to
convince you otherwise.

On another (is it altogether another? I don’t know) subject, I’m
sending you a 64-poem formatted for A4 paper, as I know that you
don’t like to read from the computer screen, and this is a poem
that I think you would like very much. The setting is Alaska, and
there is a heavy atmosphere of Russian wind in it. This poet,
Nathaniel Tarn (and Janet Rodman, I don’t know who she is), but
Tarn edited the Cape Editions number 45 of which translated
Zabolotsky. Strange, the translator of that book, Daniel Weissbort,
I took a course with him at the University of Iowa on Eastern
European poetry (I remember him writing once to me how much he
enjoyed reading my essays), but he was extremely quiet, and shy,
and a ‘terrible’ teacher in the sense that, in a way I’m very
aware of now, he didn’t know how to make the poems talke. If
that’s ever possible. Nathaniel Tarn heard my read when I read
at a conference for Russian and American poets about 10 years
ago, I was aware that he was there, since he read also, later
the same day, but nobody introduced me to him. About a year later
I saw him again and we almost spoke, he was smiling at me as
though he recognized me, which would have been based on his
hearing me read the year before and liking what he heard. But
I will probably never find out whether this was so, nor does it
matter, except that I feel very kindly towards his own writing
since I imagine at least that my poems struck a chord to his
hearing.

My mind this poem has that element of landscape in it that you
enjoy, and it is not cold, and it is ‘collaborative,’ there’s
the sense of two people present, writing the poem. If you printed
it out on both sides, it would only require 32 pages of paper.
I wouldn’t send such a long poem to you if I didn’t think it
might mean something to you.

Yes, Croatia, was it there or from there that you mentioned
that we could go to Venice for a day?

Kisses,

b
y e

25.11.03

Re: No Croatia, Slovakia this time

Dear Zhen,

Actually as I was walking around Lodz today I was thinking how for all
that it is important for me to be here and working here, that you might
not like it, except for the memory that it was once a very Jewish city,
but that cultre (the culture of Kafka’s diaries) has moved into the
museums. I think even that you might be a little offended by the brazen
consumerism. So the mountains, a small town in the mountains, in
Slovakia, sounds a little like heaven, and it will be good for me to
get away also (and the not-needing-to-be-mentioned wish to see you, be
with you, anywhere. But it really does sound lovely.

I do not send you things as demands to be read, only as tokens of
possible reading and conversation in the future. The very near future.
Tonight I’m having left-over chicken. Though I had enough courage
earlier today to eat in a restaurant here.

I’ll try to write a few more words tonight. B y e

26.11.03

Jan 17 or 18

Dear Zhen,

Well, this is the third attempt trying to write you in the past half
of an hour, I finally connected to the internet through the other
side of my computer, and to do it I had to work a couple of days on
trying to install my first “make file” which is not at all the
automatic installation on windows, actually I wound up reading a lot
more and the difficulty I was having was one line (called a command)
(I’d have to go back to the documentation to explain why), what
turned out to be again related to something in the modem of the
windows side of the computer. It’s one of those things that’s
fascinating to figure out, and as I mentioned in the two letters
I wasn’t able to send from my webmail (but I was connected anyway!)
I finally succeeded in doing something I hadn’t done before, and it
only took me several days, most of Saturday, Sunday and Monday.
Finally, the screen is an environment, and I’m becoming very partial
to how letters appear there, the light, sensitivity to the light,
I can hardly read the blank white screen that’s “default” on the
computers of the institution (Lodz included). But this struggle
with instructions, and trying this and trying that and nothing
seeming to work, well, that’s what you heard in my voice, it’s
nothing to do with you’re not being able to come to Poland. There
are other thoughts about this. The most important is that for you,
for your feeling, that when you leave you know that all your
documents are in order, everything arranged, so that nothing will
happen that will threaten you, one sees it all the time travelling.
It’s obvious, (goes without saying) but I never knew what a passport
was before travelling, and it gives you a certain security when
people (the notorious customs officials) just wave you through.
I was actually quite nervous about arriving in Moscow last summer.
There’s always this thought that something will go wrong and you’ll
be stranded. I was worried also that you wouldn’t like Lodz.
Or that it’s too much like an office, where I live, it’s not
very warm, but it’s nice having furniture after last year.

I think it’s better to have a vacation. You shouldn’t worry at
all about this thought of Poland or Slovakia. The important
thing is going where you feel that you won’t be remined of the
‘second-class’ citizenship of Russians, and I think that’s what
you were afraid of in coming here.

As I was wading through pages and pages of documentation and
reading about telephony signals, baud rates, peer-to-peer protocols
and daemons, packets and pings, etc., I found this line in
latinized russian:

smotrite file http://oblom.rnc.ru/linux/kernel/Changes.ru
yavlyaushisaya russkim perevodom dannogo documenta

Somehow it says more about the experience of the last few days
(really it’s nothing more or less than concentration, as just
about everything that I read lately that is ‘literature’ bores
me to death, or tears anyway, they’re both “expressions,” that
it was a good feeling to fix something, every if I made it ten
times harder than it actually was.

So by the next time we talk I won’t sound so tired, or worse,
somewhat upset with myself, and in this permanent state of
distraction. Maybe I need more people coming at with me with
deadlines and mindless work to do, as if teaching were’nt in
itself it’s own kind of mindlessness.

If you don’t call before Saturday, I’ll call you Saturday night
the same time as last week. “Obligatory?” Really! You sound
sometimes as though you think it’s quite funny, what’s funny?
I never answered your comment about the poem, the line in the
poem, it’s “cruelty” about the worst happening.

But you’re right about that “obligatory” sense of the writing
about the writing, memories of obligatory readings, accountings,
really, why did you write that poem or what were you thinking
when you read it?

Writing is so much litter in the head. I like you’re word for
it very much, and I never believe anyone (including myself)
who pretends to be able to speak clearly about what they were
writing about. It all happens so much in the moment of writing.
There are questions of method and technique. But they all get
forgotten in the need to write. That’s what is so remarkable
about the Diaries. In some way they needed to be written
more than the works or art. I’m not sure I even know what
a work of art is anymore. It feels like a kind of grateful
forgetting.

Slovakia sounds so beautiful. It would be nice to visit mountains.

b

y



e!


p.s I found out today that classes are over on Monday the
19th so I will (or can) leave on that Saturday, the 17th. Does this
sound like a good date (you mentioned Sun).

26.11.03

Story of an hour

Zhen, this is what the record of one hour looks like from the point of
view of the machine. I’m wondering
if it’s isn’t rather more like Pavel Filonov’s “a fly on a horse’s
belly sees it like this” …

Nov 25 18:59:14 localhost login[1579]: FAILED LOGIN 1 FROM (null) FOR
hypo, Authentication failure
Nov 25 18:59:26 localhost login[1579]: FAILED LOGIN 2 FROM (null) FOR
hypo, Authentication failure
Nov 25 18:59:34 localhost login[1579]: FAILED LOGIN 3 FROM (null) FOR
hypo, Authentication failure
Nov 25 18:59:40 localhost login[1579]: FAILED LOGIN SESSION FROM
(null) FOR hypo, Authentication failure
Nov 25 18:59:40 localhost login(pam_unix)[1579]: 3 more authentication
failures; logname=LOGIN uid=0 euid=0 tty=tty1 ruser= rhost= user=hypo
Nov 25 18:59:40 localhost login(pam_unix)[1579]: service(login)
ignoring max retries; 4 > 3
Nov 25 18:59:45 localhost login(pam_unix)[1580]: authentication
failure; logname=LOGIN uid=0 euid=0 tty=tty1 ruser= rhost= user=hypo
Nov 25 18:59:48 localhost login[1580]: FAILED LOGIN 1 FROM (null) FOR
hypo, Authentication failure
Nov 25 18:59:55 localhost login[1580]: FAILED LOGIN 2 FROM (null) FOR
hypo, Authentication failure
Nov 25 19:00:02 localhost login(pam_unix)[1580]: check pass; user
unknown
Nov 25 19:00:02 localhost login(pam_unix)[1580]: authentication
failure; logname=LOGIN uid=0 euid=0 tty=tty1 ruser= rhost=
Nov 25 19:00:04 localhost login[1580]: FAILED LOGIN 3 FROM (null) FOR
mc, Authentication failure
Nov 25 19:00:10 localhost login(pam_unix)[1580]: authentication
failure; logname=LOGIN uid=0 euid=0 tty=tty1 ruser= rhost= user=root
Nov 25 19:00:13 localhost login[1580]: FAILED LOGIN SESSION FROM
(null) FOR root, Authentication failure
Nov 25 19:00:13 localhost login(pam_unix)[1580]: 1 more authentication
failure; logname=LOGIN uid=0 euid=0 tty=tty1 ruser= rhost= user=hypo
Nov 25 19:00:17 localhost login(pam_unix)[1581]: session opened for
user root by LOGIN(uid=0)
Nov 25 19:00:17 localhost — root[1581]: ROOT LOGIN ON tty1
Nov 25 19:00:22 localhost gconfd (root-1131): 20 items remain in the
cache after cleaning already-synced items older than 300 seconds
Nov 25 19:02:41 localhost login(pam_unix)[1581]: session closed for
user root
Nov 25 19:02:45 localhost login(pam_unix)[1718]: session opened for
user root by LOGIN(uid=0)
Nov 25 19:02:45 localhost — root[1718]: ROOT LOGIN ON tty1
Nov 25 19:03:44 localhost login(pam_unix)[1718]: session closed for
user root
Nov 25 19:03:51 localhost login(pam_unix)[1817]: authentication
failure; logname=LOGIN uid=0 euid=0 tty=tty1 ruser= rhost= user=root
Nov 25 19:03:53 localhost login[1817]: FAILED LOGIN 1 FROM (null) FOR
root, Authentication failure
Nov 25 19:03:56 localhost login(pam_unix)[1817]: session opened for
user root by LOGIN(uid=0)
Nov 25 19:03:56 localhost — root[1817]: ROOT LOGIN ON tty1
Nov 25 19:04:02 localhost sendmail: sendmail shutdown succeeded
Nov 25 19:04:02 localhost autofs: automount startup succeeded
Nov 25 19:04:02 localhost mwave: /dev/ttyS1, UART: 16550A, Port:
0x02f8, IRQ: 3
Nov 25 19:04:15 localhost gdm(pam_unix)[2026]: session opened for user
root by (uid=0)
Nov 25 19:04:17 localhost modprobe: modprobe: Can’t locate module
sound-slot-0
Nov 25 19:04:17 localhost modprobe: modprobe: Can’t locate module
sound-service-0-0
Nov 25 19:04:19 localhost gnome-name-server[2209]: starting
Nov 25 19:04:19 localhost gnome-name-server[2209]: name server
starting
Nov 25 19:04:21 localhost kernel: cdrom: This disc doesn’t have any
tracks I recognize!
Nov 25 19:04:21 localhost xinetd[2227]: warning: can’t get client
address: Transport endpoint is not connected
Nov 25 19:05:11 localhost gconfd (root-1131): Received signal 15,
shutting down cleanly
Nov 25 19:05:11 localhost gconfd (root-1131): Exiting
Nov 25 19:05:11 localhost gdm(pam_unix)[2026]: session closed for user
root
Nov 25 19:05:11 localhost gnome-name-server[2209]: input condition is:
0x11, exiting
Nov 25 19:05:17 localhost gdm(pam_unix)[2026]: session opened for user
root by (uid=0)
Nov 25 19:30:16 localhost modprobe: modprobe: Can’t locate module
irlan0
Nov 25 19:38:23 localhost modprobe: modprobe: Can’t locate module
irlan0
Nov 25 19:38:28 localhost ifup-ppp: Setting up a new
/etc/ppp/peers/ppp0 config file
Nov 25 19:38:28 localhost ifup-ppp: pppd started for ppp0 on
/dev/modem at 57600
Nov 25 19:38:29 localhost kernel: CSLIP: code copyright 1989 Regents
of the University of California
Nov 25 19:38:29 localhost kernel: PPP generic driver version 2.4.1
Nov 25 19:38:29 localhost pppd[2951]: pppd 2.4.1 started by root, uid
0
Nov 25 19:38:30 localhost WvDial: WvDial: Internet dialer version 1.41
Nov 25 19:38:30 localhost WvDial: Initializing modem.
Nov 25 19:38:30 localhost WvDial: Sending: ATZ
Nov 25 19:38:30 localhost WvDial: ATZ
Nov 25 19:38:31 localhost WvDial: OK
Nov 25 19:38:31 localhost WvDial: Modem initialized.
Nov 25 19:38:31 localhost WvDial: Sending: ATDT 0202122
Nov 25 19:38:31 localhost WvDial: Waiting for carrier.
Nov 25 19:38:31 localhost WvDial: ATDT 0202122
Nov 25 19:38:54 localhost WvDial: CONNECT 31200/ECLC
Nov 25 19:38:54 localhost WvDial: Carrier detected. Waiting for
prompt.
Nov 25 19:38:55 localhost WvDial: WITAMY W INTERNECIE TP
Nov 25 19:38:55 localhost WvDial: Serwery DNS 217.98.20.34,
217.98.63.164
Nov 25 19:38:55 localhost WvDial: Nasze strony www:
www.telekomunikacja.pl, www.tpnet.pl
Nov 25 19:38:55 localhost WvDial: Wpisz:
Nov 25 19:38:55 localhost WvDial: Username:ppp
Nov 25 19:38:55 localhost WvDial: Password:ppp
Nov 25 19:38:55 localhost WvDial: Username:
Nov 25 19:38:55 localhost WvDial: Found a good menu option:
“username”.
Nov 25 19:38:55 localhost WvDial: Found a good menu option:
“password”.
Nov 25 19:38:55 localhost WvDial: Looks like a login prompt.
Nov 25 19:38:55 localhost WvDial: Sending: ppp
Nov 25 19:38:56 localhost WvDial: ppp
Nov 25 19:38:56 localhost WvDial: Password:
Nov 25 19:38:56 localhost WvDial: Looks like a password prompt.
Nov 25 19:38:56 localhost WvDial: Sending: (password)
Nov 25 19:38:56 localhost WvDial: Prosze czekac
Nov 25 19:38:56 localhost WvDial: Start sesji PPP
Nov 25 19:38:56 localhost WvDial: Exiting shell, and starting PPP
session.
Nov 25 19:38:57 localhost WvDial: Hmm… a prompt. Sending
“password”.
Nov 25 19:38:59 localhost WvDial:
~[7f]}#@!}!}!} }8}!}$}%\}”}&} }*} } }%}&[04]>[17]q}’}”}(}”Zk~
Nov 25 19:38:59 localhost WvDial: PPP negotiation detected.
Nov 25 19:38:59 localhost pppd[2951]: Serial connection established.
Nov 25 19:38:59 localhost pppd[2951]: Using interface ppp0
Nov 25 19:38:59 localhost pppd[2951]: Connect: ppp0 <–> /dev/modem
Nov 25 19:39:02 localhost kernel: PPP BSD Compression module
registered
Nov 25 19:39:02 localhost kernel: PPP Deflate Compression module
registered
Nov 25 19:39:05 localhost pppd[2951]: local IP address 213.77.250.58
Nov 25 19:39:05 localhost pppd[2951]: remote IP address 1.1.1.1
Nov 25 19:39:05 localhost pppd[2951]: primary DNS address
217.98.20.34
Nov 25 19:39:05 localhost pppd[2951]: secondary DNS address
217.98.63.164
Nov 25 19:39:05 localhost su(pam_unix)[3060]: session opened for user
root by (uid=0)
Nov 25 19:39:05 localhost su(pam_unix)[3060]: session closed for user
root
Nov 25 19:39:05 localhost su(pam_unix)[3066]: session opened for user
root by (uid=0)
Nov 25 19:39:05 localhost su(pam_unix)[3066]: session closed for user
root
Nov 25 20:02:01 localhost pppd[2951]: Terminating on signal 15.
Nov 25 20:02:02 localhost su(pam_unix)[3233]: session opened for user
root by (uid=0)
Nov 25 20:02:02 localhost su(pam_unix)[3233]: session closed for user
root
Nov 25 20:02:02 localhost su(pam_unix)[3239]: session opened for user
root by (uid=0)
Nov 25 20:02:02 localhost su(pam_unix)[3239]: session closed for user
root
Nov 25 20:02:04 localhost pppd[2951]: Hangup (SIGHUP)
Nov 25 20:02:04 localhost pppd[2951]: Modem hangup
Nov 25 20:02:04 localhost pppd[2951]: Connection terminated.
Nov 25 20:02:04 localhost pppd[2951]: Connect time 23.1 minutes.
Nov 25 20:02:04 localhost pppd[2951]: Sent 52520 bytes, received
240614 bytes.
Nov 25 20:02:05 localhost pppd[2951]: Exit.
Nov 25 20:02:09 localhost modprobe: modprobe: Can’t locate module ppp0
Nov 25 20:02:49 localhost atd: atd shutdown succeeded
Nov 25 20:02:49 localhost Font Server[864]: terminating
Nov 25 20:02:49 localhost xfs: xfs shutdown succeeded
Nov 25 20:02:50 localhost gpm: gpm shutdown succeeded
Nov 25 20:02:50 localhost xinetd[780]: Exiting…
Nov 25 20:02:50 localhost xinetd: xinetd shutdown succeeded
Nov 25 20:02:50 localhost crond: crond shutdown succeeded
Nov 25 20:02:50 localhost apmd[650]: Exiting
Nov 25 20:02:52 localhost apmd: apmd shutdown succeeded
Nov 25 20:02:52 localhost dd: 1+0 records in
Nov 25 20:02:52 localhost dd: 1+0 records out
Nov 25 20:02:52 localhost random: Saving random seed: succeeded
Nov 25 20:02:52 localhost rpc.statd[537]: Caught signal 15,
un-registering and exiting.
Nov 25 20:02:52 localhost nfslock: rpc.statd shutdown succeeded
Nov 25 20:02:52 localhost gdm(pam_unix)[2026]: session closed for user
root
Nov 25 20:02:53 localhost portmap: portmap shutdown succeeded
Nov 25 20:02:53 localhost kernel: Kernel logging (proc) stopped.
Nov 25 20:02:53 localhost kernel: Kernel log daemon terminating.
Nov 25 20:02:54 localhost syslog: klogd shutdown succeeded
Nov 25 20:02:54 localhost exiting on signal 15
Nov 25 20:32:32 localhost syslogd 1.4.1: restart.
Nov 25 20:32:32 localhost syslog: syslogd startup succeeded
Nov 25 20:32:32 localhost kernel: klogd 1.4.1, log source = /proc/kmsg
started.
Nov 25 20:32:32 localhost kernel: Inspecting /boot/System.map-2.4.7-10
Nov 25 20:32:32 localhost syslog: klogd startup succeeded
Nov 25 20:32:33 localhost portmap: portmap startup succeeded
Nov 25 20:32:33 localhost kernel: Loaded 15046 symbols from
/boot/System.map-2.4.7-10.
Nov 25 20:32:33 localhost kernel: Symbols match kernel version 2.4.7.
Nov 25 20:32:33 localhost kernel: Loaded 175 symbols from 4 modules.
Nov 25 20:32:33 localhost kernel: Linux version 2.4.7-10
(bhcompile@stripples.devel.redhat.com) (gcc version 2.96 20000731 (Red
Hat Linux 7.1 2.96-98)) #1 Thu Sep 6 17:27:27 EDT 2001
Nov 25 20:32:33 localhost kernel: BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
Nov 25 20:32:33 localhost kernel: BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 –
000000000009fc00 (usable)
Nov 25 20:32:33 localhost kernel: BIOS-e820: 000000000009fc00 –
00000000000a0000 (reserved)
Nov 25 20:32:33 localhost kernel: BIOS-e820: 00000000000f0000 –
0000000000100000 (reserved)
Nov 25 20:32:33 localhost kernel: BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 –
0000000007fd0000 (usable)
Nov 25 20:32:33 localhost kernel: BIOS-e820: 0000000007fd0000 –
0000000007fdf000 (ACPI data)
Nov 25 20:32:33 localhost kernel: BIOS-e820: 0000000007fdf000 –
0000000007fe0000 (ACPI NVS)
Nov 25 20:32:33 localhost kernel: BIOS-e820: 0000000007fe0000 –
0000000008000000 (reserved)
Nov 25 20:32:33 localhost kernel: BIOS-e820: 00000000fffe0000 –
0000000100000000 (reserved)
Nov 25 20:32:33 localhost kernel: Scanning bios EBDA for MXT signature
Nov 25 20:32:33 localhost kernel: On node 0 totalpages: 32720
Nov 25 20:32:33 localhost kernel: zone(0): 4096 pages.
Nov 25 20:32:33 localhost kernel: zone(1): 28624 pages.
Nov 25 20:32:33 localhost kernel: zone(2): 0 pages.
Nov 25 20:32:33 localhost nfslock: rpc.statd startup succeeded
Nov 25 20:32:33 localhost kernel: Kernel command line: ro
root=/dev/hda2
Nov 25 20:32:33 localhost kernel: Initializing CPU#0
Nov 25 20:32:33 localhost kernel: Detected 363.967 MHz processor.
Nov 25 20:32:33 localhost kernel: Console: colour VGA+ 80×25
Nov 25 20:32:33 localhost kernel: Calibrating delay loop… 725.81
BogoMIPS
Nov 25 20:32:33 localhost kernel: Memory: 125076k/130880k available
(1269k kernel code, 4520k reserved, 90k data, 220k init, 0k highmem)
Nov 25 20:32:33 localhost kernel: Dentry-cache hash table entries:
16384 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
Nov 25 20:32:33 localhost kernel: Inode-cache hash table entries: 8192
(order: 4, 65536 bytes)
Nov 25 20:32:33 localhost kernel: Mount-cache hash table entries: 2048
(order: 2, 16384 bytes)
Nov 25 20:32:33 localhost kernel: Buffer-cache hash table entries:
4096 (order: 2, 16384 bytes)
Nov 25 20:32:33 localhost kernel: Page-cache hash table entries: 32768
(order: 6, 262144 bytes)
Nov 25 20:32:33 localhost kernel: CPU: L1 I cache: 16K, L1 D cache:
16K
Nov 25 20:32:33 localhost kernel: CPU: L2 cache: 256K
Nov 25 20:32:33 localhost kernel: Intel machine check architecture
supported.
Nov 25 20:32:33 localhost kernel: Intel machine check reporting
enabled on CPU#0.
Nov 25 20:32:33 localhost kernel: CPU: Intel Mobile Pentium II
stepping 0a
Nov 25 20:32:33 localhost rpc.statd[549]: Version 0.3.1 Starting
Nov 25 20:32:33 localhost kernel: Enabling fast FPU save and
restore… done.
Nov 25 20:32:34 localhost kernel: Checking ‘hlt’ instruction… OK.
Nov 25 20:32:34 localhost kernel: POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
Nov 25 20:32:34 localhost kernel: IBM machine detected. Enabling
interrupts during APM calls.
Nov 25 20:32:34 localhost keytable: Loading keymap: succeeded
Nov 25 20:32:34 localhost kernel: mtrr: v1.40 (20010327) Richard Gooch
(rgooch@atnf.csiro.au)
Nov 25 20:32:34 localhost kernel: mtrr: detected mtrr type: Intel
Nov 25 20:32:34 localhost kernel: PCI: PCI BIOS revision 2.10 entry at
0xfd880, last bus=7
Nov 25 20:32:34 localhost kernel: PCI: Using configuration type 1
Nov 25 20:32:34 localhost kernel: PCI: Probing PCI hardware
Nov 25 20:32:34 localhost kernel: PCI: Using IRQ router PIIX
[8086/7110] at 00:07.0
Nov 25 20:32:34 localhost kernel: Limiting direct PCI/PCI transfers.
Nov 25 20:32:34 localhost kernel: isapnp: Scanning for PnP cards…
Nov 25 20:32:34 localhost kernel: isapnp: No Plug & Play device found
Nov 25 20:32:34 localhost kernel: Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.4
Nov 25 20:32:34 localhost kernel: Based upon Swansea University
Computer Society NET3.039
Nov 25 20:32:34 localhost kernel: Initializing RT netlink socket
Nov 25 20:32:34 localhost kernel: Simple Boot Flag extension found and
enabled.
Nov 25 20:32:34 localhost kernel: apm: BIOS version 1.2 Flags 0x03
(Driver version 1.14)
Nov 25 20:32:34 localhost kernel: mxt_scan_bios: enter
Nov 25 20:32:34 localhost kernel: Starting kswapd v1.8
Nov 25 20:32:34 localhost kernel: VFS: Diskquotas version dquot_6.5.0
initialized
Nov 25 20:32:34 localhost kernel: pty: 2048 Unix98 ptys configured
Nov 25 20:32:34 localhost kernel: Serial driver version 5.05c
(2001-07-08) with MANY_PORTS MULTIPORT SHARE_IRQ SERIAL_PCI ISAPNP
enabled
Nov 25 20:32:34 localhost keytable: Loading system font: succeeded
Nov 25 20:32:34 localhost kernel: ttyS00 at 0x03f8 (irq = 4) is a
16550A
Nov 25 20:32:10 localhost rc.sysinit: Mounting proc filesystem:
succeeded
Nov 25 20:32:34 localhost kernel: Real Time Clock Driver v1.10d
Nov 25 20:32:10 localhost rc.sysinit: Unmounting initrd: succeeded
Nov 25 20:32:34 localhost kernel: block: queued sectors max/low
83016kB/27672kB, 256 slots per queue
Nov 25 20:32:10 localhost sysctl: net.ipv4.ip_forward = 0
Nov 25 20:32:35 localhost kernel: RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM
disks of 4096K size 1024 blocksize
Nov 25 20:32:10 localhost sysctl: net.ipv4.conf.default.rp_filter = 1
Nov 25 20:32:35 localhost kernel: Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver
Revision: 6.31
Nov 25 20:32:10 localhost sysctl: kernel.sysrq = 0
Nov 25 20:32:35 localhost kernel: ide: Assuming 33MHz PCI bus speed
for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
Nov 25 20:32:10 localhost rc.sysinit: Configuring kernel parameters:
succeeded
Nov 25 20:32:35 localhost kernel: PIIX4: IDE controller on PCI bus 00
dev 39
Nov 25 20:32:10 localhost date: Tue Nov 25 20:32:03 CET 2003
Nov 25 20:32:35 localhost kernel: PIIX4: chipset revision 1
Nov 25 20:32:10 localhost rc.sysinit: Setting clock (localtime): Tue
Nov 25 20:32:03 CET 2003 succeeded
Nov 25 20:32:35 localhost kernel: PIIX4: not 100%% native mode: will
probe irqs later
Nov 25 20:32:10 localhost rc.sysinit: Loading default keymap succeeded
Nov 25 20:32:35 localhost kernel: ide0: BM-DMA at 0xfcf0-0xfcf7,
BIOS settings: hda:DMA, hdb:pio
Nov 25 20:32:10 localhost rc.sysinit: Setting default font
(lat0-sun16): succeeded
Nov 25 20:32:35 localhost kernel: ide1: BM-DMA at 0xfcf8-0xfcff,
BIOS settings: hdc:DMA, hdd:pio
Nov 25 20:32:10 localhost rc.sysinit: Activating swap partitions:
succeeded
Nov 25 20:32:35 localhost kernel: hda: IBM-DARA-209000, ATA DISK drive
Nov 25 20:32:35 localhost random: Initializing random number
generator: succeeded
Nov 25 20:32:10 localhost rc.sysinit: Setting hostname
localhost.localdomain: succeeded
Nov 25 20:32:35 localhost kernel: hdc: TOSHIBA CD-ROM XM-1902B, ATAPI
CD/DVD-ROM drive
Nov 25 20:32:10 localhost rc.sysinit: Mounting USB filesystem:
succeeded
Nov 25 20:32:35 localhost kernel: ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
Nov 25 20:32:10 localhost rc.sysinit: Initializing USB controller
(usb-uhci): succeeded
Nov 25 20:32:35 localhost kernel: ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
Nov 25 20:32:10 localhost fsck: /: clean, 90134/480960 files,
330973/960120 blocks
Nov 25 20:32:35 localhost kernel: hda: 12594960 sectors (6449 MB)
w/418KiB Cache, CHS=833/240/63, UDMA(33)
Nov 25 20:32:10 localhost rc.sysinit: Checking root filesystem
succeeded
Nov 25 20:32:35 localhost kernel: ide-floppy driver 0.97
Nov 25 20:32:10 localhost rc.sysinit: Remounting root filesystem in
read-write mode: succeeded
Nov 25 20:32:35 localhost kernel: Partition check:
Nov 25 20:32:17 localhost rc.sysinit: Finding module dependencies:
succeeded
Nov 25 20:32:36 localhost kernel: hda: hda1 hda2 hda3
Nov 25 20:32:18 localhost rc.sysinit: Checking filesystems succeeded
Nov 25 20:32:36 localhost kernel: Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M
Nov 25 20:32:18 localhost rc.sysinit: Mounting local filesystems:
succeeded
Nov 25 20:32:36 localhost kernel: FDC 0 is a National Semiconductor
PC87306
Nov 25 20:32:18 localhost rc.sysinit: Enabling local filesystem
quotas: succeeded
Nov 25 20:32:36 localhost kernel: ide-floppy driver 0.97
Nov 25 20:32:19 localhost rc.sysinit: Enabling swap space: succeeded
Nov 25 20:32:36 localhost kernel: md: md driver 0.90.0
MAX_MD_DEVS=256, MD_SB_DISKS=27
Nov 25 20:32:21 localhost init: Entering runlevel: 5
Nov 25 20:32:36 localhost kernel: md: Autodetecting RAID arrays.
Nov 25 20:32:23 localhost kudzu: Updating /etc/fstab succeeded
Nov 25 20:32:36 localhost kernel: md: autorun …
Nov 25 20:32:30 localhost kudzu: succeeded
Nov 25 20:32:36 localhost netfs: Mounting other filesystems:
succeeded
Nov 25 20:32:36 localhost kernel: md: … autorun DONE.
Nov 25 20:32:31 localhost sysctl: net.ipv4.ip_forward = 0
Nov 25 20:32:36 localhost kernel: NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
Nov 25 20:32:31 localhost sysctl: net.ipv4.conf.default.rp_filter = 1
Nov 25 20:32:36 localhost kernel: IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP, IGMP
Nov 25 20:32:31 localhost sysctl: kernel.sysrq = 0
Nov 25 20:32:36 localhost kernel: IP: routing cache hash table of 512
buckets, 4Kbytes
Nov 25 20:32:31 localhost network: Setting network parameters:
succeeded
Nov 25 20:32:36 localhost kernel: TCP: Hash tables configured
(established 8192 bind 8192)
Nov 25 20:32:32 localhost network: Bringing up interface lo:
succeeded
Nov 25 20:32:36 localhost kernel: Linux IP multicast router 0.06 plus
PIM-SM
Nov 25 20:32:36 localhost kernel: NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0/SMP
for Linux NET4.0.
Nov 25 20:32:37 localhost kernel: RAMDISK: Compressed image found at
block 0
Nov 25 20:32:37 localhost apmd[662]: Version 3.0final (APM BIOS 1.2,
Linux driver 1.14)
Nov 25 20:32:37 localhost kernel: Freeing initrd memory: 321k freed
Nov 25 20:32:37 localhost apmd: apmd startup succeeded
Nov 25 20:32:37 localhost kernel: VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem).
Nov 25 20:32:37 localhost kernel: Journalled Block Device driver
loaded
Nov 25 20:32:37 localhost kernel: kjournald starting. Commit interval
5 seconds
Nov 25 20:32:37 localhost kernel: EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with
ordered data mode.
Nov 25 20:32:37 localhost kernel: Freeing unused kernel memory: 220k
freed
Nov 25 20:32:37 localhost apmd[662]: Battery: * * * (100% unknown)
Nov 25 20:32:37 localhost kernel: Adding Swap: 272152k swap-space
(priority -1)
Nov 25 20:32:37 localhost kernel: usb.c: registered new driver
usbdevfs
Nov 25 20:32:37 localhost kernel: usb.c: registered new driver hub
Nov 25 20:32:37 localhost kernel: usb-uhci.c: $Revision: 1.259 $ time
17:36:49 Sep 6 2001
Nov 25 20:32:37 localhost kernel: usb-uhci.c: High bandwidth mode
enabled
Nov 25 20:32:37 localhost kernel: PCI: Found IRQ 11 for device 00:07.2
Nov 25 20:32:37 localhost kernel: usb-uhci.c: USB UHCI at I/O 0x8400,
IRQ 11
Nov 25 20:32:38 localhost kernel: usb-uhci.c: Detected 2 ports
Nov 25 20:32:38 localhost kernel: usb.c: new USB bus registered,
assigned bus number 1
Nov 25 20:32:38 localhost kernel: hub.c: USB hub found
Nov 25 20:32:38 localhost kernel: hub.c: 2 ports detected
Nov 25 20:32:38 localhost kernel: usb-uhci.c: v1.251:USB Universal
Host Controller Interface driver
Nov 25 20:32:38 localhost kernel: EXT3 FS 2.4-0.9.8, 25 Aug 2001 on
ide0(3,2), internal journal
Nov 25 20:32:38 localhost kernel: parport0: PC-style at 0x3bc
[PCSPP,TRISTATE]
Nov 25 20:32:38 localhost autofs: automount startup succeeded
Nov 25 20:32:38 localhost mwave: Using /lib/modules/2.4.7-10/mwave.o
Nov 25 20:32:38 localhost kernel: Mwave Modem, UART settings IRQ 0x3,
IO 0x2f8
Nov 25 20:32:38 localhost kernel: ttyS01 at port 0x02f8 (irq = 3) is a
16550A
Nov 25 20:32:40 localhost mwave: mwave modem, initializing mwave
manager…OK
Nov 25 20:32:40 localhost mwave: mwave modem, initializing modem
specific code…OK
Nov 25 20:32:40 localhost mwave: mwave modem, getting configured
startup speed…33600.
Nov 25 20:32:40 localhost mwave: mwave modem, checking configured
speed…OK
Nov 25 20:32:40 localhost mwave: mwave modem, setting modem speed…OK
Nov 25 20:32:42 localhost mwave: mwave modem, loading modem DSP…OK.
Nov 25 20:32:42 localhost mwave: mwave modem STARTED. To setup serial
port use: ‘setserial /dev/ttySx autoconfig’
Nov 25 20:32:42 localhost mwave: /dev/ttyS1, UART: 16550A, Port:
0x02f8, IRQ: 3
Nov 25 20:32:42 localhost pcmcia: Starting PCMCIA services:
Nov 25 20:32:42 localhost pcmcia: modules
Nov 25 20:32:42 localhost kernel: Linux Kernel Card Services 3.1.22
Nov 25 20:32:42 localhost kernel: options: [pci] [cardbus] [pm]
Nov 25 20:32:43 localhost kernel: PCI: Found IRQ 11 for device 00:02.0
Nov 25 20:32:43 localhost kernel: PCI: Sharing IRQ 11 with 00:06.0
Nov 25 20:32:43 localhost kernel: PCI: Sharing IRQ 11 with 01:00.0
Nov 25 20:32:43 localhost kernel: PCI: Found IRQ 11 for device 00:02.1
Nov 25 20:32:43 localhost kernel: Yenta IRQ list 0298, PCI irq11
Nov 25 20:32:43 localhost kernel: Socket status: 30000006
Nov 25 20:32:43 localhost kernel: Yenta IRQ list 0298, PCI irq11
Nov 25 20:32:43 localhost kernel: Socket status: 30000006
Nov 25 20:32:43 localhost pcmcia: cardmgr.
Nov 25 20:32:43 localhost cardmgr[761]: starting, version is 3.1.22
Nov 25 20:32:43 localhost rc: Starting pcmcia: succeeded
Nov 25 20:32:43 localhost cardmgr[761]: config error, file
‘./config.opts’ line 8: no function bindings
Nov 25 20:32:43 localhost cardmgr[761]: watching 2 sockets
Nov 25 20:32:43 localhost kernel: cs: IO port probe 0x0c00-0x0cff:
clean.
Nov 25 20:32:43 localhost kernel: cs: IO port probe 0x0100-0x04ff:
excluding 0x200-0x207 0x220-0x22f 0x388-0x38f 0x3b8-0x3df 0x4d0-0x4d7
Nov 25 20:32:43 localhost kernel: cs: IO port probe 0x0a00-0x0aff:
clean.
Nov 25 20:32:44 localhost xinetd[792]: chargen disabled, removing
Nov 25 20:32:44 localhost xinetd[792]: chargen disabled, removing
Nov 25 20:32:44 localhost xinetd[792]: daytime disabled, removing
Nov 25 20:32:44 localhost xinetd[792]: daytime disabled, removing
Nov 25 20:32:44 localhost xinetd[792]: echo disabled, removing
Nov 25 20:32:44 localhost xinetd[792]: echo disabled, removing
Nov 25 20:32:44 localhost xinetd[792]: linuxconf disabled, removing
Nov 25 20:32:44 localhost xinetd[792]: rsync disabled, removing
Nov 25 20:32:44 localhost xinetd[792]: time disabled, removing
Nov 25 20:32:44 localhost xinetd[792]: time disabled, removing
Nov 25 20:32:45 localhost xinetd[792]: xinetd Version 2.3.3 started
with libwrap options compiled in.
Nov 25 20:32:45 localhost xinetd[792]: Started working: 1 available
service
Nov 25 20:32:47 localhost xinetd: xinetd startup succeeded
Nov 25 20:32:47 localhost gpm: gpm startup succeeded
Nov 25 20:32:48 localhost crond: crond startup succeeded
Nov 25 20:32:49 localhost xfs: xfs startup succeeded
Nov 25 20:32:49 localhost xfs: listening on port 7100
Nov 25 20:32:49 localhost anacron: anacron startup succeeded
Nov 25 20:32:50 localhost atd: atd startup succeeded
Nov 25 20:32:50 localhost xfs: ignoring font path element
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/cyrillic (unreadable)
Nov 25 20:32:50 localhost xfs: ignoring font path element
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/local (unreadable)
Nov 25 20:32:52 localhost linuxconf: Running Linuxconf hooks:
succeeded
Nov 25 20:33:05 localhost gdm(pam_unix)[949]: session opened for user
root by (uid=0)

26.11.03

Croatia?

Dear Zhen,

And how do the prices compare to the remote location in Croatia, the
one that you mentioned? (Not in Zagreb). Also, the place (again in
Croatia) on the lake. Do you mean 500-600 Euros for both of us? In one
sense, the price is not important, but then if we can go somewhere
cheaper, it will also be important, or, what do you think? Obviously,
it will be more expensive for me to get to Zagreb, or anywhere in
Croatia, so that should be taken into account.

I’m busy teaching today, so it’s not a very good day. I’ll write you
tonight.

I miss you.
I like you.
I do not dislike you.
Am I like or unlike you?

b

y

e

27.11.03

Kernel panic

Dear Zhen,

Wednesday is over, and I can begin to relax. I’ll try to write a
little
more about my mood, as it’s getting to be understood between us.

You are very perceptive and to have noticed it, and to keep returning
to it, the “it” this mood–as if something’s not quite right here–is
anything wrong?

Yes, and no. No, and yes. Nothing, and everything.

And if I wrote to you that I am extremely unhappy here and
uncomfortable
here–would you believe me, or would you chide me? Scold me?

The size of my apartment makes me uneasy, nervous. It is the kind of
apt. that belongs to people from another world, the university world.
Still you know I am not from that world, that I am a kind of
interloper
(masquerade is a word that’s used in internet communications, and it’s
used for machines masquerding–disguising their home address–there’s
nothing more unsophisticated than logging in somewhere from an address
that can be identified).

So, interloper, as I am not masquerading at the moment. I am neither
a pedagogue nor a scholar, and I can be brilliant and at other times
entirely somewhere else–not there. And then the thought returns to
you, in the middle of listening to your voice interacting in the
entirely contrived and institutional space and you can’t believe that
it’s your voice, your representation, your being that’s being
articulated by a space that, for whatever else it is, authorizes.
Authenticates. Like the machine was saying.

My brilliance? Today I played 45 minutes from an early Kurosawa
film from the 1930s, based on a Gorky title, I think, “The Lower
Depths.” (For my vernacular seminar). The class had ended last
week very successfully, the class that I wrote you about on Reznikoff
(I think there was sometimes a Jewish culture/life-world in the NY
that he grew up in) not exactly a mirror of the Prague-Warsaw nexus
of Kafka’s time–but both life-worlds equally consigned to the
museum. Anyway, there was this kind of satisfaction at the end
of last week’s class that the problem of the Holocaust had been
resolved in statements about the universality of suffering, and
then I played part of this utterly ‘foreign’ film and I even
heard some students in the back making fun of the Japanese sounds.

My point, when I stopped the film in the middle of the class,
was to draw attention to the students’ disorientation. There was
a palpable (touchable, noticeable) estrangement (yes, ostrenenie!)
effect, and the suffering being portrayed was inaccessible to us
on the basis of the strangeness of the sounds (no Indo-European
language sounds that strange, I’ve noticed that in my earliest
months in Chita, when I didn’t know a word, and I listened to it
all the time on the radio and the TV–I didn’t know it, but I
could identify patterns and resemblances to what little Spanish
and French (how many French words there are in Russian!); on the
basis of the camera-work (incredibly stationary, as though the
camera was simply recording a play; the black-and-white photography
and the destitute setting. So all of these ‘foreignesses’ combined
to produce a 45-minute sample of a glimpse at the ‘other.’

Then of course, I drew attention to the tension, historical tension,
between the English subtitles and the visual information, against
the background of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One student spoke about
the internment camps in the U.S. during WWII. How this fits in to
my concept of the vernacular is that we are positioned as outsiders
always, in every sphere of the vernacular. It is interiority itself
in the relation of one culture to another. When you think about
the dissemination of Hollywood film products and popular music
and any other commodity you care to plug into the picture, what
is immediately apparent in the transparency, and the (even overtly
manipulative) identification processes, so we get a little emoting
without even doing much effort. The vernacular, even though it is
emotive, is opaque in comparison–and this is another reason why
I showed this film, for its very opacity.

It was an experiment, teaching by instinct. My instincts are very
sound, but I am always, always, in a context where I must distrust
my instincts–which is to say that I never find myself in a creative
teaching environment, never. So, this makes me extremely unhappy.
Extremely. To have sharp and piercing insights and then to have
to masquerade them in some form that’s acceptable to the institutional
space.

The world we live and work in conspires to make us mistrust ourselves.

Thought will not stand being mistrusted, mistaken. Then it becomes
error.

This is some of the tension you hear in my voice. It feels like
alternating walking around in meaningless circles, and utter
boredom. The computer is a part of that. It’s good that it’s a joke
between us. But I was very seriously humiliated several years ago
by this very device, and as a form of discipline, I guess, as an
example of the disciplining that goes on when we are overpowered
(not to mention publicly humiliated) I return and return again to
this object, trying to compensate for what happened to me, and if
I cannot convince you that something very serious happened to me
several years ago, none of this present life can make much sense.

You see I am very glad that you hear tensions in my voice, “moods.”

You know that I have moods. I believe you do to. The great lesson
is how to learn to let them lead their course, burn themselves out.

My present mood is the surface of much deeper disturbances, and
feeling [a vast blank space for which I have no other word for the
lack of a word here than the nausea I feel whenever I see a white
screen on a computer] prevented, really prevented, shut down or
shut in. Shut up! That too.

Either I’ll write myself out of it and to somewhere else, or
accomplish some other meaningless task on this object that I use
to write to you.

Very simply, it is a writing pad. But when you visit the var logs
you see that there is no ontology here, only processes.

I’m getting tired of saying “bye” to you. How about I miss you?

Wish you?

No, I want you.

Is that okay?

28.11.03

Malta

Dear Zhen,

Malta is 444 dollars, but I can get the ticket here in Lodz, so there’s
some convenience. It wouldn’t be difficult at all for me to fly there.
But I’ll let you factor in the cost to compare. Really, I’m open to any
ideas. I just want to see you, and where? WHEREVER it is best for you.

Good classes this morning, and deep sleep last night for six oblivious
hours. So I feel rather “chipper” as they say in England. Thank you so
much for your letters. I’ll will write a longer letter tonight that you
can read tomorrow, and I’ll call Saturday (around 9:00 p.m. your time).

I miss you.

28.11.03

Cairo, Lituania

Dear Zhen,

Just to check I consulted airfare to Cairo and it is 700 dollars though
it is only a six hour flight.

Why not Lithuania? You do not need a visa to go through Belarus. But I
don’t know how safe the trains are.

Lithuania is very close, like Slovakia.

Which is just to say that I take your ideas about ‘where’ very
seriously. I could get to Lithuania without a problem.

All three classes went extremely well today, and for the one class that
I’m dissatisfied with (a practical English class) I made an appointment
next week with the chair of the practical English program to discuss
teaching materials.

Last night I ate turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, apple (not pumpkin)
pie, wine, and salads (invited to dinner to the chair of the American
culture program, an American, very nice, who lives in a beautiful house
outside the city.

Well, as I told you, I looked miserable because I had just been reading
texts from the history of the extermination of the native peoples to my
teachers’ class, and no one seemed to care, they wanted to eat pumpkin
pie.

I look forward to the eventual and accelerated greying of your hair (of
which you were reminded during your last hair cut–how many grey hairs
you had) and I will not cease to remind you of your elderly appearance.

A dignified senior citizen, yes, I can see you as this right now in my
mind’s eye, still feeding every stray dog that comes your way.

Should I bring a cane with me to Cairo-Malta-Vilnius …

30.11.03

testing testing

dear zhen

do not laugh at me though it seems we laugh a lot and especially at each
other buth it is almost 3 a.m and i am testing new internet connection
having implemented (sort off) (it’s not working perfectly) two very
difficult utilities called sendmail and fetchmail so if this message
reached you it will mean that (surprise!) after a week’s work (not so
much, after all i am lazy an dhope you do not mind) but the concentration
is very enjoyable as enjoyable as talking with you this afternoon maybe
you will call next week and i will call the week after.

bye

01.12.03

Reckless pedestrian

dear zhen

not so late as last night only around a few minutes after minute and
i think i’m going to bed after writing this letter which i hope
reaches
you (is found waiting for you) when you arrive tomorrow morning, this
morning, excuse me, it’s already near dawn and i think you must be
fast asleep as i’m writing, fast asleep and i am afraid more than a
little cold. i have clothes on the radiator still as my washing
machine
worked not only yesterday but today as well and yes i am still lost in
the new operating system and so i’ve not read hardly anything only a
few pages from a book, a novel, which i decided at the last moment to
include in my ‘violence’ seminar a novel which covers the same ground
as Reznikoff’s Testimony poems, but of course, being a novel, much of
the writing turns into scene setting and scenario–more and more i am
hardly able to read a novel as the form itself increasingly appears to
me as the epitome of language laziness

another kind of laziness from that which i was (and am) accusing
myself
of lately, though i’m content to leave it at distraction. and how
strange are moods, a week ago that immobilizing self-doubt (anxiety)
(panic) and now the old illusions set in, that there’s really no
danger, no cause to be concerned for the possibility of sudden and
inexplicable change without resources and panicking, panicking, when
i cannot even begin to anticipate next year or the next and if i ever
stop and seriously doubt myself, then one thought tumbles over another
and i more or less don’t really even want to move out of my bed, so
one thing that i did was make the big move! i’m writing you from the
“beige room” as the “walnut room” began to be too dark for me and so
i’m going to blame the “walnut room” on last weeks dip into
depression.
The walnut room i call so as that is the color of the desk and the
bookcases on which there are no books (another reason to be depressed)
and the carpet is dark orange and red and the table and chairs are
also walnut-colored, and the beige room, as you might guess, is
lighter and bright in color, there is less furniture in here, only
a sofa and desk and chair with reading chair and wardrobe and bookcase
(it’s hard to imagine that yes it is me that is living with all these
places to sit and to lie down and to put one’s clothes and books and
well all those little things we accumulate to keep us company like
paper clips and postage stamps, which as you may notice i’m not using
why? can you believe that it’s actually more pleasureable to write
to you with the machine that i spend so much time before, today i
learned how to spin down the disks on my hard drive so that the
machine rests when it’s not being used–the ideal of course is a
machine that’s always on, even when you’re not using it, there are
processes running in the background and automated tasks, uptime,
uptime, that’s kind of a reproach to the humanness of not wanting
to do anything even when there’s time to do everything.

maybe it was the pedestrian fine but i didn’t go to the store today
to buy food and made it through the weekend on odds and ends, no
Sunday chicken with glass of red wine, eggs and ham without even any
cheese and the ham was rather salty so i’ve been drinking water all
evening instead of wine, and when last week i worried a little about
loss of sleep i bought some herbal tea but like all tea i prefer
coffee and i even began to wonder if the many many cups of coffee
i’ve been drinking began to affect my mood, as i know you have
mentioned this before, that you’re not supposed to drink coffeee,
and yet i prefer this to tea any time. tomorrow evening i will go
to the market and fill up my kitchen, though i tend to buy always
the same items, and when i am distracted, i tend not to spend a lot
of time preparing something that i will eat quickly and without
much pleasure. it’s more fun when you are asking for the third or
fourth helping. my mind this is not your typical state, i think
you were practicing psychology on me! trying to convince me that
i can cook when you know really all i know how to do is put garlic
and onions in a pan with olive or sunflower oil and then whatever
else is lying around goes into the pan with them.

have you been reading anymore from kafka’s diaries? it’s one of
those few books that should always be close by, even if one only
reads a few pages here and there. i have the feeling of having
been to a prague nowhere to be found anymore after last weekend’s
reading–was it only last weekend? do you think the passages from
the diaries you sent me depressed me? why, it’s your fault! yes,
how convenient, i just realized that now i have you to blame for
my gloominess! (not really something to joke about, and this is
what people tend to use one another for).

what a good mood i was in after speaking with you, as it feels
closer and closer to the time when i will actually see you,
and i think that we won’t have changed so much, this is one of
the advantages of the aging process, complete with wrinkles and
grey hair (wrinkles is such a funny word as it sounds to much like
wink and sprinkle–both silly-sounding, and i think you sounded
very serious (yes, that is the word you used, “serious,” when
you spoke about the deep-drawn lines in your face … is it
really with such apprehension that you face your “forties”?

we should change the subject. i don’t want to write lightly about
anything that it is a serious matter for you, even if i don’t quite
understand why, so i think i’m going to go to sleep now, and begin
again tomorrow in my “old” role as teacher and friend of humanity

b


y


e

2.12.03

Common denominators

dear zhen, how cold are you now are you very cold in the mornings
I can’t but feel that you are not so cheerful when it gets so cold,
tonight i read your letter after 7pm when the rates are cheaper for
connecting to the internet and then i write after 10 so this feels
like a good rhythm of communicating everyday since it’s already 5 or
6 in the morning now? 4:15. It’s 4:15 and i hope you are sleeping

about kafka, i don’t think i ever really liked any of his novels only
the atmosphere, for a very long time i think the density of detail
was important to me when reading this kind of text, narrativity, the
imagined world, though a lot more imagining goes on in the text that
doesn’t know what it is, only writing, though i’m not even sure that
anyone writes to themselves anymore–writing against so many walls–
authorities, that’s probably what i meant by the university in my
comment the other day, it’s a kind of structure where yes many years
of my life have been influenced by, and i work in the shadows, when
i work at all, having no independent means of support, so it’s a
place where i work, but i don’t or can’t recognize myself there

in this i’m probably not that far from you, as much as i understand
from you that it’s where you work, where you started working how
many years ago and without even any salary, but to identify any
further with it, what is that? it seems too simple to me to call it
only bureaucracy, but isn’t it (or maybe only in the world that i
come from) a kind of cultural-economy, producing (and funding)
representations, and the appearance of ideas, so many appearances!
is teaching even being ‘friendly to humanity’? my mind most of the
people i’ve ever met work there to avoid having to work the real
work, like that brick oven in your one day that one day in the past

the problem is, that i always feel like i’m going back to the brick
oven, when from my notes and the energy that transpires in class
sometimes all the indications are that i talk about subjects with
great energy and sometimes even humor, attendance is always high
in my classes, though whether or not this amounts to anything how
can i know except that more than ever the classroom appears to be
a place where young people go because they can’t possibly imagine
a life without going there first–a kind of lowest possible common
denominator effect

so i think the friend of humanity bit is a bit of a joke, though
i hardly know how else to characterize this so-called work, except
that it’s not work, more like catering, like serving to too many
people the appearance that their learning anything that will be
of any possible use to them–though i agree that it’s useful to
teach people how to extract minerals and other resources from the
earth, but the idea that ideas change anything seems worse than
a bad joke to me, and i don’t have that illusion, though i believe
somewhat in the effect of an energetic and sometimes even passionate
speaker, and that is what i am able to accomplish sometimes, so is
it work, a profession, career? more like a way of staying alive, so
your always comment, “i’m still alive” maybe it speaks to both of
us

about lithuania, is it even necessary to arrange my part of the
trip? couldn’t i just show up at the hotel? couldn’t we arrange
something there? that’s probably leaving too much to chance–but
really, the process is quite simple, when i arrived to lodz for
example and i got tired of waiting and it was starting to get dark
and i wanted to sleep i simply walked to a hotel nearby and gave
them some money and my passport and they gave me a room, so i’m
sure this is the custom in lithuania also, unless it is a tourist
resort, though even then, would they only rely on pre-arrangements?
sorry for such obvious remarks, but i’m wondering if it wouldn’t
be easier for me just to meet you, and yes, you are right, the
process of the arrangement of details is rather unfamiliar to me
though i’m beginning to appreciate the delineaments of the special
procedure, which of course applies to everything, and the infinite
steps in every process which results in someone’s signature which
as they explain here, people will sometimes avoid you from whom
you need a signature for this or that document since they don’t
want to take the responsibility, even when their job is for them
to exert such responsibility, so that often you go for days and
days to the same office, and the person you need to sign is not
there, maybe even hiding under their desk, or more likely in an
adjacent office

the other idea i had was an imaginary one, called the Socialist
Laptop

of course after all the compliance with every conceivable regulation
the Socialist Laptop would resemble my Washing Machine, which, as
i was watching my Washing Machine complete it’s second full cycle
in two days with my laundry, i thought this is what a Laptop computer
would look like under Socialism, and though it would manage to be
entirely correct, nothing would work, what do you think, are there
some details that might be added? nor should this be interpreted as
a slight of the socialist ideal (everybody equal and nobody exploited
etc) it’s just that the definition of the Laptop would have been
different, and so a machine would have evolved that you put your
ideas in a cannister or Listening Tube and they circulated like
laundry until finding their way to the open ports–maybe Radio
would have been more part of it–maybe it would have looked more
like the enormous radio in my room that receives two channels, both
of them in lodz–which all just to say that it takes high degrees
of exploitation to build a better mousetrap

the tone this letter has taken might seem to you a bit supercilious
and i do have a hard time being humorous (like, don’t you think the
perfect Socialist Laptop would have been pulled by a Camel, like the
one we say trotting down the street in Tomsk)–there’s a beautiful
Polish movie from the ‘Socialist’ period when a man adopts a camel
and everywhere he goes, he takes the camel with him, until the rest
of the townspeople ostracize him, because he is the only one in the
town that has a camel … really, who did he think he was? shouldn’t
he have donated the camel to–where does one donate a camel? where
did that camel come from in Tomsk? don’t you think it’s a little
strange to see a camel galloping down the busy street? especially
in Siberia, where there are supposed to be bears? well, you don’t
know how much i respect your refusal to wear furs in winter, even
when they would keep you warm, and if there’s anyplace in the world
where someone should have the right to wear a fur coat, it is
Siberia but i am afraid you compassion for animals will leave you
a little cold, yes?

when i watched that movie made in the late 60s about the man with
the camel who thought he was a man with a camel even though he was
a man with a camel to be such a man with a camel in those days was
to stand out from all of those in the world without camels in their
yards that stick their heads in the window at night at dinner time
waiting to be fed–now we are in the time of conspicuous consumption
and this was not a term my class knew last week, they didn’t know
what conspicuous meant, and one student said she even dreamed of
owning 100 pairs of shoes and so i made a joke about Ismerelda
Marcos and nobody knew who she was, the same as i would not know
who anybody was from Polish history, such as the Secretary of the
Party in 1968–yes, that party–i didn’t quite get the details the
other night on the drive home from dinner (thursday night) but one
of the polish teachers was remembering in 1968 a crisis of expulsion
when Jews were forced to leave the country, do you know anything
about this? as recent as 1968? i really should read something about
the country that i’m in and from which i am earning a little money,
just think about it, i’m paying the same rent as in Tomsk with
more rooms, my own flat, with telephone, so i can write you in the
evening and sent the letter to you as soon as i’ve finished writing,
and there is an oven and washing machine, and windows on both sides
of the building, and the food here costs about the same, maybe even
a little cheaper (public transportation though is very expensive)
so, as you can guess, i’m actually saving some money, as apparently
it only costs about 500 “zwats” to feed me during the month, so if
i could save 800-1000 zwats a month, that would mean i was saving
about 200-250 dollars a month, if i continue to live the same way
as in Tomsk, so suddenly i had the idea that i’ll have enough money
for this summer in Tomsk without having to worry about work, private
lessons, etc., though, sometime, it’s not urgent, but do you
remember that guy we met at the Macintosh shop who worked for the
private school? Benedict’s? i’m thinking that they probably teach
year around, so it might be a good idea to inquire as to whether
they would like a teacher for July and August (my contract stipulate
that i have to participate in September exams–so really i think
i’ll be done by mid-June and need to return about first or second
week of September–but even two months i think would be plenty of
time to teach at this school–what do you think? of course by
September it is possible that we’ll Mr Armadillo and Mrs Porcupine
though one shouldn’t expect miracles from the one’s who must take
responsibility for their signatures, not to mention all the
directives that must have already been sent thoughout the city
administration that you are not to be allowed to leave Tomsk for
any reason, except Englification.

i’ve chatted enough for one night so i’ll leave you still sleeping
and i wonder, what kind of coffee will you drink this morning?

b



y


     
e

2.12.03

eXpertise

dear zhen

once in my library there was a translation of a poem by a french
poet, Ponge, called le pre or the meadow (in english) and it was
the only description of nature that i could ever think of as of the
name, for the name, of nature, the writing was conceptual, he saw
the physical environment as might a scientist (structuralist–Ponge
was something of a structuralist) how much i wish i had this book
now, as i feel like reading it. the writing was all over the map,
or so it appeared to me then, not scultpural the way Zabolotsky’s
poems appear, in translation, but i suppose that i’m looking for
poetry written with an ‘agrarian’ sensibility (the word sounds
ridiculous in english, associating some sort of classicism, though
Z. is classicist, isn’t he? i go through these periods when i want
to reread everything, and tonight i wish i was reading Reznikoff,
Zabolotsky and Ponge–the poems of theirs written in the 1940s. now
is when i really miss my inter-library loan priviledges when teaching
in the u.s., i had some meaningless low-paying job teaching freshmen
and yet the very fact that i worked for the university gave me
access to libraries not only in that state, but part of a network,
so sometimes i would get books from the univ. of michigan, etc.
all i had to do was go online, and the univ. gave 120 free hours
a month. to everyone. it seems incredible here. doesn’t it? you
get so used to working online, looking for stuff there, and being
able to push a few buttons and in several days any book in any
one of a number of enormous libraries was waiting for you. if i
sound nostalgic, it’s only because i’m growing tired of my reading
being channeled for me on the basis of what’s available here, in
english of course, that’s where i’m stuck, or struck, what? no,
i’m not complaining, the last few days have been pretty good, and
tomorrow i will get exhausted again. thank you for thinking about
my nerves. they are very stretched thin these days, and without
a major catastrophe, i should be able to save about 1000 dollars
between Feb and June (classes here are over in mid-June, so i
would have two to two and a half months in russia, and yes, without
travelling, just getting to tomsk by train, about 300 hundred
dollars would be more than enough for each month, don’t you think?
this is all based on the supposition that i’ll be able to work
here again next year, as i don’t like to think of the alternative
(having yet again to look for another job somewhere, anywhere)
and you are very sensitive about the porcupine matter, which if
i know you just a little, you refuse to anticipate more than wait
and see approach which is all that we can do? you will dislike
this question, but i couldn’t help thinking about it on my trips
to the passport office, but if everything happens as we have talked
about, then would you consider living here next year? would it
be possible? i’m not asking for an answer, maybe it’s something
we can talk more about in january, only it is important for me
to express it as a thought. i don’t feel free to ask you to think
about too much in this regard as i am quite concerned by economics
and without resources, it’s not possible to imagine very much.
the best i can say is that on days when i’m not panic-stricken
about the future (the next year) it appears that i’m getting along
very well with everyone (fitting in, as we say) and teaching
reasonably well given the fact that–there are too many facts.
teaching is teaching, a service that i perform, and though it
exhausts me emotionally, i don’t get any meaning from it. most
disturbing is the amount of terrible texts that i have to read
and discuss as though i thought they were important, simply
because they appear to represent ‘culture’ and discursive expect-
ations, that’s all they do, giving students who don’t read much
a small glimpse into very complex matters. once, just once in my
life, i would like to be able to think aloud, but where? how?
what, even, do i know? a poet’s knowledge is very peculiar, wide
without being scholarly (writing, imaginative writing, simply will
not tolerate authority over it’s subject, which is what one falls
into believing by studying anything, and i really do believe that
i can say that i’ve never studied literature, or when i did, i
was so alienated from the process that i was simply obeying the
procedure, and i hate reproducing this in the classroom. or what
ever i know about poetry that’s essential to my existence, i learned
by reading and reading in no particular direction, for no particular
purpose, reading as a form of floating, drifting and lightnesses.

that’s why there’s no “expert” and anyone who keeps Kafka’s diaries
under her bed knows more about writing than many people who have
degrees from this or that “expert school.” it feels good to write
this way, though as you know i suffer from the anxiety that i don’t
have the proper credentials, and my life, my occupational life,
can come to an end at any moment, and i am always one step away from
the warehouse where it hurts too much to hold a pen in my fingers.
i have always been very frank with you about this, from our first
conversations, don’t you agree? i don’t remember trying to make
myself appear to be someone that i’m not, in tomsk, and i mention
this to share with you just a little my anxieties and concern about
this very basic matter, work and how to support oneself. it is
a problem that will never go away for me, and now writing about it
i’m a little embarrassed with the thought that such expressions of
concern may appear to you as “weak” or, well, weak. you are also
a little more comfortable with unpredictability than i am, if i
remember your conversations, which i do.

so, yes, i would like to work a little with Zabolotsky poems, not
work, so much, maybe, but as we are reclining and relaxing and
resting in lithuania or slovakia, to try to find some english for
these poems, for a few of these poems, that’s more or less what
any poet writes for, and i always imagine this happening with my
work 100 years from now (well, 50, i hope that in 50 years some of
my poems anyway will have been read–though who knows what reading
is–yes, it is the book kept near one’s bed. the most ridiculous
posture in the world is reading at a desk, and people in libraries
including myself always look miserble, like they’re not really
reading, it’s more like the book is controlling them, hold them
magnetically in place. one thing that’s very nice about this flat
is that i can walk around in it while working, though as i keep
insisting, i’m not really working very much, and frankly, i’m asking
about working with you in january a little with the Zabolotsky poems
as a way to start working with language again, beyond typing into
the space of this screen my more or less daily letter to you.

my voice and the circumstance of the direct address shapes what
the language is capable of saying, as already there are many known
coordinates between us, since we know one another, (and i’ll put
all the weight of the verb to know on us, that “we” exists as
part of communication, and all this goes away when writing whether
poetry or prose, the fictive, when we are writing to the historical
and cultural memory of forms, as well as to the poets, Dante with
Vergil in Hades, etc., and this consciousness places a lot of pressure
on the act of approaching language this way, and it is always an
approach, always provisional, hesitant, searching, not a language
use, which is how language is used whenever it wishes to assume
the status of discourse, which is what all the institutions are
built on, discursive practices. poetry is not discourse! even the
experts, especially the experts, they don’t know what it is, since
most of them can’t do it, they don’t know how to abandon themselves,
even to forget themselves, you have to forget yourself to enter
the moment of the emerging of the imaginative in writing. then to
learn to appreciate the halting and hesitant power of words trying
to find other words, so as to make, build, put together a verbal
object that’s worth something, worth paying attention to, that’s
an object by virtue of both it’s knowledge of the past and it’s
departure from that past.

writing writes to itself and to other writing, that’s what i liked
so much about the kafka diaries. seriously, i think i have been
writing for so long that periods when i’m not working don’t bother
me much, though i can recognize the stress that’s the result of
feeling detached, too detached, from the process of making something,
and it’s always a combination of days of reading and the most lazy
appearing reading in the world, and keeping a notebook around,
which you write in but don’t read from until after the impulses
have passed, at least that’s one way that i’ve written before.
the computer is a troublesome tool in this regard. it’s so
instrumental. there are by now a number of poems that i’ve written
directly into the keyboard, and it bothers me a little that i can
feel a certain tentativeness (the fear of the blank page) evaporating
because you can always fill up a screen with words. that’s what
you probably think that i’m doing now, so i’ll SHUT UP though not
before mentioning that i did cook tonight but a chicken that must
have been meant for the stew pot (i couldn’t read the polish of
course but it was half the usual price) since when i took it out
of the oven i could barely cut myself a slice and then it was
too tough to chew, so it must have been meant for soup. but by
accident almost i made something with mushrooms, tomatoes and
onions with paprika and thyme and pepper which was quite good over
rice, and i hardly had to pay any attention to the leathery chicken.
without wine, as tomorrow’s a teaching day. will you call me this
weekend? don’t be shy about saving money. there’s nothing more
important, as you know. i’ll call you next weekend, same time,
it’s rather nice talking with you on a saturday evening, you are
in a rather nice mood (oh, yes, you are always in such moods)

have you seen any camels lately? in your letter, there something
about the sentences, but i can almost feel how cold you are,
how cold it is, there–the other kind of coldness is quite good,
the refusal to indulge in language that everybody uses, that’s
not what i mean by cold, but there’s an immobility in the expression,
as though one is sitting and typing without moving their body,
and when you type, when you work at the computer, you like to
bend over the keyboard, very closely. it’s too bad that there
wasn’t a socialist laptop that also included a built-in heater
in computers, why not a computer that runs on wood or coal?
i forgot, electricity also gives off heat, so why can’t there
be computers that also function as space heaters? on each side
of the screen instead of speakers they could have small grills
that would burn at high heat, so that the fingers pressing the
keyboard would not freeze. then again, most computers were not
designed with Siberia in mind. you would be amazed at the typical
thermostat settings in offices and homes in the u.s. there is
always this will to make the interior environment the same
regardless of the weather conditions outside. it is the ultimate
in the control over nature. i’ve expostulated enough. thank
you for your letters, they mean a lot to me

b y e
e y b
y e b
y b e
e b y
b e y

ps. have you compared currency exchange rates in both
slovakia and lithuania? i don’t want to assume they’re
the same, especially since i’ll be exchanging “zwats”

any other busy-busy questions i can ask you?

3.12.03

Zima

Dear Zhen,

I’m at school at couldnt wait to write you a note which is all this
will be though it is too bad that you won’t get it till tomorrow I
wanted to send you a few words while you were at work, how much I would
enjoy being where the electricity goes off for the day and one has to
go home (is the electricity off for all of Tomsk or only the
university?). Cold. Here I am still wearing a light sweater without
gloves, hat or scarf. It is not to make you feel bad that I mention
this, only to say that I am somewhat grateful sometimes for where I am,
even if I have to teach my “Conversation” class today (they are very
lazy, and do not like to talk). My other classes are going quite well.
I guess I feel more secure, for the moment anyway. I miss you.

4.12.03

Thursday morning mist

dear zhen

it’s 8:00 a.m. and i just dragged myself out of bed, the alarm went
off
as usual but i did not obey it, for some reason or other all i have to
do today is go to the british council library to return two books (and
check out two new ones!) one of them is overdue since i lent it to a
colleague and just got it back tuesday, but i couldn’t go to the
library
yesterday because of my schedule, so now my one book is one day
overdue

you see how complicated my life is, and the view from the window shows
a heavy grey day wet with not quite rain, a dew, a heavy dew, more
than
dew, mist, yes, mist, as though this were a baltic city (yes, i would
like to be with you in january on the baltic, or in the mountains, as
recently as a few days ago someone mentioned how beautiful the
mountains
of slovakia are, they are very popular places for europeans from the
big countries (france and germany)

yesterday i had to glance at the newspapers for materials for my
conversation class, and there were all kinds of tremors and tremblings
in the headlines about european union debate and the coming european
order of 25 nations led by france and germany and there is a military
component to it also (of course i was reading an english paper, ‘the
observer’), not really reading, i hate reading the news anymore, it
is so molecular, though i think there’s more ontology in studying
mitosis in a microscope than looking for a single instance of analysis
in contemporary commentaries (that is too dignified a word, they are
comment-makers, all of them) russia is a very quiet place in
comparison

which is an absolutely stupid remark, one of the high points in
teaching last year, i remember one of my second-year students speaking
about the strike of airport workers in Omsk and her saying that as
a result of all the unpredictabilities from generation to generation
that ordinary people are afraid to do anything that might make
anything
different (worse) in their lives than their already very bad
conditions
because, as you know, there is no bottom to just how bad the
conditions
of life can be, which is one reason why i worry, my conditions of
life,
here, are too good, something is wrong, i don’t have anything to do
today except reread Meridel LeSeur’s “Women on the Breadlines” and
outline some comparisons to the film, “Ironweed” with Jack Nicholson
and Meryl Streep (my students immediately knew of them, liked them,
so i showed them this film that was in the library, as the author,
not of the film but of the book by the same title, William Kennedy,
participated in a conference at this university in September, so all
his books are here now, and his novel is awful, though i assigned it
for one class, next weeks’ class, telling the students to divide up
the seven chapters–why am i writing you about all this except that
it’s what my head is full of this morning when i wake up one hour past
the time that i’ve set for myself, so i’ve already lost one hour in
a day where i have nothing more to do than go to the british council
library

do you mind if i have a second cup of coffee? i’m convinced that my
mood alteration of a week ago developed out of beginning to drink
coffee in the late afternoon and early evening and a few night where
i worked until almost dawn, trying to figure out this and that on
the other side of my computer, so only coffee in the morning and
never past noon, though more and more herbal tea tastes insipid to
me, but it is a good policy, no caffeine after high noon, my mind
this is a consideration you must remember, also, though not for mood
reasons, but your kidney? i remember you saying that you have been
advised not to drink coffee at all, though how could one give up
such a pleasure? i envy tea drinkers all over the world, really
there is no comparison, when i am drinking tea i am always drinking
water, and it is does not clear my thoughts as coffee in the morning

you might always read my commenting on the university and life and
work there as one of deep ambivalence (not to mention anxiety) as
what reason do i have to complain? this flat is the best place i’ve
lived in since cleveland, for 8 months before coming to russia as
i once told you i lived in a beautiful place in cleveland, my work
load is not heavy, my students come to my classes, my colleages are
pleasant (not fighting among themselves, even in russia everyone was
in a permanent state of anxiety over this demand or that coming
down from ‘above’), we design our own classes (there are no syllabi
from the Polish Ministry of Education), though yesterday i provoked
laughter in my conversation class when i referred to Poland as a
‘peace-loving east european country’ when, in Polish, everyone is
talking about the presence of Polish military in Iraq,it is not
popular, not at all, though for the most part i avoid discussion of
all political matters, in class or out of class, and it is not a
question of being up-to-date on the latest events, as i know what
is going on, historically, i know what is going on, and it is cause
for worry, though concern is the better word, especially the phrase,
grave concern, though what does one do with their grave concern?

before i have written to you how writing, serious writing, has to
be aware of the time that it is being written in, that there are no
comforting fomulae to hide behind, even formulae that we except in
our daily lives, well, i just wrote except instead of accept, one of
the typical and recurring problems for learners of english, for those
both inside and outside of the language, so it reminds me that i am
always one step away from beginning all over again, and this is very
good for one’s writing though not always very good for one’s health

my grave concern this morning is wanting to read Ponge, Reznikoff
and Zabolotsky, their writings in the 40s, how can i get hold of their
books? you will think that i am asking for my gift back if i ask you
to bring the two volumes of reznikoff with you in january, but they
would be nice to read from along with the zabolotsky (could you do
this for me, you who are so kind and who actually help me?) could you
look for the best edition of zabolotsky? there is a difference
between reading him and khlebnikoff, why does the latter enter the
anglo-american culture of the avante-garde and not zabolotsky? why
is z. neither classicist or experimentalist? what is valuable in his
poetry? does it mean anything that he comes from the countryside?
does it mean anything anywhere for any writer to come from the
countryside? when i write at the beginning of my life that i come
from the countryside, am i writing meaningless or meaningful words?
how can i know unless i read other writers who come from the country
side? really i distrust, deeply distrust, the kind of facility with
ideas represented by essenin, despite a few beautiful lines about
hay and meadows, it is the worst tendency in lyricism, to gloss

my mind z. is not glossy, yes? even in translation the poems are
sculptural, this ever-presence of the sculpture in russian culture?
even in your dacha, all the objects, the age of the objects, their
time, the time kept in them, are kinds of sculptures, very real and
material, tangible, solid, so that the one living there has this
perception (and it has everything to do with what i call ‘ontology’)
that you are moving in a very real and stable and physical world,
and it is an accomplishment, in life, to have this world

so i will end this morning’s letter on my perception of your life
even though you express loss of patience with your life experience,
for me, i am disoriented as soon as i stop reading, and i have never,
never understood what this is, “life,” it all seems so conditioned
by circumstances and well, circumstances, over which one has no say,
no control, my future, your future, our future, you seem to have more
sense of humor about the fate of the armadillo and the porcupine, as
they wander from office to office with notarized documents seeking
the permission to travel together, to live together, to receive
work benefits together (what a demand! who dares make such demands!
who has the right to make demands of benefits! health benefits?!
fiiiiiii….) so Porcupine and Armadillo return to the pine needles
in the forest, the one always searching for smetana to add to his
soup, the other drinking coffee around the clock, in their separate
countries, far away from one another, yet patiently waiting, yes,
even faithfully waiting? well, i’m not asking you to be faithful
and i am not jealous, only i am very happy when you write to me
every day, and i do not like this word, ‘obligatory,’ and what is
it? yes, it is obligatory to care for someone, as it is obligatory,
isn’t it, to keep one another alive, especially in the deep and dark
and bitterly cold siberian winter? although, unfortunately, words
don’t keep anyone alive, only warm food and socks on the radiator
and two blankets at night …

i will hope for a letter from you this evening

b
y
e b
y
e

do you know the repetition in english of ‘baca’ sounds awful and yet
i say it all the time, automatically, why? how does one take apart
all
the words for goodbye, see you later, so long, etc? they are all
awful.
one is never gone from another, the idea that we ever enact our
“byes”
is false? theoretically, the word that might be used is ‘closure,’
all
the conventions in conversation for closure, saying this is over now,
i am no longer speaking to you now, when the very idea that someone
we
are speaking to is no longer speaking to us, will no longer be
relating
to us, is no longer relative to us–so there is kinship, kindred
feeling
in the most ordinary and mundane exchanges? terrible word, exchange!
is it a marketplace, where the old lady pushes her cart in the cold
winter crying “coffee, chai…” and in every market stall are words
warmly spoken, caring, but only appearing to care, how do we ever
find
the capacity to actually care for another human being? so, no, i do
not
accept the word obligatory, i woke up this morning thinking i did not
write you last night because if i had written you last night i would
only have complained about how tired i am, when, this morning, i have
the whole day to myself, so what better way to begin the morning than
by writing you, since now i feel very good having written you and
this
letter, it is 2:00 p.m. in Tomsk, and please be frank, be honest,
when
you checked your mail, did you miss me? i am not trying to make you
miss me and you do not need to answer this question, but i am trying
to analyse the phenomenon of caring about another, as i say that i
care about you, now i want to know what i mean by it, as these
letters,
the writing to you, is a kind of lifeline for me, so is it caring for
you, and caring for me, that sends me to writing to you?

well, i will ask you to care about me just a little and ask you then
to send me, if you can, the russian text of the “For the Translator”
that you transcribed, if you kept it in MSWord format, do you have
the MSWord doc. If you do, could you send it to me?

5.12.03

More on Zabolotsky

dear zhen,

just finished half an hour (precious time!) searching for more info on
zabolotsky and thought you might also in addition to the website post
i sent you in this url

www.newamericanwriting.com/20/

where there is a recent translation among other russian poets you may
recognize, also

www.vavilon.ru/texts/purin3-18.html

looked interesting, in passing, which is all that it’s possible to do
when the connection is being billed by the minute, which arrangement
i don’t think i’ll change until after january

tomorrow i will look up the lithuania sites (is this also maybe and yes
it should be, a quiet request for a little assistance from me?)

my classes are prepared for tomorrow, what could possibly irritate me?

i sent the text you transcribed to some museum in france that was
collecting “mission statements” but i had to send it in the text of
an email, so even though i sent it “cyrillic windows” i don’t know if
it will be legible. what setting do you use for cyrillic in outlook
express?

this is an entirely info-based and non-subjective letter, except that
i’m sorry if you worried for just a moment when you hadn’t heard from
me. i went to bed rather early last night, and now my day in which i
didn’t have much to do is nearly over.

i miss you, and like you very much, and yes, it is rather formal,
though you should know that my (private) thoughts of you are not so
formal, though they are not expressible in your language or mine …

5.12.03

OBERIU

dear zhen,

and finally, i thought you might be interested in hearing about someone in
russia working with russian poetry in the u.s.

Eugene Ostashevsky
OBERIU: Russian Absurdism of the 1930s

These translations aim to introduce readers of New American Writing to the last,
and least known, of the groups of the Russian avant-garde. The writers of this
group came of age with the Russian modernist impulse already in its last throes,
smothered by censorship both external and self-imposed. Unlike their futurist
predecessors, they had no chance and they knew it. After the arrests that
followed a burst of performance activity around 1930, they worked in silence; by
1942 almost all were dead from what might be characterized as unnatural causes.
In Russian, they are called oberiuty, from the acronym OBERIU,
standing for The Union of Real Art: so they referred to themselves between 1927
and 1931. Western scholars sometimes speak of them as Russian absurdists,
because their work bears stylistic and existential similarities to what later,
with Beckett and Ionesco, became known as the Absurd. OBERIU operated in
Leningrad.
Its ringleaders were Daniil Kharms and Aleksandr Vvedensky. Kharms
(1905-1942) was tall. Vvedensky (1904-1941) was not. Kharms cultivated the dress
and manner of an English eccentric. Vvedensky dressed modestly and had rotten
teeth. There was nothing artistic in his conduct save for a mania for cards.
Kharms was into found objects, and at one point assembled a huge metallic
thingamajig in his room. “What is this?” asked an astounded visitor. “A
machine.” “What kind of a machine?” “No kind. Just a machine.” “But where did
you get it?” “I put it together myself!” “But what does it do?” “Nothing.” “Then
why do you have it?” “I just wanted a machine in my room.”1 Vvedensky, on the
other hand, had almost no furniture. “Vvedensky came over with a pint of vodka,”
recorded a friend. “He drank a half of it and sat quietly on the couch, saying
only that he was saving himself for the evening’s party.”2
Kharms wrote poetry, prose and plays. It is his play Elizaveta Bam that, in
the whole absurdist oeuvre, is most reminiscent of Ionesco. Its plot consists of
the arrest of a woman for the murder of one of the people who have come to
arrest her. The play is full of non-sequiturs, circus acts, music and wild
changes in tempo. Both Elizaveta Bam and some of Kharms’s hilarious prose texts,
with their illogical action and grotesque, puppet-like violence and eroticism,
have appeared in English, in the translations of George Gibian and Neil
Cornwell.3 George Gibian has also translated Vvedensky’s play Christmas at the
Ivanovs’, but Vvedensky’s major achievement-his poetry-has not been available
for the English-speaking reader until now.
Vvedensky once said that his writing has only three themes: time, death,
and God. On another occasion, he described his intellectual project as follows:

I raised my hand against concepts, against initial generalizations that no one
previously had touched. Thereby I performed, you might say, a poetic critique of
reason – more fundamental than that other, abstract [critique of Kant]. I
doubted that, for instance, house, cottage and tower come together under the
concept of building. Perhaps, the shoulder must be linked to the number four. I
did it practically, in my poems, as a kind of proof. And I convinced myself that
the old relations are false, but I don’t know what the new ones must be like. I
don’t even know whether they should form one system or many. And so my basic
sensation is that of disjointedness of time and fragmentation of space. Since
this contradicts reason, it means that reason does not comprehend the world.4

His pieces are all long, several pages and up, and often involve dialogue, or
rather monologues of almost hallucinatory intensity, by beings who have no
essence save speech. Typical Vvedensky anti-metaphors are “animals too are
clocks” and “the sky became empty and clean like the sky.” In Russian these
illogical combinations manage to be absolutely, unbearably tragic. He wrote
poems in one or just a few sittings and almost never corrected, using rhymes and
simple fast meters to aid the automatic-writing character of his process.
If another major oberiut poet, Nikolai Zabolotsky (1903-1958), was an
absurdist, it was despite his best intentions; and his break with the group
occurred, first and foremost, on theoretical grounds. A son of an agricultural
scientist, with an acute eye for detail, in the 1920s Zabolotsky built a
beautiful and ponderous style out of folkloric and cubist elements. Around 1930
he embarked on poems in which animals and people engage in profound
philosophical discussions. His masterwork, The Triumph of Agriculture, predicts
that scientific communism will liberate farm animals from mortality. Published
in 1933, it encountered a storm of vitriol: Zabolotsky, the critics claimed, is
a counter-revolutionary, cynically clearing his nostril upon everything that
humanity holds dear! In fact, it seems as if the poor poet did expect the
Revolution to lead to the liberation of nature from exploitation and death. He
started moving towards more traditional forms, a process greatly aided by six
years of hard labor (1938-1944).
Another member of the group, Nikolai Oleinikov (1898-1937), specialized in
“bad” poetry-in what may be described, with Run DMC, as “not bad meaning bad,
but bad meaning good.” My favorite piece is about the vivisection of a cockroach
by heartless scientists, whose most pathetic moment is: “There, in the shadow of
a large cupboard, / abandoned by everyone, alone, / the son babbles, Papa! Papa!
/ Poor son!” Oleinikov also left a manuscript on number theory. He, Kharms and
Vvedensky made a living as children’s writers.
The group also included the philosophers Leonid Lipavsky and Iakov Druskin;
the talented and erudite poet / novelist with the unfortunate pseudonym of
Konstantin Vaginov; the poet Igor Bakhterev, the director Doivber Levin and
several others from the Radiks theater company. Since Zabolotsky was the only
poet to publish adult pieces, the group made their work public in performances
where poetry reading alternated with circus acts, arguments, singing, screaming
and general ruckus. After one heated show, the newspapers took to accusing them,
in increasingly hysterical tones, of counter-revolutionary attitudes and
activities. The illogic of their work was seen as a deliberate attempt to
confuse the proletariat. At the end of 1931, Kharms and Vvedensky were arrested,
incarcerated, and sentenced to internal exile; however, they got out remarkably
quickly, serving only a year each.
When they returned, there were to be no more performances. The oberiuty met
informally, reading new work to each other and conducting philosophical and
not-so-philosophical conversations, preserved for us by Lipavsky. In 1936,
Vvedensky married and moved to Kharkov, in the Ukraine. In 1937 the Great Purge
started. Oleinikov, as member of the Civil War generation that was the one of
the targets of the purge, was arrested and executed as Trotskyite terrorist and
saboteur of children’s literature. The publishing house where the oberiuty
worked got cleaned out. Zabolotsky was arrested as well.
In the summer of 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union. There were fresh
arrests of anyone deemed potentially subversive, and Kharms and Vvedensky had
political records. The Soviet police came for Vvedensky during the evacuation of
Kharkov. He died in December 1941, apparently of dysentery in a cattle car
headed for Siberia. Kharms, arrested in Leningrad, feigned madness to escape the
firing squad; instead, he starved to death in a prison asylum during the first
winter of the German blockade. Lipavsky was killed in the trenches. The oberiut
Iakov Druskin, already in the state of dystrophy, walked across the mutilated
city to Kharms’s apartment. Kharms’s wife, Marina Malich, gave Druskin a
suitcase with Kharms’s and Vvedensky’s papers. He tied the suitcase to a child’s
sled and pulled it back home. This is how the greater part of their surviving
work came down to us.


1 V. Lifshitz, in Jean-Philippe Jaccard, Daniil Kharms et la fin de l ‘
avant-garde russe (Bern: Peter Lang, 1991). Translated into Russian by F. A.
Perovskaia as Daniil Kharms i konets russkogo avangarda, (Saint Petersburg:
Akademicheskii proekt, 1995), p. 351.
2 Leonid Lipavskii. “Razgovory.” Logos, vol. 4 (Moscow: Gnosis, 1993); pp. 7-75.
Available online at http://www.ruthenia.ru/logos/number/1993-4.htm.
3 The Man with the Black Coat: Russia’s Lost Literature of the Absurd. Ed. and trans. George Gibian. 2nd ed. Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP, 1997. Daniil Kharms. Incidences. Trans. Neil Cornwell. London: Serpent’s Tail, 1993.

4 Quoted in Lipavskii, p. 16.

*

Writers House hosts evening of cross-cultural readings from Brazil, France and Russia

By Elizaveta Malashenko
September 18, 2003

Reading international literature is complicated by barriers of language and culture, but last night, three speakers at Kelly Writers House attempted to bridge those differences.

A bilingual poetry reading series entitled “A Night of New Translations” gave students the opportunity to embrace cross-cultural communication by exploring international poetry.

Translators Craig Dworkin, Marcella Durand and Eugene Ostashevsky offered readings that embraced the influences of modernist poetry from Brazil, France and Russia.

Organizers invited the translators specifically to represent the diversity of
modernist poetry.

“It’s a mixed bag,” Kelly Writers House Director Jennifer Snead said about the variety of speakers.

The event’s host, Caroline Crumpacker, also said that the translations’
multinational scope was an important aspect of the evening.

“At a time when our country is increasingly pleased with its isolation and
xenophobia… a spectrum of international dialogue is urgently needed,” said Crumpacker, who herself is a poet and an organizer of a bilingual poetry reading series in New York.

In her introduction, Crumpacker emphasized the wide meaning of translation in understanding poetry.

“To read is to translate,” Crumpacker said. “No two people ever read a poem the same way… we are always translating.”

Dworkin particularly addressed the symbolic meaning of words in poetry before reading his translation of Brazilian poet Haroldo de Campo.

“When I am translating poetry, I am concentrating more on the words and the ideas they convey,” Dworkin said.

Some members of the audience said they found Dworkin’s analysis particularly useful.

“It was interesting to hear Dworkin deconstruct the original language and the link to the feelings that have no language,” Engineering and College freshman M Tong said.

The other speakers of the evening offered various thoughts about the purpose of translation.

Durand, who discussed French modernist poetry, commented on the influence of such poetry on modern American writers.

“Much of our precedent comes from a place not unexpected — but obscure in that it is foreign,” Durand said. “Much of the poetry that so revolutionized American poetry remains untranslated.”

Ostashevsky read his translation of Russian poetry by Nikolai Zabolotsky, who wrote in the 1930s. Ostashevsky placed the poem that he was reading in the political context of its day.

“Total adaptation of Revolutionary rhetoric and total misapplication of it,” he said, commenting on the language used by Zabolotsky.

Overall, the event served to represent the diversity of poetry, as well as
demonstrating the importance of translation in reading.

“Translation is not something that we study at Penn,” Snead said. “As Americans, we do have an English bias.”


5.12.03

Re:Lithuania

This won’t reach you till tomorrow, but its a pdf tourist brochure for
lithuania in which i thought there might be some useful info. i’m going
to read it tonight. maybe you have already downloaded it, as it was at
one of the sites urls you sent me. bye. i’ll write more later (tonight)
as i’m at the school and on valuable computer time.

6.11.03

Capitallessness

dear zhen,

should i or should i not, never, at least not most of the times,
say i will write you in the evening when at the end of a long day
i know better than to write since all i will write is that i am
tired, and lonely, and hungry, and bored.

yesterday at least was not so boring, my classes as on wednesday
were the best yet, maybe it is because we are nearing the end of
the term, but the students are in a good mood, and sometimes even
seem to genuinely like me, and that of course is so very american,
to wish to be liked, rather than this determination to impart
knowledge–is it possible that russians and europeans alike interpret
knowledge more seriously, or is it only me? am i too ironic towards
my profession? except that i believe you are even more ironic than
me, and you are quite russian sometimes i believe, smiling as i am
writing them at these national signifiers, as empty and yet as
bewitching as they are.

do you like my turn towards the capitallessness of my letters?
i started using them when i was somewhat depressed and they amused
me, and now they are becoming another convention of our discursive
practice, and yes, i’m afraid, these letters represent a discursive
practice, use of language (english language!) and i’m not giving you
much of a model of good standard english language usage, in fact
perhaps you have noticed but my syntax is rather disobedient sometimes don’t you think? at least i hope that it is.

there is nothing in particular that i need to do today or tomorrow.
the two books i checked out on my thursday when except for several
hours of class preparation i also had nothing in particular required
of me to do, well, one book is about teaching collocation in english
and the other by one of an army of clever englishmen whose thinking
would be very different without raymond williams and pierre bourdieau
about the sociology of place, the space-time construct, you know,
very theoretical, but i’m at the beginning of developing a course
maybe even for the spring that would interpet the urban spaces of
new york, los angeles, and maybe chicago and detroit (though i would
like to include atlanta also–in the make of things, these cities are
all extremely wealthy, and their culture is intense (even cleveland
had very active local and international cultural rhythm, with art
and music by visiting artists–there was a major Diego Rivera show
while i was living there, well i could go on and on about this and
it’s not just the culture that my class would focus on, but the
urban tension in the social space, etc., and in a way such a course
would develop on the very traditional notion of the geography course
which is still taught here as in russia, but incorporate mass media
and multimedia. if this sounds ambitious, i had better be. i need
to be more ambitious. maybe i’m beginning just now to get my bearings.

once more, remember my logic for coming here: to develop a framework
for future teaching, to prepare for the next 20 years of teaching,
to accept that i am looking at a lifetime (remaining lifetime) of
work, and to try to to do this as best as i possibly can without the
proper credentials, and these credentials are very important now,
more than ever, i’m really suffering for my distraction/reckless
utopianism of believing i could write poetry and get away with it.
one needs to be something else or do something else, in addition,
you cannot ask your writing to constitute your identity in a world
that is terrified of the poetic. last night i went to a poetry
reading and it was so congenial, a young woman poet was reading,
and there was a question-and-answer period following, of course all
in polish so i didn’t understand anything, except that it’s quite
possible to perceive a verbal environment based on inflection and
tone, and i felt like i was somewhere in the imagined 1970s when
women in the u.s. were first seriously occupying social space as
poets and cultural leaders. as far as i understand, poland still
does not have a great author who also just happens to be a woman
(this is how a man would think) when the difference is crucial, the
gendered mark affecting confidence and even some measure of reckless
to be wild in language, to throw oneself at the language, my mind
there is tsvetayeva and ahkmatova but they are such threshold figures
between 19 and 20 centuries, that they cannot always be inspiring?
who do you read when you want to read someone closer to your own
time? or is time, this kind of historical time, felt and perceived
differently in russia? are the poets such as the oberitus more
contemporary in russia than in the accelerated stratospheres of
anglo-american trends?

as for space, there are at least two variants now, material-cultural
and immaterial-virtual, and that is why i send you the opennet.ru
address for taste of what very clever russians are doing and leaving
microsoft and developing communications networks among each other
and the rest of the world. take a look some day at www.sarai.net at
an online cultural project from india (your beloved india!) (you
don’t know how many teachers i met in chita who spoke fondly of india
either as a place they had once visited or where they wished to
visit as perhaps some third-world alternative to the western empire
of u.s. and europe that like russia is science-smart and developed
but suffering, poor and suffering, without even basic social safety
nets in new delhi not to mention calcutta (like cairo how powerful
these names are to me) do you know that when i have tried to teach
texts from this sarai.net my students in russia did not want to
read about writing from another country (a poor country) but only
from england and america (this psychology is very typical i think)
when i was trying to develop some thoughts about english as
international language that people from all over the world use to
communicate with one another outside their language/culture boundaries
so that the practice of english does not need to enmesh oneself in
anglo-american culture only, and it is this internationalism that
i am so very interested in, and why i am not living in the protection
(cocoon!) of my own country and language (despite library borrowing
privileges!) and why i believe so much in future of internet as
boundary-crosser.

so much for this morning. if you do not call today you know that it
is not obligatory, and i worry as always about the expense. this
weekend, in the interest of frugality, i will eat only rice and beans
and kasha with two apples and one tangerine remaining on my kitchen
counter, and monday or tuesday i will shop again for food. by my
calculations i now have 4400 zwots (about 1100-1200 dollars) all
of my earning here already, 400 hundred dollars and 4000 rubles,
so i am in about the same place as when i left u.s. in september
with 1500 dollars. if you remember i was very worried because last
two times when i left the u.s. it was with about 2500 in addition to
monthly income. this safety net. no one provides it but ourselves.
i write to you very frankly about this because i am very fond of
russian custom of all queuing at the same window for their salary, so
money is not a secret yet (if englification proceeds it will be–
there is nothing more forbidden in anglo-american culture than to
talk about money–salaries especially–it is how the professional
society is kept divided) so it is a pleasure to be frank about this
and to be able to say that, according to my plans, i am able to
save money here, enough to be able to travel to tomsk, to russia,
and to you. it helps with my ability to hope and to anticipate the
future, to accept the possibility that there will be a future.

everyday i see polish pedestrians crossing the street on the red
light, so i want you to know that i was only doing something that
i saw others doing, and didn’t know i could get a ticket for it,
all the while amused at thinking how incomprehensible it would be
for citizen of tomsk: do you mean that i cannot cross the street
when there are no cars coming, that i must wait for the light to
change color? what kind of custom is this? do you think that i can’t
tell the difference between cars and no cars? how ridiculous! what
kind of people are these who wait for the color of the light to
change for permission to cross the street! social disciplining,
or urban space. i’m sure that it’s the practice in moscow or
petersburg, but in tomsk? i never saw anyone waiting anywhere.
people walk at all zigzags and everywhere, as cars drive everywhere
not only on the streets. do you take for granted such freedoms?
in the modern city, there are strict rules of walking behavior.
and don’t forget, in the country, at least in america, there are
fences everywhere. in iowa, in the surrounding fields, the largest
farmer-landowner put tires every hundred meters on fence posts
with white-painted letters: Tresspassers Will Be Shot.

i am suggesting how, culturally, socially-culturally, beautiful,
absolutely lovely, aspects of russian culture are, everyday life,
unless you forget sometimes in the bitter cold.

have you had time to look at the lithuania pdf. now i know where
the region is on the baltic (Palanga?) which is almost in latvia.
there seem to be a lot of rural getaways in the southern lithuania
near the small russian territory and not only would this be closer
for me, but i am guessing also more russian spoken here and more
friendly towards russians? or maybe the closer the borders, the
less friendly? let’s go to lithuania any which-way this time, and
with the hope that we will go here again, maybe to explore more.
it is my lack of talent with figures, but at exhange rate of about
3.5 ls to the euro, how much does that make my pns (polish currency)
at 4.75 to the euro, worth? more or less? if i convert 3000 pns,
about 600 dollars or 450 euros, will this be enough? i can do all
of this here, at my bank (i even have electronic credit card) but
i have no head for currency conversion, and it would help to plan.
even in russia, with bank card, you could withdraw immediately the
money you needed in dollars, rubles, or euros–maybe this will be
the same in lithuania. (i didn’t have a bank card in tomsk, which
is why i always went to the currency office, as you may remember).
enough about money. i am glad that it grows on trees.

today i think i am going to study my computer, as it always reminds
me how human i am.

your very virtual “kissmiss” was quite palpable, and for a moment
just for a moment, we were face to face again, mouth to mouth.

i forgot to mention that i’m writing this letter without having
yet shaven, which no doubt you would remind me of if we were kissing.

with unshaven kisses and coffee, always coffee

b

y


e

6.11.03

What should writing be?

Should the writing would the writing if the writing could see anything
other than the fact of the writing, the instance of the writing, the
moment of the writing itself, than wouldn’t that require some form of
suspension, the will to a fiction, and how can this will to the
fiction be tested between the writing and its reading, if all reading
is projected, than the writing shows how it wants to be read, needs to
be read, once there is arrived at that position, an occupied position,
frame or framework, where the writing establishes its condition for
reading, that it can only be read in this way, such formalities.

For writing to admit that it doesn’t know what it’s writing about.
That’s what’s given to the narrative, the suspension into the fiction
is already a violence, as there are other and more instrumental tools
for capturing the real and real time, why use writing to document,
what does writing document other than its own processes, its
inclination to textuality, vacating landscape and portrait alike.

Does it even remember, ever remember, the will of the text to be only
text, and being only text, does it simulate being? Or does all writing
affront being, and where does the concept disclose the sign? What if
the writing isn’t reading anything? Isn’t this also an affront? Isn’t
this also departure from a tradition? Convention, not tradition. Isn’t
that what. That’s what. The materiality of these particles.

Write the refusal of every imaginable context. Write the refusal of
the imaginary. The other side is not necessarily documentary. There
does not even have to be another side. It is the absence of the
metaphor that disturbs. And the hands try to learn how to write. They
don’t obey the mind sometimes. And they shouldn’t, should they? Why
should there be the assumed integration of their coordination in the
search for a word?

 7.12.03

FYI NZ

In contrast is Daniel Weissbort’s translations
of another Russian Nikolay–Nikolay Alekseyevich Zabolotsky
(1903-1958). Divided into seven sections that cover the entirety of
the author’s poetic oeuvre, Weissbort assures the reader in his
preface “that these are translations and not imitations, or my own
poems.” This is only partially true, in that Weissbort has
transformed this Russian poet into his own, due in large part to the
fact that he has been enmeshed in translating Zabolotsky for more
than thirty years. Weissbort’s understanding of the poet and the
general worth of this collection are further expanded by the
participation of Robin Milner-Gulland (a premier Zabolotsky scholar)
and Zabolotsky’s son, Nikita. On the surface, Milner-Gulland
provides an introduction, notes, and a translation of Nikolay
Zabolotsky’s own account of his imprisonment in the Soviet camps,
and Nikita adds an essay about his father that details more personal
notes along with a timeline of the poet’s literary history. Beneath
this surface, their participation provides an image of the poet
beyond the stanza–a point of particular importance due to the
poet’s relative obscurity up to the present day.
Nikolay Zabolotsky was a Russian Modernist and a
founder of the OBERIU (Association of Real Art)–a group that bound
together to defend “the various tendencies of leftist progressive or
revolutionary art against those who sought to tame intellectual life
and bring it under a single banner.” Within the group’s manifesto,
Zabolotsky describes himself as “a poet of naked concrete figures,
brought right up to the eye of the spectator. One should listen to
him and read him more with the eyes and fingers than with the ears.”
This physicality and materialism is expressed before the poems even
begin with Weissbort’s discussion of approaching the poem
“Agriculture Triumphant” alongside Joseph Brodsky. This elucidation
of his own translation process simultaneously draws a map of
Zabolotsky’s devotion to “thingness,” Brodsky’s poetic mindscape,
and Weissbort’s synthesis of these various worlds. The translator’s
preface aside, each translation in this collection maintains an
economy and intensity of language that swaggers between the absurd
reality of 1920s Russia and the poetic gift of Zabolotsky–the
ability to synthesize his chaotic revolutionary fervor with the
natural world, as in “The School of Beetles”: “We, carpenters,
scholars of the forest, / mathematicians of the lives of trees . . .
Rosewood teaches stone-breaking and house-building. / Ebony is
metal’s double, / a light for smiths, / for general and enlisted men
an education.” First time readers of Zabolotsky will notice a
profound shift in his voice and themes after his release from
prison, as he moves to more “harmonious” and classical Russian
forms. Despite the considerably more subdued and melancholy tone
throughout his post-imprisonment poems–“Long ago / A man bitter and
wasted from hunger / Walked through a graveyard”–one is still able
to make out the “consciousness still flickering” within Zabolotsky,
in lines such as, “O, trees, recite Hesiodic hexameters, / be amazed
by Ossian, mountain ash; / nature, it is not your long sword that
sounds”.

In general, I am more struck by his pre-imprisonment verse, but as this is meant to be a representative selection, the more melancholy post-imprisonment material also must be included. Unlike Mayakovksy and other poets who perished either by their own hands or at the hands of the state, Zabolotsky was able to defuse his politics and retain the revolutionary force that informed his earlier poems right up to the series of heart attacks that took his life.

This is an essential book not only for purveyors
of Russian literature, or for those interested in the poetry of
“survivors”–specifically of the Stalinist purges–but for anyone
with fingers enough to reach into the “Monkish man who quits the
stove / to climb into a bath or basin.” The poetry of both Gumilyov
and Zabolotsky should be grasped with these same fingers, as not
only Russian, but world literature in general has been greatly
transformed through their influence. The overarching difference
between McKane’s Gumilyov and Weissbort’s Zabolotsky is that it’s
doubtful if McKane ever climbs into the bath. His reminiscences in
the preface tell a romanticized tale of dabbling with the lines of
Gumilyov on trains while translating Akhmatova and Mandelshtam. As
McKane writes in the preface, “Gumilyov himself once said that he
was a traveler, soldier and a poet in that order.” With this
collection, Gumilyov may be doomed to maintain that hierarchy.
Nikita Zabolotsky, on the other hand, should feel safe in knowing
that his father’s English voice has received the attention it truly
deserves. And that the blank space he found among the notes of his
father’s final written words:
1. Shepherds, animals, angels
2.
has now been filled, in part, by Weissbort’s
English translations.

8.12.03

ВОТ ТАК

“Hello,

Why do you send me a text in Russian.
I cannot publish it, as
“My Mission”
accepts only English language.
I would also accept bi-lingual (Russian/English)

Sorry,”

[signed]

– corporate member of

the experimental platform for net based art –

9.12.03

First snow

dear zhen,

today and the day before i’ve done nothing that the equivalent of
shuffling papers around and picking up this book and that, impatient,
bored, especially bored, trying to get around to getting writing to
beginning to write, now that snow is finally beginning to fall, a
little bit of snow on the ground today, and the sidewalks icy,
slippery, finally going out to get some food, eggplant and garlic and
onions with tomato compote (memories of your dacha) and a glass of
wine which you wished for me and this is the first evening i’ve
allowed myself wine, a little bit cautions for the past week after the
skid of the week before, which wine doesn’t always help. cold, cold
enough today that i wished for salo with a glass of guiness with you,
was it salo that you ate too much of? maybe one overeats when eating
alone, this at least is my problem, as i feel some overwhelming need
not to have leftovers, so often i will eat enough for two people or
more when i do get around to cooking something.

this is a day when i don’t have very much to write about, not having
done very much and so how is it possible to say that one is a body is
space occupying time, as i am writing in the minutes before 7 pm when
i will send this to you, though i could write to you until 10 pm and
send it to you then, would there be any difference? maybe i will write
for a couple of hours, what kind of letter would that be? i don’t
think you want to hear how empty i am, though it is this emptying out
before writing that makes it possible to write. i don’t have any other
writings or writers in my head, no sounds, distractions only, or are
they studied distractions, what concerns me most is how one letter
appears after another, and any more the only letters i know are these
that we work with every day, in the space of the terminal, the
terminal itself, the interface, is it a face at all? often i’m quite
bothered (troubled) by the utter equivalence of the typed text so that
even yesteday, the page of writing lost, it hardly troubles me, what
troubles me is that it doesn’t trouble me. a day of paradoxes. hardly
a paradox. a small problem. this experience of the font on the screen
as dematerializing writing, it is something else something no longer
carved, rather floating in an expanded (ennervated) textuality.

as for this machine in front of me, more and more i understand what it
is capable of, and all for a few hundred dollars, and yet all i really
need is a writing pad, which is what i use it for, and everything
written goes into the depths behind the screen, without any objects,
manuscripts, papers, etc. accumulating in the real life, the real
surroundings, really, how empty this apt. is, of all books, all
papers, only this screen, this computer, which i’ve moved into the
beige room, only sleeping in the walnut room, now that it is getting
too cold to sleep in the room next to the kitchen which faces west and
that seems to be the direction from which the cold winds blow.

thank you for the thoughts about red and green. never would i have
thought that my eyes are green, though i seem to remember you’re
remarking about just when they turn green (very, special moments),
most of the time blue, as i am typing into a grey and blue terminal,
with a font an acceptable size, are these accoutrements that allow one
to think, how could i think of life and living without such a machine
to write into?

slowly and slowly i’m beginnning to learn how to live at the terminal,
writing into it, though it is still strange to read and then write
into to it so probably one of the concerns lately, my concerns, is how
to get the computer to hibernate, quiet down, while it’s on, while i
am reading, not writing, so that i can wake it up again, it’s probably
the strangest thing about this machine, very different than the one
with you in tomsk, which had no problems going to sleep for a while,
this one always seems to be running, humming, you can hear the motor,
which mustn’t be very good for it, as i think that machines like to go
to sleep when they’re not being used, and yet it’s not good always to
start up the machine, it’s better to leave it on, resting, then wake
it up gently with a press on the space bar when it’s time to write, so
my reading, on the couch next to the desk in the beige room where i am
working now, as it’s not so dark in here, well, writing (and reading)
and (working) is so much getting in a position to read and write and
work, it hardly has anything to do with whether you feel like working
or not, so i become very particular about the space where i work, and
i think this particularity is very important. (verging on obsession).

something on the news on the radio now about gruznia? what? i haven’t
a clue about what’ going on in the world. do you pay attention? this
also seems necessary as a prelude to work, concentration, focus,
attention. without getting totally lost in the writing. i’m reading a
lot lately about space, the space of the screen, the space of the
room, the space of the city, the space of the town and the
countryside–as it appear to be one thought that it is the drive of
history and the captital configuration of the world in which we live
to annihilate space by accelerating time. so then, one tries to
recuperate space. as long as one thinks about space and time, there
will always be something to think about!

the judgment? the process? i know it in english as the trial. so many
equivalences for the same thing or multiple meanings? the diaries,
those dear things you sent me, to keep me company, and they are the
best thing that i’ve read in a long time, PRAGUE exists forever as a
dot on the map of eternity thanks to those diaries. there’s a bit of a
sense of WARSAW too, those two jewish cities, oh, hebrew, some sort of
ancient cultivation of intellect, oppression, furtiveness, and hope.

all of it wiped off the map.

which should give pause to a thought about the materiality of culture
(what could be more material than that space and time?) and where did
it go? what happened to it? where is it now? the materiality, the
granularity, the physical dimension of space and the voice in time.

instead, panoramas.

did you know there is no landscape in the space of the terminal? i
cannot even call it even more a screen, as i am rather fond of that
word, screen, like srim, like scream. no, it is a terminal that i
write into, writing and writing and watching somewhat distractedly the
words as they appear in the space of the terminal (it’s something of a
loaded term in english, terminal, the endpoint, the finality,
experience of finitude, oh bitter experience of the mortality of all
our illusions about the future our words might and should enter into!)

and your words, zhen, they are coming, i know they are, please believe
me, you think i am full of myself, that i boast, that i am too
conscious of my writing, all the time you have thought this about me,
and you are not wrong, but it’s only because i waited so long for the
words, the rush of words, the flow, the river, the coming and going
and folding in between, until one is wherever it is impossible to say
that what or who and why i am or you are and there is only the
writing, and the form, the object, the thing in the world remaining
after all the work, and concentration, and distraction, and laziness,
and appearing to all the world like you are next to nothing, and you
make this verbal object finer than all the marble sculptures in the
world, and you know that it will last for many years, centuries, and
that is all, that’s why there is writing, and if there was ever a
moment in your life when you thought about writing, when you wanted to
write, when you wished for the condition of being in the writing,
then, that’s why i am alive, to remind you of this thought, even if
only it was a passing thought. it was always a passing thought with
me, for me, always something and it still is something that is beyond
me, as full of as i am of my own writing (about in the same way as
after you’ve eaten too much) i don’t capitalize on it, i don’t use it,
i don’t make it do anything more than simply be writing, so that’s why
i write you about remembering any wish that you once had for such
living and being in the words, among the words, to be only the words
that one writes, that is what is called Horizon. Threshold. Being.

so no doubt you will read such expressions as paternal, or worse,
brotherly, or even worse, the wish for you to work! no no no. not. not
ever. you know don’t you that i don’t believe in work? only something
akin to casualness about text and writing and literature and always,
always, its remoteness, that it is something far away, something that
i nor you is doing right now, when very likely we are writing even if
we are not writing. you can tell that i’m a little bit happy about
recent developments in my computer for me to write to you this way.

zh, zhen, b

y

e

10.12.03

beneath the portrait

dear zhen,

flashes of insight as to one’s future happen in an instant
it seems sometimes. tonight having dinner with a visiting
fullbright from slovakia who will speak tomorrow about pop
culture and andy warhol and what not all everything so
recognizably and indentifiably and certifiably wickedly
postmodern american agnieszka the chair of my dept. do you
remember your saying how much you liked her name when we
sent the fax from tomsk? she asked me when i spoke about
wishing to return to russia, “you will let me know by
february whether you wish to teach here next year?” so
in this flash of a moment i was given insight that i am
succeeding here, teaching well here, fitting in here, so
that i am asked this way, very informally, over dinner,
with colleagues, about my future plans, so i wish for you
to know very simply that maybe your intuitions about my
standing under picture of your grandfather without knowing
it was your grandfather and yet everyday i wait for you
in shadowed hall and i am standing under picture of your
grandfather, do you think sometimes for all my anxiety
that i am capable? yes, well, if i am, then if we cannot
marry in tomsk this summer we will in the winter in u.s.
and you will come to live in lodz either at end of sept.
or at the beginning of 2005?

this by way of asking you about how you imagine the
future. this by way of saying to you that i am not so
incapable of a person. among the so many surprises
here. there is a new two-volume “mayor” book published
here edited by agnieszka the chair of my dept. whose
name you liked so much, and in this book there is a
chapter on the objectivist poets by her, we have talked
a little about reznikoff who my mind is one of the
few poets in english whose writing you care for, and
she said especially she reads and re-reads lorine
niedecker, you know these poets are not even that well
known in u.s. in university culture, and i am working
at a university in poland where the chair of my dept.
reads and writes about poets that i read and whose
writing is so very important to me, so you will forgive
me a little if i write that i am kind of happy right
now, at least breathing a little more easily, but you
should know that i think, hope, imagine, a future,
you do not believe in future i know, but i am saying
that there is a good possibility that we will be able
to live together here during the school year and then
return to tomsk in summers and winters, how much i
would enjoy how much i would respond–this is what i
dream of, this life, so maybe it might be possible
and that is why i thought i would write about even the
mention of the possiblity that i would be able to
teach here next year.

missing you

11.12.03

8.30 am to 10 pm

dear zhen,

home after a few minutes after 10 p.m. the day starting at 8:30 a.m.
with lecture by visiting fullbright from slovakia on Edward Morand and
Andy Warhol, moving between 1875 landscape paintings and engravings of
the mountain of the holy cross in colorado and warhol’s marilyn and
jackie iconospherics, followed by summary class on vernacular (the
students begin doing their presentations next week), so i presented
notes that i wrote the last week of sept. in tomsk, reminded of how
much work i was able to get going in sept. and i’m not kidding when i
say that sept. is my idea of working (writing) life, as writing does
not really obey more disciplinary rhythms. in my conversations class
which i was not connecting with before i now am and we had very good
discussion with everyone participating (almost, i don’t call on
students to speak, and perhaps i should) about consumer culture, and
the local galeria mall which is full of european and american luxury
shops promoting flaneur culture and the good life etc. everyone has
seen this change with their own eyes, and they had very sharp and
perceptive critiques of the call to the passivity of the one who moves
through such spaces, compared to the bare functionalism of the state
store a few blocks away. then class at 6:00 p.m. on Superman and
Malcolm X, and my students turned the discussion into a roundtable on
the hype of the matrix, and then after this class i met with
discussion club with colleagues from british english dept. and
students about the Sensation art show in brooklyn which was something
of an event though i yet do not know what kind, so all of this day i
am surrounded–breathing–the air of my own cultural references,
actively engaging ideas in english, through the translation buffer,
and happy (a good mood, yes, but also something more sustainable than
mood) as i feel that i am participating, visible, active, in motion
across the perceptual space of the institute, contributing to the
environment of teaching and learning and discourse about art,
literature and culture. i have been asked by my chair to lead a
faculty meeting on web resources with the idea (mine) to get our dept.
online, webpages for our courses, syllabi, texts, to attract students
to our dept., among a general tendency towards broader treatment of
popular culture, mass media, and film and photography. my polish
colleagues are young, energetic, and creative, and appear to genuinely
enjoy teaching. so there are these moments more and more when i am
feeling good, and i regret that my moods appear to you so volatile,
and i wonder whether i should pretend sometimes to be in a better mood
than i am. part of it of course is good old neurosis, part of it the
unpredictable and perpetual dissatisfaction with everything which the
consciousness of writing requires, and part of it is the effect of
dislocation, living in foreign language environment, and the struggle
to adjust and adapt.

is it possible that you do not enjoy my imagining events that although
we have discussed them they are not accomplished events yet, so you do
not enjoy imagining them? the portrait is a metaphor. i tend to see
everything as a metaphor, and am relatively uninterested in the
literal detail, except for the coincidence of where i was standing in
that hall.

i’m beginning to be able to think and work a little, and when i try to
talk about texts lately, teaching, i am able to present them from
innovatory points of view. today i ate chinese food at a local
restaurant (chicken wings with potatoes and cabbage–really a little
like polish-chinese food).

so will you write me tomorrow? you are sleeping and turning restlessly
now after eating too much and drinking coffee late. you cat has it’s
nose in your yoghurt, and the mud puddles of melted snow and ice and
freezing again and tomorrow many will slip on the ice slopes of the
streets in tomsk. do i sound like the delphic oracle?

b
y
e

ps. if forgot to mention that i woke up at 4:30 this morning to
prepare for classes since we were at the restaurant until quite
late last night (for me, anyway past nine p.m)

12.12.03

Superstisions

dear zhen,

today i woke up at nine in the morning after dreaming terrible dreams
about my son about whom i have not dreamt in a long time and hardly
think about at all, not more than once or twice a day, among all the
other detritus that passes through one’s mind–at the threshold of the
consciousness/unconsciousness we call a mind. So to avoid gloominess i
worked all day preparing for classes tomorrow, rereading a novel i’d
already read, and now i have quite an impressive lecture prepared, and
grading papers, and preparing for the final conversation class with my
5th year students before their preparations. next week is the last
week before a two week break, and i think i will do nothing but read.

about what might writing be, whose writing? my writing simply ‘is’
one way or another, and i cannot attribute a second-person singular
subjective case or possessive case to the noun or gerund: writing.
but you are someone who once gave her entire month’s salary to the
obtaining of the very best edition of mandelstam’s poetry, so you must
love your native language, and that is something that marks,
identifies, one that writes. it is so very private. there are no easy
and ready words to write about anyone’s writing, not even mine. which
is mostly to you, i will begin to write something differently when i
no longer need to write to you, when you are near me and in
conversation with me. not that i make a great claim for this writing
in these letters, which tell you of this small news of that in this
day or that, and which refuse to expand on such a topic as your
question invites.

writing? it is kafka’s diary kept under one’s bed, it is a line of
poetry that haunts the memory, it is the desire for a life somewhere
other than the life that one has. dearly and deeply i believe that in
writing we are writing always to someone other, that the writing does
not speak for the person writing it, cannot represent the person
writing it, almost, perhaps, as if someone else is doing the writing.
that, and that it is maddingly mechanical, a practice and a habit, and
a few words must be written every day, which is perhaps what i mean
when i say that writing to you is my writing, that i must write a
little every day (apart from my notebook, which is always open, always
near me, with a pen near, and in which i write notes and quotations in
passing without reading them again), and writing is not, at least for
me, a question of being productive. i do not make writing as product.
many writers do. it is the price for making the writing enter a
cultural moment. it is the price for constructing one’s identity as a
writer. i’m not saying this is wrong, only that it exerts a tremendous
pressure on anyone who wants to write and yet who is intimidated
(usually from a love of others’ writing) by the wish to write. it is
more than lack of confidence. it is much more than lack of confidence.
there has to be some believing at stake, there has to be something at
stake beyond mere productivity. that is why i stopped writing in a
certain way when i sensed that i was beginning to write merely for the
productivity, as useful as that is for the mood that one is always
working, always engaged with thought, always making texts.

at least in writing, the pressure, the energy, the inspiration, comes
from outside (contradicting one of your favorite phrases) and if you
rely on your inside, on how you feel, to determine whether or not you
feel like writing, then you will make writing more and more (and
needlessly) difficult for yourself. that is why i sent you the long
poem by Nathaniel Tarn and Janet Rodman? (how interesting that i
cannot remember her name!) for this writing reads to me as having been
written effortlessly, it flows, and it is responding to a trip that
the two took together, so the writing and experience and sense of the
writing following the experience is attained. i was trying to do
something very similar when i was writing in sept. in tomsk.
perception and emotion was heightened, intensified, by the time limit,
and restriction on the experience, and the being there was going to go
away, so the writing was needed for it. any word written vacantly is
writing. it does not have to be anything else. maybe you did not ask
me for my thoughts about what ‘is’ writing so much as what writing
‘could be’ and for that i would need to imagine more than i am able to
imagine right now, this evening, as i have been working all day as a
good teacher.

my machine just became very quiet. there’s a story behind this.

in my previous installations of this linux operating
system is installed the system on what is called an ext 3 filesystem
which apparently includes a journalling system which makes it easier
to reboot the system without running block checks (in other words,
sudden reboots are not so hard on the system), but this very
journalling mechanism prevented disk spin down, when the machine is
not operating at full capacity, and it goes into a kind of rest (not
exactly sleep), and this spin down on the machine’s disks is quite
good for the machine, and i noticed this, even in tomsk, for as long
as i was writing on the computer, sometimes for several hours, the
machine was always sounding like it was running at high speed, and it
wasn’t until recently (last week) when i yet again re-installed the
operating system and having read about this contrast between the ext2
and ext3 filesystems that i used the ext2 and now my machine becomes
nice and quiet after 10 minutes and it is quite nice both for illusion
that i am requiring less work from the disks in the machine and it
also makes it easier to think, quieter. the disk just spun up again, so
maybe i’m wrong, but i do worry about making the machine work too hard
and shortening the lifespan of the machine. i also miss my macintosh
from time to time, how is it? do you talk to it sometimes or play
music to it? you know, computers are like plants, they respond to
extra attention.

tomorrow you will write to me making fun of my machine superstitions.

yes?

zhen, i’ll call you this saturday evening. i’m still worrying about
lithuania, and you are right about this, i worry about everything!

b
y
e

13.12.03

writing

i got a cord today so i could listen to digital video footage and i heard yr
voice

voice?

the whole of the history of russian literature is in yr voice

voicing tsvetyevavya

you

who

are

you

?

o

h

15.12.03

How are you

Function performs conscious of itself as fiction, here designating
there, since in the fiction the displacement is accepted, expected.
That is a writing which conforms to expectations. An imagined world.
Should there be the assertion of a controlling identity and through
their subjectivity events are narrated? City streets? A figure moving
through city streets. The surface on the text of the illusion that
anything can ever be seen. Can this street be seen? There are buildings
on the street. In the buildings, windows, and behind the windows,
offices and flats. How does the author remove themselves from their
writing, without projecting subjectivity as a spectrum, layers of light.

Hello.

Where are you?

Where? Why where?

How are you, then?

This happens all the time in conversation. One voice following
another. But no one ever says what they are thinking. Thought does not
exist outside the construction of it in the process of its
formulation. Why does one person ask of another where or why or how
they are? In theory, the model of one figure passing another on the
street and stopping to say hello would fill the air with nothing or
the news, passing the time of day, exchanging pleasantries, performing
rituals. The subject of the conversation could change, any declaration
heard as a request to change the subject, more formal than the familiar,
Don’t ask, which oftens means the opposite. Who would want to talk to
someone who wants to talk about themselves? This conversation didn’t
happen anyway and besides, it’s not convincing. I’m not persuaded that
it could happen, anywhere, on any street in any city.

When a subject speaks, it articulates itself? The subject stands. The
subject represents itself, standing in and for. The ‘I’ stands in for
another that it cannot know. The ‘I’ stands for itself, projects
itself, as standpoint, and this standpoint could not exist without the
belief that language articulates being. We use this fiction every day,
functioning, among others. Is it so simple, then, to ask how you are?
Should another respond, Don’t ask me, I’m not capable of representing
myself, I accept that I am not me, that I don’t have access to that,
it, whatever it is that I am, knowing only that I am ‘not-I’ also even
as I participate in the fiction that I am and that you are, also, not
me, and not yourself either, though that is not for me to say. If I
were to say that you do not exist, at least in the form that makes it
possible for you to ask how I am, where would you relocate the
conversation you began? Would you experience my dissatisfaction with
declaring that I am this or that as closure? No, you saw in my eyes
and in the smile on my face that I am glad to see you and speak with
you. What is it then which interferes with the performative gesture
of exchanging a few simple words in passing on the street?

So you met someone walking on the street that was not entirely capable
of participating in the social function of a casual greeting, looking
up from the fiction as much as to say, ‘I do not exist.’ That’s
nonsense. Well, so, ‘I live as though I do not exist.’ This is that
nothing then that you were talking about? Yes, though neither phrase
satisfies me, whether or not I exist and am something or nothing,
these sound like slogans, banners, for non-being. What makes anyone
be anything other than what they are? What am I or you other than the
totality of the functions we provide for others? When you read, are
you reading for yourself? And when you write, are you writing for
yourself? Perhaps I am writing to myself and through this obstruction,
exploring the boundaries separating myself from another, whether that
person stops me in the street, or stares back at me from a page of
writing.

*

p.s. it’s been raining all day and the cold seems to be everywhere.
the three rooms with doors are all closed off, and so i wrote a little
this morning (see above) perhaps feeling guilty for characterizing
myself to you yesterday as lazy. one wants to be both lazy and not.
maybe it is a little like being and not-being. read very closely
through the afternoon a volume of contemporary polish poetry. then
wishing i’d enjoyed it more than i did, which wasn’t very much. all
the poems sounding like second-generation translations from anglo-
american models, and yet it is precisely this imitation which will
reward the writers with symbolic membership in the American Poetry
Club. But there was a very amusing poem about a dog, so i thought
you might enjoy this:

MONODRAMA

I’m not that unknown after all.
Today, for instance, when I asked for bottled beer
at the store, the woman said: Why, what a change!
(Cans take up less room, don’t they?)
Most of all, I’d like to own a dog.
(Dogs take up less room than horses).
I’d like to own a dog the size of a horse.
So I wouldn’t have to go out with him.
He wouldn’t fit on the stairs.
I like to go out when the streets are empty.
If I had a dog, there’d be someone I’d come home to.
Especially since I wouldn’t have to go out.
If I had a dog, I’d have a dog with no name.
I wonder if anyone before me has had a dog with no name?
I wonder if a dog with no name can bark?
My poems are sad as a dog.
Maybe not so much sad, as faithful.
Thinking doesn’t get you far.
I’d like to take part in some survey.
But no survey takers come to me with any survey.
Most of all I’d like to take part in a survey about dogs.
One that has questions about horses.
Lots of questions about which I’d have to think long and hard.
They go around with these surveys just to depress me.
Round and round.
And don’t come to me.
Someone’s cheating us.
With this world.

Myslenie daleko nic prowadzi … isnt it interesting how
close the polish is to russian … at least the “daleko” and
just yesterday i was saying that about thinking, thought,
whatever it is, writing resists thinking in very profound ways.

there was this overwhelming aloneness or sadness or
whatever it is when the line finally went silent. i was sitting
in the dark, in total silence, for too long afterwards. it is
hard to say that, i dont know why. on the polish keyboard
the z and the y are reversed, so i have to look elsewhere
for your name … yh_zh …

16.12.03

Junk food

dear zhen,

not so lazy today yet a little more than not lazy at all,
read a junk-novel which is should quote to you from to show
you, but it would be only as bad as the poem i sent yesterday.
but i did find some good books in the library today, already
i am beginning to read for the second term, when i will be
teaching a seminar in native american literature and writings
about contemporary urban space in the u.s., and there are two
very good books here at least, one about los angeles and
another about my the city where i was born, miami, florida,
and if i can find a book about new york i will title the
course, the Devil’s Triangle. maybe no one will get the humor.
not that the iraq devil has been captured, who will they
invent to be the next one?

maybe i mentioned this, it was a little uncanny (unheimlich–
from the german) but reading more than i usually do about
popular culture i had the impression that the u.s. is a deeply
theological society, more than even islam, only the theology
is unconscious, and its markers are fashion and fleeting
things, even fleetingness itself, not to associate islam
with the news, but this sense of a collision of cultures,
or maybe there is no collision–accident–if i write any
more about it right now it will sound like i was influenced
by the news, when i had this thought last week, reading
about the comic strip, superman. but the novel i read today
was exactly that, a comic strip. it didn’t take more than
a couple of hours of my time, and this is time when in
the being “lazy” hours are freely given to mindless books.

nothing oppresses me more than the thought of writing an
abstract about an essay i’ve no interest in writing. maybe
i shouldn’t have mentioned the conference. it would only
be a pretext for getting to the u.s. for two months, and
i don’t need to, i don’t think, and i know that i don’t
want to go there unless i had a job where i could save
a thousand dollars, and if you could come at least for a
month. maybe i will send the abstract anyway, though i’m
really blank at the moment, or not blank, but impatient
with discourse, and i can’t make myself sound serious
even to myself. maybe if i had more books. there has to
be an element of randomness to reading, that what means
most to you at any given moment is a book that comes your
way entirely by chance (like the Kafka diaries you sent
me) and when i start ‘organizing’ my reading, my interest
in reading stops. wanes. flags. subsides. you could use
all these words to describe the effect of trying to make
poetry speak in language other than the poetry itself.

does poetry have any language particular to itself?
i have often thought of it as a kind of cross-register,
appropriating other languages, other forms of language
use within the language it is written in, if this isn’t
metaphor i don’t know what is (and i thank you for the
compliment about the metaphor of the portrait), how in
my mind (my experience) the perception of the marker,
the name, could be superimposed by the story you told
me about the picture that you had to turn against the
wall, poetry does that all the time: it recombines and
superimposes, and some sort of reflexivity between image
and word results, at least i see these picture-words in
my mind when i read. why people don’t trust them more
i don’t know–trust for what? for sound and rhythm?
what’s wrong with that? always there has to be something
more (i’ve read also for more than an hour from some
theoretical works about culture which i brought home
today).

sleeping late and even all day in lithuania sounds
like a very good idea. you can sleep and i will read.
when you wake up, we’ll go out to eat, and then you
will have to listen to me talk about what i was reading
about. when we have nothing else to do, maybe we will
look at any poems by zabolotsky that you bring with you.
he was in a camp from 1938-1946. do you know if he wrote
anything in the late 40s? did he ever write about the
labor camp directly? it would be interesting to look for
the trace of this experience molecularly–at the level
of obsessive instances, repeating sounds and sound-shapes
(not the manifest content). the experience might have
been something that he wanted to write about but could
not, so where does it go in the writing? where does the
perceptual experience of human beings as objects in
a space of confinement go? most of the time i simply
imagine listening to you read and then talking about
what you’ve read–your voice is very distinct in the
recording, it sounds like the voice of someone who
has given many hours to reading. there’s nothing false
in it, the voice, and strangely soft, exploring the
sound of the words as they’re being read. that is what
i heard anyway. i know that it does not make you feel
very comfortable, for me to objectify your voice
separate from the rest of you.

i’ll stop here, then, zhen, “do zaftra”

16/12/03

11:58-12:07

dear zhen, i’m writing you at noon wondering whether you were able to send me any of the information you phoned about. maybe it’s in transit. the dates you should choose for what is best for you, i don’t think it will make much difference as to the weather, and we should anticipate snow. it’s snowing quite heavily today and i don’t feel like going outside, though i have to go to the store, and if it does stop snowing in the afternoon, as it did yesterday, when i went to the university after heavy snowfall in the morning, then if and when you call this (your) evening, and i’m not home, it will be because i went to the store.

you will be amused by this: today i looked for pair of clean socks and there were none, so this reminded me i must do laundry, though wondering where all the socks went, then i looked on the radiators (behind curtains) and found two pair of clean socks that have been cooking on the radiators for past two weeks. maybe this is why there is ‘no drying on radiators’ rule in your flat? for me, i was very amused at proof of my forgetfulness, which is always sign that i am beginning to work, write, i.e., forget about details like socks. do not worry though about travelling details for my part, i do not think it will be very
difficult for me to get from lodz to lithuania, though what i would propose is
that we meet at the airport where you are flying and then travel together.
already i am worried that you will find me very poor travelling companion. i tend to proceed by trial and error and instinct, and am always embarrassed to use english, so i try not to use it at all, and since i have no other language, that means that i never ask for assistance or directions. you will find this ridiculous and it is. you will find that i am often ridiculous and i am. this morning i woke up with very pleasant memory of my laughter at your dacha, when you said i had face of a child. i am not often (hardly ever) happy as this, just so you know. missing you. kissing you.

16.12.03

14:09-14:11

zhen, i’m going to the store now and should be back around 16:00. the radiators are covered with new laundry, and if you’re still at work where you can read this note tonight instead of tomorrow, well, don’t you think it’s time to go home?

17.12.03

Free breakfast

As with most legends, festivals and feast days the origin of the Day
of the Unabating Breakfast or Feast of Saint Evgenia is reputed to
have as its origin and inspiration the visit to this region on the
shore of the Baltic by two nondescript travellers from East and South
of Palanga whose brief stay at a local four star hotel early in the
previous century gave rise to stories of remarkable propensities for
third and fourth and fifth helpings of eggs and cheese, sausages,
apples, tangerines, oranges and bananas, smoked pork and smoked lamb,
slices of turkey, ostrich cutlets, kiev cutlets, black bread and
borscht soup (the fabled cries of disgust at the mere mention of
which from the East of the Urals companion has entered local lore as
the ritual cry, Fiiiiiii! Fiiiiiii! howled at intervals while the
symbolic substitution of a pig’s slop bucket is used to stand for
the literal-liberal ladle dipped in the steaming red-beet soup with
generous dollops of smetana floating on top). Re-enactments of the
original encounter at the morning table include hour-long debates
on the rights and wrongs of milk with coffee, and of milk in general,
accompanied by demonstrations by representatives of World Dairy
Farmers United whose annual delegations to Palanga on the Day of the
Unabating Breakfast have become increasingly militant in recent years
as a breakaway sect from the Cult of Zhen has declared that their
patron saint and martyr to the Russian Passport, which by the end of
the 21st century no longer permitted travel West of the Urals, after
the absorption of Moscow and St. Petersburg into the European Union
and NATO, and subsequent declaration and constitution of the One True
Ukraine dating back to the Kievan Monks who still insist that Moldovan
wine is better than Georgian wine, hated cheese as much if not more
than she hated milk and smetana. There is no mention of cheese in
either of the two interminable diaries written by the nondescript
travellers who dipped their toes in the Baltic, got lost in the
Botanic Gardens, napped in the afternoons, and were the first to
arrive for the Free Breakfast and the last to leave. “I’m as hungry as
a horse!” “I could eat a house!” are repeated as simulations of the
conversation of the travellers, accompanied by the ruse, “Did you see
that camel?” and as the companion from the East turns her head the
last remaining perogi and slice of black bread with raspberry jam is
deftly stolen and enters the mouth of traveller from the South, who
makes a loud munching sound laughing garbled words that are sometimes
mistaken for English, which language was officially fragmented into
10,000 competing world dialects since they became mutually
incomprehensible to one another after Globalization was accomplished
and the world was divided by the Commodity Kingdoms of WalMart and
E.Leclerc. Only very recent research by a new generation of
ethnographers has established that camels could indeed by seen on the
streets of Siberia in the early 21st century, and only last year has a
rare manuscript in Russian shown up in the basement of an internet
cafe where Irina Nikolaevna, global emailer and English-language
test-taker, recorded a conversation where the traveller from the South
who first entered her home and drank all her cognac from Crimea posing
as a traveller from the USA, said, in perfectly intelligible Russian,
“yesterday I saw a camel on the street” immediately and deftly
transformed by the inveterate veteran of hard Russian winters,
“yesterday I saw a whore on the street,” to which rejoinder the
companion from the East could not contain herself, and fell on the
floor laughing, though tradition has it that the traveller from the
East whom history was to know as Saint Evgenia the Martyr of the
Russian Passport would never lose her self-composure to the extent of
falling on the floor, and that some element of exaggeration has
entered the story, though the records are ample in their documentation
of the capacity of Evgenia Victorovna Lukyanova for hall-echoing
laughter, and if you do not know how vast a hall is, then you have
never been inside Building 1 at Tomsk Polytechnic University where our
heroine was raised as a child and where she taught generations of
Siberian youth the difference between a rock and a hard place,
reciting Tsvetayeva in private, in the Russian language, her beloved,
nor have you ever seen a camel high-stepping down a street in Siberia
accompanied by an exclamation in English, “Did you see that camel?”

p.s. Yes, to all and to everything. We’ll meet in Vilnius. I can
leave that Saturday or Sunday, the 17th or 18th of January, of I can
wait a week, if that’s better for you. Choose the dates that are
best for you, my dear.

kisses

(and a few smiles)

18.12.03

9:21 thurs morning

dear zhen,

they say people from different cultures laugh at different
phenomena, and maybe this is so, if you interpret my smile
at the thought of free breakfast as laughter at your appetite.
aren’t we both of us always very hungry? in every sense?

you write to me that you ate until you felt sick, and I eat
three or four servings of a dish i prepare and which i do
not even care for. maybe we are not even writing about eating
so much as taste for one’s existence, zest (energy, hunger)
for life?

it is better to write about that fourth slice of salo than
“hunger for life.” that, and the humor of the anticipation
that we can expect palatial displays of food at a four-star
hotel anywhere in central europe, if the hotel that i stayed
at my first night in lodz is any indication. but how will the
food taste to us? my mind not as good as the squash and peas
at your dacha, and this is the paradox:

all that is most real, most authentic, comes from the
combination of the common simplicity with friendliness and
generosity–this anyway is how i experienced those weekends
among the woodsmoke and sound and smell of chickens and cows
and pigs in their pens, and the forests and flowers in the
dacha gardens …

the visual pleasure of Palanga will be more formal, abstract,
and though i am not a stranger to such places in my own
country, and i have stayed at the best hotels and eaten at
the best restaurants, these are environments where i often
feel prevented from experiencing the sharp, fine, exquisite
taste of fresh kale from a garden (how happy i was to show
you how well the kale in your garden could be prepared!)

and i hear all this in the sound of your voice reading even
when you did not wish to read, as you do not care to perform,
not even in private, and the voice is always, always,
performative, a construction and a mask for sonorities that
are always furtive, if not fugitive, as well they should be.
poetry is never truer to itself than when the book is closed.
though you are working too hard, and these tasks tire you,
and there is no pleasure in reading–how sharply i feel this
when it requires months for me to return to readings and to
begin to sense the stillness or individual words assaulted
as they are by both conversation and discourse.

see how serious i can be? well, it is serious when you write
to me (and i hope not entirely seriously) that you heard my
poor attempt at laughter (nervous laughter at the thought of
the four-star hotel) as laughter at your expense. this is
somewhat even out of character for you? too many hours taking
orders from too many bosses, so that for a moment i even
sound like one of them? maybe yes, maybe no, but the thought
troubles me, as the long hours that you work trouble me,
and as your need for rest troubles me (to trouble? yes, it
means, to worry–so i am worrying some more). and now will
you read these words as criticisms of the hotel? “not at all.”

in a way, you know how to travel better than i do, since you
have travelled to cyprus before, on much the same terms and
in much the same way? think of my luxury, if that is the word,
in comparison, each time when i have travelled: to Chita,
to Tomsk, to Lodz, there is always someone waiting for me with
a sign with my name on it (that is the luxury of the foreign
language teacher) and i have my passport to calm my nerves,
knowing nothing terrible will happen to me in transit because
of my passport, and that is why the joking about your russian
passport is a little bit like laughing while stepping very
softly on very thin ice.

in my book on collocation in english from the british council
library there is an exercise for alternatives to “very.” i can’t
think of any now. but i think this matter of the diminishing
value of the russian passport is the cause for thought, for
anger, the discipline and punishment of the frontiers, which
is the word for the ‘borders’ on my polish documents, and
perhaps in this problem of the visa we see a glimpse of future
and greater historical tensions that will not be resolves in
any but the most traditional and catastrophic ways.

as long as we experience restrictions on our freedom of
movement, are we experiencing some larger historical process
than mere inconvenience? for myself, for example, i am still
waiting the decision for my residency from warsaw, and if for
some strange reason (remembering the visible nervousness in
the face and voice of the official at the local office when
she saw all the stamps in russian in my passport (which, almost
involuntarily, criminalized me, and on the news several nights
ago there were scenes of arrests at the border with camera
footage of kilometer-long backup of cars and the sign ROCCI
at the border station–i don’t know whether they were arresting
poles or russians–that is less important than the footage of
the arrests–but wouldn’t it be, poetically, beautiful if my
travels to russia marked me as undesirable in this country
where they give to foreign teachers four-room flats? like the
four-star hotel, both spaces i experience as places where
whether or not i belong there is less important than the fact
that they are always taken away from me, they always disappear,
and there is always a single room waiting for me, as at the
hotel in tomsk, or the loft in cleveland. so, you see, i am
worrying again, when everyone says i have nothing to worry
about. so i won’t worry for your sake (how kind of me) and
for the sake of the cruelty of the expression, you wait for
the worst to happen, and when it does, you are satisified…

p.s.

if you are going by train to Vilius, then it is very important
that our timetables agree as much as possible. be sure to
travel first class, though i worry (again!) that this does not
guarantee security, as on polish train first-class is no closer
to beginning of train, and the farther back the cars are, the
more dangerous? i can take a train from warsaw to vilnius, it
is 13 to 18 hours, depending on whether i travel day or night.
i have been advised not to travel at night, not alone. these
advisements should, i think, be taken seriously, as we will
both be travelling with a lot of money on us, so is there an
alternative for you instead of a train? are there busses?
they are more difficult to arrange, but i thought i saw one
bus line that travels to russia, maybe by way of germany, but
busses would be safer, at least they are said to be safer
here. what do you think?

p.s.s.

how wonderful it will be to be able to hold you in my arms

18.12.03

per your request

dear zhen,

per yr request, though with a caveat: i need to find out if any of my
writings last year in tomsk were published (i think something was for conferences both in nov. and in the spring, but how do i find out? also, i left with the translation dept in the main building on the third floor my only copy of a publication in chita with an essay in it, and i could use a
xerox copy of the title page and the essay. also, my ‘address in yurga’ was supposed to have been published by the univ. there, and i have the email for the translator at the pedagogical institute in tomsk who would
know about this. my request is, of course, as by now you’ve guessed, is
that it would be easier to track these publications down in russian, rather than my writing in english. could you help me? it’s for record of publication activity, for which our dept. receives funding, so if i could
provide this record (which it is bad of me not to have kept, but i’m
not used to keeping track of my publications). my question is, not only can you help me track these down, but would you mind? it would require you to ‘represent’ me in some form or manner, and this, i imagine,
may make you extremely uncomfortable. to make matters worse, i think
there are copies of “perevodchik” from chita floating around tomsk, but i have no idea where. how would i go about finding out? i don’t have a record of this publication either. what do you think? are you totally mad at me now?

#1 (secular)

During this Yuletide season, we wish you and your family a Merry
Christmas and a Happy New Year. This is the season to be jolly, so
don’t forget to hug and kiss your nearest and dearest under the
mistletoe. Are the children still dreaming of Santa Claus and Rudolf
the Red Nosed Reindeer? Our little ones keep asking us this year if
Santa and Santa’s helpers live in the North Pole or the South Pole.
Where to you have your children address their letters? If the Christmas
carollers come to your house, we hope they sing for you “Silent Night”
and “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas.” Our family has much to be
grateful for and not least among our good fortunes we count our
acquaintance with you and your family. Please remember us in your
thoughts as you cast your wishes for the coming you to the Angel or
Star gracing the crown of your Christmas Tree.

With sincere warmth and holiday cheer, yours

#2 (religious)

Our family wishes to extend to you and yours the warmest and most
heartfelt greetings as your family gathers in joy and harmony during
the Christmas season in celebration and commemoration of the nativity
of our Lord Jesus Christ. Every year at this time we remember the
remarkable happiness with which we are blessed year after year, the
gift of life and the love of our children, and praise God and the
sacred memory of his Son and the stainless exemplar and inspiration to
us all, the most sacred of Mothers, the Virgin Mary, for their
perpertual guidance over us and their infinite grace. We wish for you
the most serious and solemn of sermons during your Christmas Eve
service, and hope that you will find it in your hearts to pray for us,
and for our President and our Homeland. With infinite blessings from
this our One Nation Under God,

Yours truly,

#3 (multicultural)

Felice Navidad! It’s that time of year again and our family is writing
yours in remembrance of the many happy hours we have spent in one
another’s company, and inviting you to share with us your thoughts and
feelings during this holiday season, wishing you the very best moments
of reunion with your children, parents and grandparents, cousins, aunts
and uncles, nieces and nephews, and any friends and neighbors who
happen to visit according to the inspiration of the moment. If you have
many cookies, as I’m sure you do, don’t forget to leave a plate for
Santa Claus on Christmas Eve! In our home we are enjoying fruitbread
and homemade eggnog. Which game are you going to watch on Christmas
Day? The Liberty Bowl or the Sun Bowl? We’re cheering for the Arkansas
Razorbacks this year, though no doubt the Nebraska Cornhuskers will
will the Christmas Day title once again. Will they ever lose? Here’s a
toast to all of you, wishing you the very best!

Adios, mis amigos!
—
19.12.03

Reprieve

dear zhen,

i can’t imagine that you’re still at work though maybe there is a double-shift declared to make up for holiday past or present, anyway, i’m writing to say only hello and that i miss you and hope to hear your voice this weekend but if that’s not possible it’s okay i’ll call you next weekend–be sure to let me  know as soon as you can about the date when you will arrive in Vilnius so i can begin to make travel arrangements here

i miss you

21.12.03

Texts of ideas

dear zhen,

quiet day, and yes, i went back to sleep and slept until after
9:00 and then read until dark, this and that, tiring, very, the
“dodges of discourse”–do you know this word, dodges? very amer.
in that it associates with evasion, getting around something or
avoiding something, a negative connotation, though there are so
many positive associations with periphery and margin and off-
center, and i’m simply trying to writing how tiring i find the
texts of ideas, which is about all that i have access to here,
though today for a while i tried hopelessly to read from a polish
text of bruno schultz (a dearly beloved writer who died in the
ww2 a little like reznikoff and a little like kafka in sensibility)
speaking of kafka, i read this today too from a collection of
lectures on American literature and culture by european scholars
published a decade ago in amsterdam:

“And there were two more novels of the same year that were to
cast their shadow right across the 1940s and beyond. One was
Jean-Paul Sartre’s La Nausee…. The other work was the English
language translation, done by Edwin and Willa Muir, of Franz
Kafka’s novel, America. It was the last of Kafka’s novels to be
translated, following on from The Castle in 1930 and The Trial
in 1937. As we now know, these translations were to play a
fundamental role in Kafka’s survival as a writer and his key
place in the modern imagination. “Balzac carried a cane on
which was carved the legend; I smash every obstacle,” Kafka
once noted in his diary, “my legend runs; every obstacle
smashes me.” Kafka’s inner exile, his sense of self-suppression,
was so profound that it became the most extreme of modern
prophecies…. Kafka was the novelist of universal exile, an
exile so complete that he semmed to write only for himself,
and yet so universal that as George Steiner has pointed out,
130 languages use some form of the word ‘Kafka-esque’ to define
a recognizable modern condition of existence or non-existence.”

i quote this passage as, one, a reminder of the importance of
translation to writers, and your mention of Sukhanova’s note
about me in russian reminds me of this (and it is why i had no
interest in dual-language note recently from the museum in
cologne), and two, and most importantly, the greatest writing
is that writing that writes only to itself. If i have any
article of faith in art, it is this. and this is all that i
know to say to you about writing, that it writes to itself.
everything else is a “dodge.”

you may wake me up any day and every day, though you must
know that i was not sleeping, as i answered the phone on
the second or third ring, so now you know another fact about
me, that i often lie awake for hours in the early morning,
listening, thinking, feeling–being conscious in total dark.
it feels like writing. it feels like one feels like when
writing. i tend to lie in bed very still, hardly breathing,
listening to myself, and the very minute sounds in the room
and outside, in the street. sometimes i think that my habits
of the subjectivity (my habits which cultivate my subjectivity)
would drive you crazy if you were around them (me) for very
long, and then i think, i am almost postive that you also
have such strange habits, since you seem to me to have a
very intense interior life. one cannot cultivate one’s
subjectivity too much, and the wretchedness of life is
due so much to the fact that there is so little subjectivity
in the world, and everything conspires to deprive us of our
interiour life. so i lie awake often for very long periods
of time in the early morning, listening to what? to me,
whatever that is, sometimes it feels like floating, sometimes
it feels like stone weight.

i’m going to send this now, knowing that you are sleeping
now, but i wanted you to have something to read when you
got to work in the sunday morning, and i didn’t write today
because when i woke up again it was already past 14:00 and
i thought you would have gone home already, as it appears
that you did.

missing you

22.12.03

Early evening

dear zhen,

do you know that in addition to my letter i sent you a reply since you
predicted this morning’s gloom and the email came back, rejected by
the uni.lodz.pl server? i am still sorting out the mysteries of trying
to send a message to your server via two servers that interface with
my computer–the university server and the server where my website
is. the understatement of the year is that there’s more involved than
pushing a button. and of course i’m not satisfied with one thing that
works but i have to keep trying other formats (software) until i have
just the right combination, the space where one writes and then how
the message is sent. right now it is 5:23 p.m. and i’m waiting for my
overcooked dinner to cool, since i was doing something else, and let
the rice cook too long, so know it is stuck to the bottom of the
pot–though it isn’t entirely my fault, since the metal the pots and
pans are made of are so thin.

but what i wanted to write about before i forget, is that i did rec’
your letter earlier today, and yes, if it’s possible, i would like to
submit an essay to this year’s conference, in fact the essay i would
like to submit is one that i wrote last year at tomsk, about using the
heath literature anthology, so if it would be possible to send me the
guidelines, if there is a page limit and so on, and most importantly,
i guess, whether submissions will be accepted from someone who is not
attending the conference?

how is your tooth?

b y e

24.12.03

palace of poetry

dear zhen,

i just took the first taste of wine from a bottle of wine that i was going to take to a christmas eve party to which i am invited tomorrow night and i am at least glad that i tasted the wine and i will probably continue to taste it as i am writing this since the wine is not very good so tomorrow morning i will need to go out again and get another and better bottle of wine, it is difficult taking wine to a party as my standards are lower than might be expected of others, so i am drinking a not-very-good merlot from france. georgian wines are still the best. i miss them, as i miss the cognac, which i never buy here, and i have not had a taste of cognac since our dinner the last night in tomsk.

it is cold here, and i have been out in the cold all day going from one office to the next obtaining this signature or that and this stamp or that on this document or that, and now it appears that everything has been completed and my Permission to Work for a Specific Period of Time will arrive in three or four weeks at the local passport office, and then after that, if i stay longer than the end of Sept. 2004, the process will be much simpler. So they say. But today was a very long and cold and exhausting day. it may take the entire bottle of not very good tasting wine to
make me feel better. and yet, now that it’s over, what is there to say about it? i was very lucky to be accompanied by the graduate student who has been assigned to me, and he is very thoughtful and thorough, and i have a lot to be thankful for his help.

maybe it was the waiting in this corridor or that in this building or that for indeterminate and seemingly interminable periods of time, walking long distances and taking a number of trams (since all the buildings were very far apart from one another–the Rektorat (where i needed a stamp and where i needed to give them a copy of the decision that just arrived in the passport office today from Warsaw), the City Administration Building (it is called ‘The Palace’ and it is, though on this very ornate 17th century-looking building was huge billboard advertisment in
red with map of Russian and man in leninesque cap, an advertisement for 100 years
of Russian art, or that’s what it sounded like, one of my students when to this
exhibit, and it was an exhibition of Russian Constructivist Art, which i didn’t make it to, for no very good reason, and i should have, and why didn’t i? it is a good question. important to remember anyway that this was a very big exhibition and advertised throughout the city (in fact, i think it is until the 28th of dec. so i can still go on Friday, but it is the language barrier which inhibits me), but maybe i’ll go anyway, don’t you find it interesting that a large red map of russia is on a mural-sized billboard of the Lodz City Administration Building? i waited and waited there twice for this stamp or that, and the officer in charge of the the
City Administration Residence Permission (where i have to register my address, my ‘residence’) signed her document with a flourish using only the bare cannister of a bic pen–i would have expected a goose quill in an inkwell with serenade of trumpets, and then back to the passport office to file with them my stamped and signed Decision now stamped and signed by the City Administration Office. so i am a legal foreign resident working in Lodz. now.

i left this morning early, but it is also possible that you tried to call when i was using the internet, and for a while the modem was connected to the phone line since because of the cold i had retreated into the small room for warmth and only the phone line would reach the computer for connecting to the internet and i was using the internet for about an hour last night and left the phone line connected to it this morning since i was not expecting your call, and really maybe if you wish you might wait until this weekend, when i am going to call you on new year’s day, everything is all right here, not even gloomy, just cold and tired and
relieved (reprieve!) now that the worry about the document filing is over. last night i met for a couple of beers with other american and british teachers here and more news, good news, or maybe it is only gossip, but one of the polish teachers said that the chair of my department had said either to him or to someone else who told him, but to another polish teacher (this is what is significant, i think) that i “was a real find.” this is quite a nice compliment in colloquial english, and everyone is already asking what are my plans for next year, and the two british teachers i spoke with last night had each been working here for 5 and 6 years
respectively, so there is promise and hope of working here longer than one year, and so we are back to my dream, the one that i talked about in tomsk, without even knowing what was waiting for me here, but if everything works our way this summer (and i think it is very good idea to register at u.s. embassy, it is possible if we wanted to do this to meet in moscow in june and register then, and then it will be a decision for you to make, whether you want to come to Lodz or work one more year
in tomsk, i don’t think you would have to work here, and all of this we can talk about more in january, but it is not my imagination, that i am succeeding here, and i am doing my work well, and there is hope and possibility and choices in the future that we may have, and if i annoy you by talking about things that haven’t happened yet, it’s only that i’ve been out in the cold all day and my paperwork is all filed and it doesn’t appear that i will have to return to the u.s. unless i want to (not have to–there’s a difference) and that makes me feel very good. i am beginning, just barely beginning, to establish a foothold (so it is said in english) in a country that it doesn’t appear that i’ll have to leave until i want to.

now, lithuania. another american teacher that i spoke with last night said that he’s travelled by train to vilnius before and that it’s a very nice overnight trip and that he travelled in an open compartment, not even a couchettka (coupee) without incident, so the train it is, then, and we will meet in the train station in vilnius, though we should find out if there is more than one, since there are even three train stations in lodz, so which is the main train station in vilnius? when will you find out about your train schedule? tomorrow i have to take a short train to neighboring town where the christmas party is, and i think i will just
relax and visit and forget about all my worries this past semester, really
everything appears to be more and more possible, and if i keep going on like this, i will be sure to “jinx” it (bad luck, bad fortune), do you have such a verb in russian? last night i read a very interesting essay by an american poet who has translated native american poetry, working with native speakers, but i think the language he uses for translating is inspiring, since he writes of ‘following the voice of the other’ and finding in one’s own language another writing and form for the text that one is hearing but which one cannot copy from one language to the next, if you would like i can send you a copy of this text, since it describes better than i can or maybe i should try to describe it to you?

it’s not that i’m intending to ‘translate’ Zabolotsky, it’s closer to wanting to listen to you reading from the text and talking to me about what the poems are about, and what you hear in the language, and in this hovering over, this language about, i’m interested in what english i might find for writing towards a space that might be called Zabolotsky’s, even if only for the duration of a few lines. i am extremely committed at this point in my writing life to the proposition that structures simply do not hold together, no matter how well-made the sculpture, and
so one’s listening, one’s own language, is keyed to the single word or phrase,
floating somewhere at another remove from the surface text, the poem as total form.

neither, though, would i wish for you to feel that i expect you to ‘analyse’ the Zabolotsky poems–not at all. just to listen to you read from them and talk about them, when we feel like talking about them at all. the thing is, it’s the simplest and plainest words for what is there that are the most musical to my ears, i can hardly stand any more the assigning of abstractions, ideas, concepts, to this or that verbal body, which is what a poem is, a body of words, as we say of water that it is a body of water. body meaning here something like entity, which is far less resonant to me of an object that has being, if one can ever assign an ontology to a
sign, and i think that you can, depending on the array the cloud the cluster the flocks and groupings of words for what is being heard, and for poetry anyway it is almost always semantic, always one word leads to another word, and you talk about words this way, do you know? i think it is from many hours reading the dictionary.

another language is always other. there is not copying from one language to another. a translation in one language is always only a translation. as, for example, i do not know a single line of poetry by mandelstam, despite tolka ravni ubyoht. “i menya tolka ravni ubyoht.” you taught me that line. do you remember? that is what it feel like to be alive, to pay close attention to a line of poetry. how hard this is to do sometimes! how often i do not feel like reading poetry because i am too tired, too distracted, too bored! you are very alert as to the shadings of meanings among russian words, and do you know that you can talk to me about this word or that, and i will look for words that i know in english, for some sort of meeting place, and are you sure that Z. never wrote any more poetry after surviving the labor camp? how much reading there is to do. that’s all i want, just to read. here is am immensely selfish, much more selfish than you can ever hope to be, and i think you should be very, very selfish–you should think of no one but
yourself. it is absolutely necessary. nothing was ever written, not even a journal, as a result of someone trying to be good to everyone else. it is impossible. writing is a very fundamental task of doing things in the way that they are not supposed to be done. it is having the confidence to do something the way you feel it should be done. so you solve a problem in the way that you know how, even if the problem (the problem of language, of finding any words at all) is only resolved for a little while (until you begin writing again). every time a piece of writing begins there are new problems. what am i writing? why am i writing? what am i

reading? what is it saying to me? what am i feeling? am i feeling anything at all? what do i feel when i read when i am not bored? (and i, at least, am always bored!) aren’t you also, most of the time, bored? there’s no harm in saying so. writing is really sometimes a strategy against boredom. there’s another strategy–to make yourself believe that you are able to talk to past writings (in the writing, that writing does this, it talks to other writers) by imitation (imitating, for example, kafka’s diary), or anything, imitate anything, everything that’s ever been written
offers itself as a model, waiting to be copied, imitated. and i don’t mean
imitating an entire book. that’ too much. but to imitate a paragraph here and there, even if only to copy out the model word for word (you don’t know how many pages i’ve filled by copying out paragraphs from books that i’ve been reading) and you learn this way, what the writing is doing, and you enter into a kind of conversation with the writing, and when you put it in your own hand, your own handwriting, it starts to become yours. i have made so much of poetry written in english ‘mine’ this way. but it was only ‘mine’ for a little while. there is no
such thing as originality in writing, and the belief in originality is harmful, because you find yourself amazed by the fact of the writing itself, and you think you can make it speak, the writing you are reading, by talking about it, by writing about it, and it won’t speak this way, it only speaks in the imitation, and in the movement from one language to the next, which is always the movement from one writing to the next, one person writing to the next person writing.

that’s all that i was thinking about thinking about that book of zabolotsky’s that you found.



b

y

e

26.12.03

Christmas is over

dear zhen,

i’m just returned from christmas visit, staying over two nights in a
very nice country house. i haven’t had time to check my email yet, but i
hope you were not too worried about my not writing you yesterday. i’m
writing this now in case you are still at work, and you shouldn’t be!
i’ll write a longer letter for you tomorrow. bye

27.12.03

more thoughts about Zabolotsky

dear zhen,

i awoke late this morning after 10:00 to sunlight and blue skies so i
think i will go to the hipermarket today for fresh supplies as i have
only a chicken to cook, and i’m growing a little tired of my roast
chickens, though it was such a change to be able to use an oven at all
when i first arrived here. i should go to the last day, tomorrow, of
the exhibition on russian constructivist art, my computer says it is
Sat Dec 27 is it true? soon i will have to return to classes, give
marks (which is nearly impossible for me to do) and then lithuania,
and then you.

if i can find anything else to worry about, i will let you know. for
now, it is enough to worry about whether we will arrive at the right
train station or not, the same train station or not, and then it will
be very lovely to travel by train together to the shore of the Baltic.
if you can imagine a kind of winter garden, then should we hope for
snow? everyone says it is a very mild and warm winter here, some days
we have light snowfalls, and one evening last week, monday evening i
believe, i was walking home after midnight after visiting with
colleagues at a pub near the university and the snow was lightly
falling, dusting the streets and sidewalks, and the reflection of the
snow in the lights of the city (there are many more lights on most
streets than in Tomsk, especially with the holiday season), the effect
was quite beautiful, and for a moment i was very happy to be walking
late at night in a strange city and language in snowfall and light
reflections.

last night i went to sleep late, near 3:00 a.m., with the thought that
in pure distribution of time, we will be with each other much more
than in September? i remember well the mornings and early afternoons
waiting for the time when i would go first to my lesson and then most
of the time, by 14:00 to see you and spend the rest of the day with
you. still, if one analyzes, i believe even at 14:00 to 22:00 over 24
days from a possible 24 hour days equals approximately 192 hours with
you compared to 14 days of 24 hours: 336 hours? is it possible? should
we synchronize our watches, cellphone and computer to count the hours?
though i do not wish to know how many hours it will be until the end
of june, but that is already to begin worrying again, though there is
a good word in English for this, to fret (i wonder if it is in your
dictionary). to preoccupy oneself with thoughts about details that may
or may not happen depending on circumstances which themselves may or
may not happen. i do not like to think of Tomsk as something that may
or may not happen, but it will be a different, longer, visa, so that
is already something to fret about. also, it is very likely that u.s.
citizens cannot use their embassy for legal ceremonies, though it is
part of the unpredictability of perceptions such as you mentioned with
the importance of the u.s. visa stamp in your passport that such
things do matter, as i was not imagining the reaction of the polish
passport official when she saw all the russian stamps and
russian-language attachments in my passport. borders matter,
nationalities matter, and the language in which one has documents
matter. here, in poland, if it is from the u.s., it has almost
bibilical status. maybe i am exaggerating. but when i went to the u.s.
embassy for what in the polish documents looked very difficult and
forbidding (notarized proof of no previous criminal convictions and
that all taxes have been paid to u.s.), this documentation (an
affidavit) was provided in 15 minutes at the embassy. i cannot even
begin to imagine what the process must be like for people coming from
the East.

this is why, to respond to your writing and re-writing your wish which
is mine also, how best to make this possible, preoccupies my thoughts,
and it is as though these thoughts have no direction, only concerns (a
very dignified word for worry) that, one, even if the legal
documentation was possible in russia, and as important as this would
be if we were living in russia, if we were not living in russia, but
in poland or bulgaria (even to be free to travel to these countries,
not to mention working in them), how different would this
documentation be from documentation in english? what are our choices?
shouldn’t this preoccupy us? the summer presents us with a kind of
window, time to travel and for me, if i work, to try to arrange for a
summer job and one not in a warehouse but teaching english as second
language somewhere, and for you to travel there, though you remind me
that it is difficult for you to simply say that you wish to travel to
the u.s. and to go there without difficulty, when nothing could
probably be more difficult that a visa to the u.s. so, is it possible
to travel for education (language study, or professional
development?), in other words, to try to go to the u.s. as a student
during the summer, is this a conceivable possibility for you? do we
even know what is possible in this regard? so, before asking any more
questions, i should try to find out more information, but it seems
like good advice not burden ourselves with questions to which we do
not know the answer, at the same time recognizing that very likely for
freedom of movement, any legal documents in english have more
importance and offer less potential problems in the future.

these thoughts preoccupy me, simply because it appears that i will be
able to teach here for another year or two if i wish, and i simply do
not know the best way to work with the problem of borders, which we
should assume are becoming more and more difficult with each passing
year, and for as much information, contradictory information, that is
in the air right now, your impression that relations are worsening not
only between u.s. and russia but between european union and the u.s.,
this is historical reality, contemporary reality, despite all the
advertisements to the contrary. the entry of poland into the european
union, the expansion of the european union to 25 countries, the
currency war that is developing between the euro and the dollar, the
intensified movement between countries of people from very poor and
day laborers to professionals, and because of this movement, the
effort by govts. to restrict and control this movement–all of these
are things that can affect us very directly.

so there is much to be concerned about. you say that it is like a
circus at TPU, and circuses are dangerously unpredictable. i know that
this affects you, the unpredictability of this environment, despite 17
years of service there, you are still surrounded by unpredictability.
now i write to you about the problem of not knowing what to expect,
which must sound like a kind of agonizing of the unknown very
different or very much like the pain that keeps you awake at some
nights? you never write to me about this physical pain. i am afraid
that i write to you too much about the non-physical pain of not
knowing what to expect from the future except for the fact that i
worry about it all the time and you might say that for me the very
thought of the unpredictability of the future oppresses me and
prevents me from working on all but the most elementry tasks related
to teaching. i can promise you that you will not meet me at the train
station in lithuania with a long face, these last three months have
been too hopeful and positive despite the day-to-day ups and downs of
good and bad moods, but i feel badly to sound so serious in this
letter. there is the problem of lack of information, and the problem
of someone saying this or that about someone else (gossip) and whether
this is reliable information or not, and the problem of one’s work (my
work, not my teaching but my writing work, and whether there is a
place at all for it in the world, and it is not an easy thing for me
to talk about publishing, since i have always lived in the
circumstance of my writing not related to my working life–how
important to remember that i have only been teaching for a few years,
and to a certain, actually very great, extent, i have been able to
write what i have and in the way that i have because i have been free,
at great sacrifice of personal security and comfort, to write in the
way that i felt that i needed to write, and when one begins to write,
if one begins to write, to satisfy institutional parameters, trading
on the perception of the security offered by the institution, the
university, then this is a way that i have never written, and so i
confront the possibility of either silence, or writing shaped and
influenced by what is allowed and what is not allowed to be written.

if this sentence sounds torturous to you, it is because writing does
cause pain, and keeps one awake at night, very much like physical
pain. rereading the tortured sentence, it seems necessary to conclude
with the conditional phrase, if i wish to survive. i am not sure that
i am capable of surviving, as a writer. it may surprise you to hear
that i do not hear your, I’m still alive, ironically, but more as a
kind of reminder of the unpredictability of my own condition. to write
to you in this way, i feel as though returned to our conversations the
last week in the summer before i left Tomsk, as i remember those were
very serious conversations, and i heard from you a recognition of
one’s life as threshold of hardship and trouble. so you are still
alive and i am still alive–is that enough? what is unsettling about
poetry and literature and the life of the imagination, is that the
drive to language, the instinct to language, the overwhelming need
with which one is driven to write, comes from the determination to
confront and try to resolve conflicts, and conflicts are everywhere,
in the writing itself and the one writing, and beyond the page of
writing, the culture where the writing must enter some way or other,
and the history that is arriving from the future, and which appears to
me to be the very essence of unpredictability.

and so i have written, you expect for the worst to happen, and when it
does, you are satisfied. do you think that i was quoting you? at the
edges of your voice i was hearing a voice in myself, whatever that is
when it enters writing. how often i return to the thought of you
trying to make bricks for a day for money to buy food with. how often
i have felt like this in one workplace or another, just barely able to
go through the motions, in order to survive. it was not a direct
quote. you would never say that, exactly, but it is what i heard. or,
it was the imagination of hearing it that allowed me to find for a
moment the words to say how one side of me understands
unpredictability. today i can go to the hipermarket and buy food
because i have money for food and a marketplace, really the Palace of
the Commodity, which everyone can remember being built and which
everyone is grateful for, to tell from the size of the crowds in the
hipermarket, the food and clothing and service mall. why should simply
going there preoccupy me with concern for the future?

i do not think that you will wish for letters like this from me
everyday. do you know that i wish for very much what is called in
english: access, to the crisis and conflict of Zabolotsky? the torture
that must have gone into the writing of the Triumph of Agriculture
(the subtitle, according to history, might very well be, Terrorism
Against the Peasantry (and that is probably what he was writing). i
think about this a lot, but i do not know how to think about it, and
that is why i wish very much to listen to your voice hovering about
his poetry.

b y e

29.12.03

between no and yes

dear zhen,

when you say yes and you are thinking no, is this a sign that the
question itself vexes you, or my insecurity which motivates such a
question in the first place? that is one thing at least about me that
has not changed, my doubt and uncertainty, my insecurity.

over the past several days i’ve written and ‘published’ a pair of
statements about poetry, politics, and translation, as though i were
slowly beginning to be able to work again, think again, and as always
this process is not ‘a quiet day reading’ but agitation and conflict,
and often when i write, what i write, i would rather not write, if in
writing, by writing, it was possible to avoid conflict, both within
the space of the writing itself, and in the larger social space where
the writing appears, even when only for a moment, which is one feature
of the online ‘press.’

so, i go into my room, close the door, and communicate with no one for
many hours, sometimes even days. when i am reading, actively reading,
i often fall asleep fully clothed, and wake up in the middle of the
night with the lights on, book and notebook open, as in a form of
reproach, why did you stop? why did you let yourself fall asleep?
lately i have been sleeping very late into the morning, the curtains
drawn, the room dark, the sounds in the street below muted but
everyone once in a while two voices in polish in conversation,
children playing, the sound of a hammer (carpentry), etc. i like to
listen to such sounds for hours.

change, changing, can one ever say where or what or how they are? can
i not say to you, that nothing has happened to me or about me or that
always problematic ‘in’ me during the past three months? the problem
is, isn’t it, that i cannot say one way or the other, so it is quite
accurate, or acute, i’m not sure which is the better word, both
meaning a little towards ‘sharp,’ for you to think that no, something
has changed, something is changing, and if something is changing, then
it is my dragging myself back into my writing, and writing publicly,
which is not a quiet or quietist proposition, but a sphere and space
full of controversy, sides for and against, when writing tries to
activate not only the present moment of its coming into being, but
other writing that has gone before.

when i write to you about zabolotsky, i hope that i do not sound to
you like a tourist or passerby, interested only in one or two
superficial features. as i mentioned, The Triumph of Agriculture is
drawing me towards it, perhaps i will not even get to know more than a
line or a passage of this poem for some time, perhaps i will never be
able to read it in russian, though i imagine that in 5 years i may.
what draws me to this poem is the conflict between language and
history which its author undergoes, the severe criticism which
confronted the poet upon publication of the poem, this possibility
that he was trying to satisfy an ideological demand, and whether
consciously or not, coded into the work some level of language and
representation which was unacceptable in the immediate environment in
which it first appeared. irony would be one element of the language
that would be hard to disguise, is The Triumph of Agriculture the kind
of poem that only appears to be a statue, and when you start looking
at it, reading it, the stone shatters, and the figuration dissolves?
or is it more simply a conflicted poem, trying to satisfy the State
requirement for content, and any good poetry is never able to do this.
why was he attacked for this poem when it was first published? does
the preface of the volume of zabolotsky mention anything about this?
is there a study in russian to which one might refer? what i’ve been
able to read in english does not tell me much, though there’s at least
one longer study that i won’t have access to until i’m able to borrow
books from a university library again. the irony is, there’s probably
a book in russian here at the university, and i would never know about
it. so, i return to criticizing myself. at least that hasn’t changed.

could you tell me, when you have the time, the titles and their dates
(the dates are very important) of the different sections or ‘books’ in
the two-volume reznikoff? i’m particularly interested in ‘by the well
of living and seeing’, and then there’s a very strong zionist content
which enters, i’m not sure when, though you can probably tell from the
titles. these are longer poems, with historical titles, and there’s
one poem in particular that i remember that deals with polish-russian
history. i could use this information sometime during the next week,
as i’m still undecided about whether to submit a proposal to the
conference this summer that i wrote to you about before. it is a
question of having confidence in one’s thinking, though i resist also
thinking about poetry, reducing it to ideology, ‘affairs of State,’
but the greatest poetry addresses these themes, and is not intimidated
by the crisis and conflict of the historical dimension.

b y e

29.12.03

no more about zabolotsky (today)

dear zhen,

i wish i had a new sweater to worry about. i’m afraid to wash the grey
sweater that you liked so much, in case it falls apart in the wash.
there’s a cycle for wool and other delicate fabrics, but i’m not sure
what my sweater is made of, though it’s certainly not 100 percent
wool. synthetic fabrics are unpredictable, i might wash it and wind up
with a sweater three sizes too small. yesterday, to go with my
‘kuritza’, i made a dish of the berries one can find in Tomsk at this
time of year, adding sugar and oranges and (fiiiiii!) plain yoghurt,
and it was a very nice treat to myself. honestly, when i am reading, i
pay very little attention to other things, like supper. Zurawina they
are called here, what are they in Russian? they are sold in every
market now, and make a very nice compote or sauce. anyway, they are
not currants, which i remember you do not care for, which may also
mean that you do not wish to know that my favorite juice here is a
very dark purple currant juice, Sok z czarnych porzeczek, though
underneath it, blackcurrant juice, produkt polski and product of
poland both appearing on the carton. it is very convenient when
english is everywhere, and i’ve been told here that the perception is,
if the product has english on it, then it is considered to be a
superior product. in the u.s., the most expensive clothes are from
europe. so much for the psychology of the commodity, which, i think,
does not exist yet in the open market in tomsk (there is one here, it
is called the ‘old’ market (stalls and kiosks, bartering, and lots and
lots of language). the night before i watched a film in russian and
english with overdub in polish, and i am still surprised how clear the
russian sounds to me, even when i don’t understand the individual
words. polish does not sound to me like this. it reminds me that by
september i was arriving at a stage where i could form very basic
russian sentences, and now of course this is fading, but the
soundshapes are very real and physical, and i respond to them when i
hear them at some deep emotive level, that space where poetry comes
from. if i don’t send this now, you may not get it until after new
years. will you be at the office tomorrow? remember, i am going to
call you on new years day, probably quite late, around 22:00 or 23:00.
is this okay? would you prefer that i called you earlier? will you be
visiting? i never know what to do with perceptions of politeness. i
should send out new year’s greetings tomorrow by email, but i never
notice when someone i’ve met writes me or not. i heard once from
Shalomova in New Mexico, written when she thought i was returning to
Tomsk, and i did not write back for a very long time, and have not
heard from her since. my understanding is that by not returning to
Bldg. 7, in some way i did not express gratitude to how friendly and
welcoming everyone was when i was there. also, it must be difficult,
for strangers to appear from nowhere who have such freedom of
movement, that they go from one university to another, without
apparently needing the bonds of friendship and mutual support which
the welcoming of the guest and hospitality is intended to convey. now
i am thinking about your mentioning the ‘mysterious mystery of the
foreigner,’ and if there is any mystery, maybe it is the ability to
melt in and out of social spaces, though to be very harsh on myself, i
know that i suffer from insensitivity to the needs of others. this is
not very much of a mystery. the best word for it in english is
selfishness. you might almost say, i get what i want from someone and
then i disappear. these are not very comforting thoughts, and i even
wish to protest that they are not true. so much seems to happen by
accident. certainly i come from a society where everything is reduced
to the transaction, exchange of services, and if you have any private
space, you save that space for yourself and you don’t share it with
anyone. writing is such a private space. it’s not like literature and
history and culture just appear from nowhere, and it’s a real conflict
to write anything that you feel responds and belongs to the tradition
that you know, and read, and write to and for. here is an example of
my selfishness: i lose interest in people to whom i cannot talk about
writing, and i do not really like to talk about writing very much,
though as you may have noticed, i write about writing all the time.
that, too, is a form of selfishness. so knowing this about myself, and
knowing as well the isolation to which i have become accustomed (and
the problem is that i like this isolation, and it is one that i
recognize from the biographies of other writers, especially writers
for whom i have a great respect), so this makes me a difficult person,
and not so much a mysterious person. the best way to treat such a
difficult person is to question them constantly about what they are
thinking, because they never know what they are thinking, apart from
the enjoyment of the subjectivity of the process, the self-absorption
of lying in bed for hours alone in a flat listening to the sounds in
the street below and no one is going to bother you and interrupt your
attention to your mood. don’t you have these moments? the problem is
that we are always made to feel guilty about having them, and writing
really likes such isolation, such a situation of being alone with the
head that’s trying to move the hand and find words that are not the
words everyone uses because they are too busy to worry about words. in
kafka’s diary, there’s a passage where his sister comes into the room
for a moment and picks up a book and starts to read, and he writes
that he’s overwhelmed by anger at her for interrupting his writing
(and he probably wasn’t writing at all, probably just staring at a
blank page, until the anger moved him to write, so he needed her to
make him angry enough to start writing) and this seems to me a kind of
parable for the scene of writing and the real-life pressures and
problems of people who write or make anything for that matter which
requires self-absorption, distraction, concentration (going away and
being alone, even if it’s only to close the door in order to be alone
with your thoughts). i am always happy to hear you speak or write
about your ‘bad’ character, hoping that your ‘bad’ character is
similar to mine.

zh: GET UP.
km: SHUT UP.
zh: GET UP.
km: SHUT UP.
zh: (laughs and returns to the book she is reading).
km: (laughter muted by blankets, falling back asleep).

b
y
e

30.12.03

morning rain

dear zhen,

i’m up early this morning thanks to my neighbor upstairs who must be
getting ready for a new year’s party as there have been a lot of
moving and cleaning and scraping sounds for the past hour as i began
to wake up in the early morning dark slowly changing to a very soft
grey and blue on a day of rain, you can hear it in the dark in the
sound of the tires of cars on the wet streets

let’s talk about the letter that you need when i call thursday? i
always feel that i’m asking you for things and thinking so if you
begin to conclude that i need you, you would not be incorrect, yes,
that is correct, i need you (reznikoff wrote a very nice short essay
on writing about writing as ‘need’ and i like this word very much, as
it gets at the element of drive and being driven to language, to
writing, the drive to formal expression, and it seems to me almost
ridiculous that we use the same word in english for operating a car as
we do for the psychology, motivation, reason for being, etc.

it’s possible, more than likely, that i wouldn’t even know what to do
with the zionist materials in reznikoff, and i have always avoided
them when reading him, reading past them, and that doesn’t help
either, though it does help to find a passage such as this from my
reading yesterday:

“The population should be homogeneous; where two or more cultures
exist in the same place they are likely either to be fiercely
self-conscious or both to become adulterate. What is still more
important is unity of religious background; and reasons of race and
religion combine to make any large number of free-thinking Jews
undesirable.” (T.S. Eliot, “After Strange Gods,” University of
Virginia, 1933).

This is the intellectual climate in which Reznikoff and others were
writing, and it is one perspective from which to view the turn to
ideological materials (which is always about writing about the State)
and against which there is traditionally a strong taboo in american
writing, so that it is difficult to know how to write in the knowledge
of the onset of the wars (the period we are in now) and to which i do
not think the problem of a poet like zabolotsky is unrelated, and i am
thinking in only the most limited way about this, limited to the
translation into english of a title, The Triumph of Agriculture, the
very declaration of which is forbidding, the announcement of an
ideological content, as though one were going to read a State
Language, and i can’t rid myself of the intuition that english is
becoming more and more such a State Language, which any language
becomes when it conquers.

your comments (how is the ‘aside’ translated in russian editions of
shakespeare?) are always suggestive and casual and peripheral (off to
the side) or, to use a word which i like very much, marginal, when you
make a remark about this or that book from your library, and i’m not
forgetting that zabolotsky was in your library, as were some poems by
prigov whom you do not like, brodsky which you do like though i do not
understand why, though it is not an argument that i have any wish to
win with you, and neither am i forgetting that you have said that his
early poems are his best poems, and of course you have the best
edition available of mandelstam’s poems, for which you spent an entire
month’s salary. this is a library in which reznikoff has a place,
perhaps it was even the library he was writing for, and i’m not sure
that i’m capable of writing about him, at least without access to all
the other books i would need to read to be able to write about this
moment, when all the countries in the world went to war with one
another, and which is beginning to bear a parallel, an analogy, to our
own moment, period, time. i should go back to sleep.

your words about how people in tomsk would be pleased to hear from me reminds me of my character flaw, that i do not think of others (though the feeling is reciprocal, as i do not ask others to think of me nor
is it a condition of thinking good or bad of anyone, i do not place
the people i meet and work with in a category of ‘owing’ me
remembrances or any thought at all, they do not change in my mind) and the reason i write about this is that i am writing to you, in Tomsk,
and i do not like to separate you from the city where you live (that
would even be, perhaps, a form of violence, to pretend that you do not
live in Tomsk), and i would like to believe that i am sensitive to
violence, especially that violence where we silence another, so that i
am hoping that i do not silence you, though silence can also be a good
strategy, as in games of chess, though i don’t know whether this game
is about the cohabitation of equal and strong wills, which is a very
positive goal?

i am never quite sure when i have written something that offends you
or disturbs you, though i imagine that you are most disturbed by my
protestations of laziness, though i have long recognized that such
periods of indolence or idleness are necessary to periods of extreme
energy and advance in one’s writing (for the moment there is so much
hammering going on upstairs, and it is only 8:30 in the morning), i
would never make such noise in an apt. building, which reminds me of
how selfish and thoughtless people are in apt. buildings, and of
course this thought relieves me a little of my former self-criticisms.
the truth is, i just like to read and to be left alone as much as
possible, and you have indicated that you feel much the same way, and
so i am not afraid of you, as i am always somewhat fearful of people
who are busy with telling others what to do, which happens especially
in teaching, though i do not think only in teaching.

so there is another dialogue that we might imagine for ourselves:
zh: what are you reading?
km: a book. what are you reading?
zh: a book.
km: would you read to me a little from it?
zh: if you read to me a little from yours.

(I like very much the thought of the possibility of this dialogue
coming true, and you may tell me to SHUT UP whenever you wish).

I miss you.

3.01.04

only 15 days away

dear zhen,

it’s nearing dawn in your part of the world so i thought i would write
you a few lines before going to sleep, a little later than usual
tonight, the last several days, and i couldn’t talk about this with
you on the phone, have been notable for the nervous disturbance which
always accompanies renewed mental activity (writing). the day before
new year’s eve i wrote the first poem since tomsk, and the day after i
hardly even remember, reading here and there, but reading, and as
always, the acute sensitivity to time, as though it intensifies, and
one hour feels like five hours, and the next hour feels like five
minutes. it is always very difficult for me to talk about (writing)
and i always pretend that it’s nothing, and that i’m doing nothing,
and it’s possible that i’m very good at pretending this by now, so
only to add some remarks about this in addition to laughing about the
dilemma of whether to cook dinner or do the laundry (today i did both,
though my washing machine did not empty itself of water on the second
load). after tomorrow i will have to start returning to my class
preparating, as i collected a lot of work the last classes before
break and i’ve looked at none of it, and i have no energy for it at
the moment, and though the course work will not be heavy, i don’t look
forward to the next two weeks, and from tomorrow, it will be two weeks
exactly before i take the train to vilnius. of course you are not
beginning to get excited, but i am, and you should know that i
appreciate very much your kindness, generosity, that you expressed,
but you should know that i like to share all expenses equally, and i
would never scold you about this as i joked, but it was very kind of
you to mention. i do not think that you like being reminded that you
are very kind. you will laugh at this last thought, but after writing
a couple of days ago, i felt very close to being a ‘russian’ poet in
english, impossible to explain this, it’s intuitive, from travelling
and living and perception (not always just seeing or hearing) among
the last two years, and i’m beginning to feel the impact, always
delayed, on my writing. very much on my mind the last few days have
been the images of the aftermath of the hostage crisis in moscow, and
though i do not think you will care to be reminded of this, there was
in my experience something very strange and stark, extreme, in the
photography that followed almost immediately after the gassing and
shooting of the people inside, these images are still very strong in
my mind, and return to me when writing, as they were images that would
never be shown on western, or at least, u.s. news, there was so much
and so prolonged camera attention to the bodies, their death poses,
some by gas, some by gunfire, even now it is difficult to mention in
writing. it was probably the most graphic image of whatever it is that
‘war’ is that i’ve seen. intensifying the viewing was my isolation in
the hostel room, the cold, the guards downstairs, all external
conditions harsh and isolate, so the images had less resistances, or i
had less defense against them. i mention this not to depress you, but
it was on my mind when writing, though i didn’t write about it of
course, and i haven’t remembered it much before, and i don’t even
remember whether i’ve talked about with you before, or with anyone.
anyway, this is some of the content of thoughts passing through one in
a condition of heightened awareness which is writing, it’s less easy
to go through the motions, even when the motions are so minimal as to
be reduced to laundry and whether or not i will eat something warm. i
hope that you do not have to work very hard today or tomorrow, and i
will write you a letter for sunday also, though one more cheerful than
this. you mentioned that you like z’s later poems, but did he write
any poems after 1944? if he didn’t, what did he translate, does it say
in the introduction? about my books, i don’t regard the reznikoff as
‘mine,’ though if you would like to share them with my while in
palanga, i would be very grateful. i promise to read some of them to
you. they are very quiet and calm, and very far away from my
sensibility, which i regret some times.


b
y
e

03.01.04

1st phase accomplished, ma’am. obtained printer on which to experiment with official memorandums and tommorow may obtain chinese scanner with  ‘brand’name of Tiger Paw but has fax capability, or at least fax button,  the printer (familiar Epson) came with instructions in russian, turkish,  polish, czech, slovakian, greek (the hardest part about installation was  finding english instructions), actually, i need the printer badly for my teaching as all teachers organize their classes by handouts (xeroxed)
and our faculty has very nice xerox machine, and i am serious about
scanner faxing which you mention on the phone, what other info do you
have about the software. i will try to find out what i can tonight after
the online rates go down. if it helps, try to keep in mind that i do
want to work with you in palanga on the z poems, though not traditional
translations. so it is work, though as you know, i have very unique work
notions. i know also that you will not read this until tomorrow, but can
it be said that palanga is about zabolotsky (via chagall, very nice
idea) and yes, i am unhappy impossible jew, wanting very much to be and cannot be (so they say) either reznikoff (whom you like and whose
poetry, the importance, the value, you recognized immediately) or
zukofsky (his friend) or mandelstam (my hero) or jabes (whom you would  love and whom you should translate into russian when you are 60, or celan (paul anschel) who translated mandelstam into german (who am i forgetting, there are many great jewish poets in all languages and you remind me in particular of one (whose name you will never know as i will never know the name of irina nikolaevna’s son) today i was thinking
about your story about your boss, and i thought, this is what it means
to be russian, you would insult the sun if it smiled at you (i think
that’s in shakespeare somewhere). yes, i am the first russian poet
writing in english. maybe that means you are the first english writing
in russian. there is a very good french poet, marie, who says you are
writing even when you are thinking about writing, so you do not have to
actually write anything. i think it is very useful concept of writing.
to be serious, or more serious (to my mind, it is a serious proposition,
to propose silence as writing). extension: knees tremble=poet. it
doesn’t matter whether or not you ever write a single word. but you
would insult the sun if it smiled at you, so you are very
shakespearean-russian, no wonder you like Lear so much. if you are
bored, read the “verse-play” in the book i left with you,
“defenestration of prague” (very rare first edition) with cordelia and
stella as speaker/figures. i would like to stage this play in tomsk this
summer with former students if they don’t go back to their villages
during the summer. i’ll write later tonight as i am full of excitement
and longing to see you, zhen.

04.01.04

draft

dear zhen,

i’m sending draft and will you let me know what you think tomorrow already your today, Sunday? the problem is signing it, for that i will need to have it scanned (i don’t know anyone with a scanner) but otherwise i can fax it to you from my computer once it is scanned with signature. it doesn’t seem like a very bright idea to buy a scanner since one is not needed to fax documents. do you have any ideas? also, let me know about suggested changes as soon as you can. bye

04.01.04

 Drafr?

dear zhen,

does this one look more professional? it was interesting (funny, really, for me, last night) association my hypobololemaioi.com with concept of organization and professional look which is why what i sent to you does not look very professional (all my life i have hated this word) and the host organization in the first case, hypobololemaioi.com, can hardly even begin to pretend that it belongs in such a sphere (really, an entire mentality), and without a message today i am afraid you are upset with me or, more likely, you have a valuable insight into my outsidedness of really just about anything and everything. i call it, “marginal existence.” today i am reading student papers and one doctoral dissertation a colleague asked me to read, and both are nightmares of ritual actions repeating language without, well, without what? one student’s title: the nothingness of school. i think it is an exemplary title. the problem is, how to teach this nothingness? how, even, to be this nothingness? Well, if you wish, i will keep working on the invitation, though i think this one is better. i hope to hear from you early tomorrow. bye

p.s., on second thought, you know i have very high opinions about poetry. how do i reconcile them with the language one is forced to read in order to be able to work? i’m afraid i’m full of useless questions this morning, dreading the end of the semester, grading papers, acting as though i am invested with any kind of authority, it is a terrible game, the university, anywhere, everywhere. i’m hoping that maybe you did not have to work today, yes?

6.01.04

depart times from vilnius

dear zhen,

more details, but if you could let me know which one
is better for your schedule, when you are leaving on
the 1st of Feb, I don’t know what time you are leaving,
do you, your train? Here are my possible departure times:

Feb. 1
depart 1:28 and arrive next day, 20:24
depart 12:25 and arrive next day, 0:44
depart 16:10 and arrive next day, 9:22
depart 17:40 and arrive next day, 12:22

Feb. 2
depart 1:28 and arrive 20:24

I will wait until I hear from you before buying the
ticket, and of course I will call you tomorrow eve.

I have finished grading my papers, and the students
in one class wrote very lovely essays, some of them,
and I had this sense, briefly, that I had inspired
them, some of them. It’s very important for this kind
of subject. But it makes me unhappy, to have to give
grades.

You should be a little irritated with me for some
of my attempts at humor lately, I experience sharp
ups and downs when writing, and I want to write most
of all right now, and I have hardly any will or
inclination to prepare for my classes.

I am also just simply hungry for poetry, and I don’t
have enough (hardly any) access to the poetry I need
here, and it contributes to my moods. Still …

and still, it was good to hear your voice today.

zaftra vicherum …

 8.01.04

back to work

dear zhen,

yesterday was quite exhausting and i didn’t get home until late and i am just up now near 9:00.

today i buy my ticket to vilnius, and it is really rather convenient, as the train station i will leave from is the same as the one where i arrived at the end of sept. if i can buy a return trip ticket (i’ve been advised that because it is an international trip i may not be able to buy the vilnius-lodz ticket here) i will choose the 17:40 time, that way we can say goodbye going to separate platforms at the same time.

goodbyes. we have already experienced two of them. one more i do not look forward to. but i think you know quite a lot when you speak about the “basic” element of reality. we have many words for this in english, maybe too many:

basic, simple, elementary, fundamental, and there are probably more and i can’t think of them right now (i just woke up).

as i have mentioned, the objects i photographed at your dacha have this quality, the radio, the wall cloths, the glass held in your hand, the brick fireplace–as if these were solid and material and durable objects, irreplaceable.

sometimes i feel like i had to get rid of all the objects in my life in order to be able to perceive what an object is, though i’m convinced that some of the difficulty, emotional difficulty, is due to the abstractedness of everything in my living space.

the living space is so very important, this chair or that book, a cup and saucer,  and i am without any of these consolations, nothing for my eye. now i am complaining again, and i ask you to laugh a little at me (though just a little).

your voice sounded so happy and contented tuesday evening, and do you know what happened later that evening? three children came to my door and sang a song in polish, and as i could not speak to them in polish, and as they could not speak to me in english, i asked them if they spoke russian, and the oldest child did (maybe ten years old) and we exchanged names, menya zaboot etc and i tried to asked them why, pichymoo vasha chanson (i know, terrible russian) and they only laughed rather shyly, and i gave them what is called a “contribution” as i imagined they were singing for a church group, and as they were leaving, on the eve of the russian “St. Nicholas” i said, Merry Christmas, and they were laughing and repeating this phrase as they walked down the steps and out of my hearing.

such pure voices appearing from nowhere in the dark hall without festive lights, and i felt just a little happy.

i’ve also been told that in vilnius (and probably palanga) russian is very useful for getting around and asking directions, so you have the advantage (well prepared  for) of two of the world’s major languages for travelling. but you have been to  lithuania before, what am i talking about. you are far more the experienced traveller than i am, and i hope this does not affect your opinion of me.

tomorrow when i write i will have my ticket to vilnius.

bye

9/01/04

back tickets

dear zhen,

it’s very early in the morning here as i have another day of student presentations so i am leaving early but i wanted to write you and let you know that yesterday i managed to get the right tickets (i think) to vilnius, my train for warsaw from lodz leaves at 16:30 on Saturday, 17.1 and then i catch a sleeper car to vilnius and i arrive on Sunday, 8:45 a.m. though there is an hour’s difference, so it will be 7:45 a.m.

i can well understand about the toothache, or at least i can say that i understand. i don’t have the words this morning, but i worry some times about what we call “making light” of your trip, and i do not like such “making light.” without making light, however, there is the danger of appearing too serious, so what to do? you like a good joke. i froze all my laundry one morning, putting it on line on the balcony, and that evening (actually the next morning, i forgot about it) i thought the pants and shirts would break in two, they were frozen so. i had to melt them before i could dry them on the radiators. this is really true, but i was too embarrassed to mention it to you.

you do not care for sentiments much more than descriptions of nature, but you should know that i will be so very happy to see you in vilnius on the sunday morning, i imagine it to be a little like that cold, dark early morning in novosibirsk, though i will not lose my luggage ticket this time.

i miss you

11.01.04

 positive signs

dear zhen,

it’s late and i’m going to go to sleep but on the chance that you’ll
be in the office tomorrow, and you shouldn’t be, though you probably
will be, will you, are you? no, i hope you are reading this on monday,
anyway, no laundry today, just a quiet day reading after successful
presentations (except for one class of 5th year students already
corrupted by lazy teachers in the past who were not prepared and
complained instead about life in poland, etc) and the chair of my
dept., Agnieszka, asked me to teach next semester two classes of a
survey course in American literature in addition to a seminar for 4th
year students (I will teach Native American Literature) and a seminar
for 5th years students (I will teach several books on Urban Culture
and Social Space) in addition to two classes in practical English
which it is up to another dept. to assign. She added, “and since we’ve
already decided that you’re going to teach here next year,” so I
conclude from these positive signs that my teaching is successful
here, despite, or perhaps because of, my anxieties, and my perpetual
self-doubt as to my ability to communicate what for the students must
appear to be a bewildering mass of materials, but I had several essays
from 2nd years students writing an imaginary dialogue between Thomas
Jefferson and Malcolm X and they are among the best essays I ever had
from any students anywhere, so there is real potential here, for
engagement, the kind that I need from my teaching, despite the
language and culture barrier. I wanted to write to you this way,
positively, since you’ve had to read so many of my complaints and
doubts and sometimes you must wonder about my ability for success, and being asked already about my plans for next year I understand as a
measure of doing well here, and as you know that was a great concern
of mine (and hope of mine) when we talked in Sept. about whether I
should teach in Tomsk or here, and as I remember you were very
definite about the need for me to teach where I felt most competent
and capable. You can see, that I’m building up my confidence in order
to take the train in the right direction. Did I tell you that once I
took a bus to Detroit from Cleveland to go to a Van Gogh exhibition
(there were even paintings from a museum in Russia, I think the Pushkin
Museum, but I’m not sure, is there one in Moscow or Petersburg?) and
the bus was driving down the interstate for almost an hour when one of
the passengers said, Hey, we’re going the wrong way!). The regular bus
driver was training another bus driver and they had an incident at the
beginning when an elderly homeless woman wanted to go to Detroit to
visit her children, she kept saying, but she didn’t have a ticket, so
they had to call the police to carry her off the bus, and since she
wouldn’t leave, they had to carry her physically, so I guess this
distracted them, and so a three-hour bus drive took five hours and I
almost missed the exhibit, since the tickets were sold in advance and
only for certain times. That was one of the funniest things that ever
happened to me on a bus. But I can’t think of any other stories to
tell you to amuse you, except that I think you are very brave to
travel to lithuania, and know you will say Oy Oy Oy to this, still, I
need to say it. It is very cold and white and snowy here, and I am
beginning to have thoughts about filming the coastline of the Baltic
in snow and ice at different times, following the light, so I think I
will bring my camera, but no computer. As always, I promise, no
pictures of you, though the silhouette of you in the door way and one
with your face framed by the window (both shadows) and two partial
details of your hair and eyes and your hand holding the blue glass are
among the most evocative, for me, images I’ve ever taken. Do you
remember how I hold the camera? I do not aim it, or assert it, and
more and more I believe in filming with the lens cap on, to catch the
sounds. I have not done any filming here yet. Maybe the Baltic will
change this. As much as I do not wish for you to be at work tomorrow,
I hope at least you stop by the office to read this. If I had know it
was a wisdom tooth that you had to have pulled, I would have worried
more (I did not think you would be returning to work the day after the
dentist, so I was quite surprised that you wrote me today, and that is
why I did not write). A quiet and very cold day here, reading and
writing, and a trip to the store, where I bought an eggplant and a
chicken and some other things my kitchen is too cold to cook in, and I
looked for grape vodka, after your recommendation, but couldn’t find
any. Cognac I have not tasted since our last dinner together, and I am
hoping that we shall have a glass in Palanga, as I remember you are
quite fond of it.

bye

12.01.04

KONCEPT

dear zhen,

my rooms are cold because i was too lazy to insulate them, or afraid
that it would cost too much money, or both. today is not so cold. i
was able to cook in the kitchen and made eggplant with garlic and
onion and the tomatoe compote like we ate last summer with the dacha
squash though the last ingredient you will not like, yes, yoghurt! i
use it with everything now, i don’t know why, i have never cooked with
yoghurt before, don’t they use it in middle eastern cooking? also i
did laundry today and my washing machine worked well and i was very
happy.

i will send larisa’s conference call in second email. the big change
will be from toleration to tolerance:

verb: to tolerate
noun: tolerance
adj: tolerant

though now that i look at the word, i’m not sure that i’ve ever seen
it before. we say of someone that they are an intolerant person (have
no patience), or a teacher will tolerate or not tolerate late papers,
etc. for a conference theme, i don’t know, to a ‘western’ reader, it
will sound like what is called “top down” (bureaucratic language is
said to be “top down”), such as: who or what is determining the limits
of tolerance? the word, at least in english, is full of authoritarian
connotations, but then the conference call is not for ‘westerners’ is
it? (i have not been happy with words ‘east’ and ‘west’ since writing
about the windows in the flat in tomsk in september, but when your
chief travels to china, he travels east, yes? mandelstam wasn’t sure
where it was, either. actually, writing i’ve been doing lately reminds
me that i have learned too well from the english translations of
mandelstam’s critical prose, that mandelstam is quite intolerant, even
contemptuous, and when i write critically, i realize that i have read
those essays so many times that i am reproducing them, back into
english (and maybe he does not even sound this way in russian) but in
the english, he is a very proud and contemptuous writer.

sometimes, i worry (you see i must always have something to worry
about) that when i write to you about my perception of success here
that it irritates you. if so, please tell me. you don’t have to tell
me why. so that i won’t write about it. or else you do not like to
hear about my worries (fretting) and relief when it appears that i’m
succeeding. it’s not two more classes, about that i wasn’t clear, but
two new classes in place of two i was teaching this fall. i will be
teaching for the rest of my life, so obviously it is something i am
interested in reflecting on, thinking about, and i am uncertain about
it sometimes, because of the cross-cultural and language context. but
enough about that. i am drinking coffee for warmth near 8:00 p.m. so i
will be awake long past midnight, though i have nothing (nothing!) to
do tomorrow except grade. all of my students would probably accept any mark i give them, but i am not used to this kind of authority. it was
very wise (protective) of bldg. 7 in tomsk, they did not ask the
foreign teachers to mark the students.

now, i would like to ask you about an idea which if you do not like
this idea, tell me, and i will forget about the idea. my idea is that
i would like to work with you between an hour to two hours (no more
than two hours) every morning, talking about zabolotsky’s poems,
especially the Triumph of Agriculture, but talking about them the way
we talked about the title of the book of poems of Gleb Shulpyakov, on
the phone, my idea being to open the russian text of zabolotsky in a
floating kind of space of word associations, and they wouldn’t be
linear, line by line, reproducing the poem. whenever we start talking,
we could start anywhere, a single line, a stanza, a word. my idea is
not to reproduce the Triumph of Agriculture (actually my old teacher
at university has published a well-known volume of translations of
zabolotsky), but to listen to your word-associations, definitions,
translation-transliterations, eventually to transcribe in a voice
text, and for the transcription, our conversations would need to be
recorded. only for an hour each morning, or until you became bored
with the project. what do you think? please tell me what you think,
because if you agree to this project, i will obtain a small tape
recorder with microphone here, my tapes for the digital video i want
to use filming the Baltic. the idea about the transcription, it grows
out of language in the poems i wrote in tomsk in september, the idea
of “writing you” and if you remember, i wrote for about two weeks in
the morning for about two hours, and then i would read to you in the
evening what i was writing in the morning. this pattern of writing
developed because i was alone in the morning and with you in the
evening. now i will be with you for two weeks, about the same period
of time as the writing, but i will be with you both in the morning and
in the evening, so it seems very natural to ask you if you wish to
collaborate on such a possible text. it would be a companion piece to
the poem i wrote in september, only this time you would be writing it
with me. the method of the transcription i have learned from
reznikoff. please tell me what you think about this idea. no more than
one hour to one and a half hour’s each day, and never the whole poem.
i am not interested in word-for-word translation, but exploring the
space between two languages. do you like this poem by reznikoff?

After forgetting this and that–
even what has just been said or done–
and watching the old men and women
in the house where I live
walking with sticks, crutches, or a sort of cradle about them,
even wheeled in chairs,
I have concluded
that I must have my own mental crutch–
a notebook.

bye

12.01.04

toleration

dear zhen,

i was wrong about toleration. i looked it up in an online websters’ dictionary. i think i’m beginning to lose my english without compensation of another language. soon i will have no language at all. does this ever happen to you? i’ve been reading all day, and suddenly words, english words, don’t look familiar to me. and i’ve been reading in english! don’t tease me too badly on this one. the attachment should have my corrections marked (tracked changes) in red. if for some reason there is a mistake, and no changes have been made, let me know and i will send another copy. please give my regards to larisa (i remember she liked my kafka allusion). and how is irina? did she pass her test? while for a rare moment i’m being thoughtful and thinking of others, please remember me to your mother and father. how is your tooth? i can’t believe you went to work both on saturday and sunday. i would have been in bed for a week.

bye

12.01.04

warm room

dear zhen,
on the chance that you will again be in your office at 19:19 i am writing you and at my favorite moment of the day, finally out of bed (many long hours in bed this morning as it is cold and outside snowing wet, wet snow) and coffee, very good coffee, which costs almost 4 dollars for 12 ounces here, and i have nothing to do today or even really tomorrow unless i want to go to the university in the afternoon, depending on the weather, so the next two days, today and tomorrow, i will be reviewing attendance records, and writing short paragraphs for my students complimenting them and marking them either 4 or 5. no 3’s this semester, and i’m told this is a perceptible difference between the foreign teachers and the polish faculty, as there is tradition in poland, as in russia, of marking hard, and giving only one or two students 5’s. it is the “old” system they say. when everyone was made to feel they could never know enough. now, my students say, my older students, the one’s that are graduating, everything is in a kind of chaos, the bureaucracy has not changed that much, and for all its problems, the bureacracy protects people, that very deep experience that everyone should have a job, and nobody should ever lose their job, even if their job is a “symbolic” job. there is a whole social field of study of the notion of ‘symbolic labor’ in the “old” system, and i am not suggesting that my students say they miss it, most of all, they are excited about very soon being able to work in england, in two years france, and in seven years, germany only 4 hours away by train. one could almost conceivably commute by train. and some of the students here are quite brilliant. so you see, i like to have a few words for them, though apparently this is not the custom.

i hope my idea does not sound like work. more and more i like to approach writing with a concept, instead of just writing what “i” feel as “i” feel it. so much of my writing is a form of transcription anyway (i learned this while working in stenography school in cleveland) following someone else’s voice, or following another text. if there is eventually a text that emerges from our conversations about zabolotsky, then it will be ours, both of ours. the poem “Cities” by Janet Rodney and Nathaniel Tarn might be one image of the kind of text or writing i’m thinking of, something that floats and at least does not translate line by line.

it is very warm in the room i am writing in, the small room, the one that is usually too cold even to sleep in. sometimes when the weather changes, the direction of the winds change (you see i am very observant) and when this happens, the spaces that are cold and warm in my flat are reversed. so today and tomorrow i will spend in my small room with bare white walls, a rug (all of my rooms have rugs, or area carpets they are called, they do not cover all of the wood floor (and yes, i have wood floors) but most of it, and this also was difficult about the hostel last year, all the hours i stared at the bare wood floor very cold to the feet even in socks that were never warmed by the radiator. in this room is also a bed very much like yours, narrow, against the wall, next to the door (there is a door to this room), so i close the door, move a reading chair with arms and what we call a coffee table (small table about height of chair) which i rest my legs on when i am reading, or place my computer on when writing (actually i am writing to you now with the computer on my lap, for it is a laptop, is it not?).

the time, time of arrival, i almost forgot: 8:45 vilnius time, 7:45 warsaw time. there is an hour’s difference, and the ticket shows the vilnius time. please do not let me forget, that morning when i arrive, i must buy return ticket from vilnius to warsaw. i will bring the schedule with me, and they say here that both russian and english will be easy to use to buy tickets there, in vilnius. here, i had to use polish (what polish?) as the ticket agent did not speak english. all i can say is that i know the different between “do” and “v” and provotny means return-trip, thus: nye provotny with elaborate gestures and explanations i did not understand. warsawa-vilnu. i am afraid i have not lost any weight, i was only feeling thinner that day, maybe i had not eaten all day. now i have been eating well, cooking, and i feel overweight again. i hope you do not mind that i am not all “skin and bones.”

well, i must attend to my responsibilities, and yes, there is a different accent, between our two jobs, perhaps i am trying to please, but that is the problem of the foreigner and the traveler, as i have not worked here for 15 years. there is probably a very great difference in accent based on the perception that one is always a “guest.” you have a job that you must go to almost every day, but at that job there are colleagues who have known you all your life, and you do not have to work every minute of every hour that you are there. i was quite impressed by this when i was in russia, actually, maybe i have mentioned it before, but there is an overlapping between living space and working space in the russian university, and the people who work there treat the university space as their home, they have celebrations there, and they relax there. in the u.s. there is a strict division between the two spaces. the living space, the home, is the space where you are not getting paid to be there. the working space you go there to make your salary. my own perspective though is limited, as i have never worked in one university space for very long, and maybe it is different for people who have worked there for many years.

today you get a long letter from me. you will say it is because i do not wish to attend to my students. i will also say it is because i like you. i will be home early tomorrow (tuesday) morning, if you wish to call.

bye

13.01.04

last minute details

dear zhen,

well i will look for you near a desk with both words hanging over them. the second one reminds of me of polish currency, zlotes (nickname: zwats). today i spoke with one of my polish colleagues who has travelled before to lithuania and he told me there’s no difficulty especially nowadays of changing zwats to litas, and probably i can do it even in the train station, though it is probably better to go to a bank. i will be able to bring equivalent of $500 (in addition to what i owe you for the hotel). does this sound like enough? we will want to go out to a nice restaurant at least once, and maybe we will want to take a bus tour once we are there to a neighboring location. i am lucky, as when i return, on feb. 2, my salary will be waiting for me. i do not think i am going to buy a tape recorder. i am very reluctant to own very many things now, though my printer has made preparing grades for the semester much easier, and i should have obtained one when i first got here (it only cost about $50 and black ink refills are only $20). do you know why i have been so “up and down” this semester? i counted all the students in all my classes and realized i have been teaching 106 students. i had the feeling that i was talking to a lot of people, and it is quite exhausting. last spring in tomsk i think i had more, because of large lecture class of 70 students in history of english language which i only co-taught, and wasn’t responsible for attendance and marks (though we occupied almost 4 days giving oral finals) and also i was teaching at the pedagogical, about 30 students, so this semester has not been the worst for the sheer number of faces looking at and listening to me, but it is the first time i am solely responsible for attendance and marks. it chita, i had only four groups of students 8-12 students per group, it was probably the last time i sincerely enjoyed teaching. and they wanted me to come back! and i didn’t go! why? because i thought tomsk was better for my “future.” if you are beginning to get the impression that i am someone who always tries to make the best decision by choosing the most difficult, the choice that makes my life the most difficult, well, then you may feel that you know me a little. what you said on the phone, that you don’t know me, do you mean that? this is about all there is to know, must work, must work, must work (punctuated by periods of intense idleness). i am trying to imagine your kitten playing with ceramic monkey. the kitten must be a pretty big cat by now, yes? i remember a grey creature very active and fond of milk. sometimes i wish for a pet here, either cat or dog, the days when i do not go to the university are so very quiet, but then i would have to take care of the creature, and i only just barely remember to feed myself sometimes. are you bringing any other books with you than z. and cr? i am not asking you to bring any of mine, today i checked out Samuel Beckett’s complete plays, don’t know why. it’s hard to find good books in the british council here. Beckett is sometimes compared to Kafka, and if you would like, since some of the plays are quite short, only several pages, i’ll read some of them aloud to you at night. they’re quite removed from any description at all, voices echo like hollow sticks in the wind, as though everyone where permanently on the heath in King Lear, only we’ve all grown used to the storm, and call it everyday life. “myself” has been somewhat stormy lately, bending in the general direction of writing, so you may notice about me a slight bit more impatience than you remember, though i do not need to warn you, do I? you have such a bad character yourself, as you never cease reminding me. one of my favorite childhood imaginations of you is you as young girl lying in bed refusing to get up to go to school and your father pleading with you at the door to get up, Jenka, look, I have made something very wonderful for breakfast, look, the birds are chittering on the tree branch, please, Jenka, won’t you get up, please? No! she shouts, and buries her head further under the blanket. do i imagine you at all accurately, zhen? (i think you told me about one such episode, but i’m not sure i’m remembering what you told me very well).

bye

15.01.04

The last minute

dear zhen, i do not think that you wish for a long letter from me on a day when it is difficult to imagine that you will be in the office at all, but you are probably there, for a little while, and so i hope these few words do not wait in your mail until you return on that, by now, unthinkable date at the beginning of february.

so, you must–and i repeat, must, have a safe trip.

since you are bringing with you an english grammar, i will bring my russian grammar. please notice the use of the modal in the sentence above. you MUST have a good and safe trip.

life would be impossible if we expected only the worst alternatives?

i only know this about travelling, that the intensity of perception, of language sounds, colors, buildings, these by far make up for the unbearable anxiety of being taken from one’s bed, and who knows how many of the world’s books were written in bed. probably as many as have been read in bed. i always feel ridiculous when i am sitting at a desk. it feels like work.

perception, also, is related to memory? so i would ask you to remember the morning in june on the river, and the morning in september at the gate of the novi. airport, and that the train station in vilnius belongs to these. of course, both of these memories belong to tomsk, but i remember your calm (do you remember my remarking upon it?) the evening before you left for the conference in alaska, though we were not close yet, in our conversations, and maybe you were more upset than you could say.

for two weeks we will be surrounded by peace and in such a place where nothing can go wrong.

for the intensity of the perception of the moment when nothing bad can happen.

lately i have a very strong longing to look at the Baltic in winter. i imagine that i shall have never viewed anything quite so beautiful, and i am very happy that you will be there with me,

so, dear Jenya, you must have a good trip. i think there may be one great difference between us. whenever the plane lifts off, i always feel tremendous pleasure, to be going somewhere, and especially far away. it is excellent for dreaming. train schedules are a little too ordinary for this. the trains run every day and at the same time. but i should not talk so badly about trains, as they are making it possible for us to meet.

bye