Early morning translation thoughts

Thu, 21 Oct 2004 05:38:50 +0200

dear zh, i just lost a couple of paragraphs written under the sign of
too early waking, as my alarm went off at 4:00, and then i lay in bed
not quite an hour longer, feeling uncomfortable, the flat is too warm,
the morning too dark, the coffee too strong. of course i had to get up
and make my own coffee, but after a few sentences about having to go to
the institute to pick up a book i requested two days ago and sentences i
will not repeat about the idiotism of libraries here generally, this
kind of structual idiotism of the old system, where literally everything
is made as difficult as possible, the step that led me to the loss of
the paragraphs, though, wait, perhaps they save themselves, some
programs do that …

doesn’t look like it, there is no autosave to the application that i
write in, which always makes me feel a little strange, i believe you can
even include this function in msword, and time the intervals that you
request a backup, though this function removes the need to remember what
you were writing, and, as you may guess, i was writing about poetry,
which led me to the next sentence, the third sentence, in the “marka”.
something about you and me and a glass of water?

may i ask if you could when you can and if you do, sent the sentence
back to me, could you send whatever you write in the form of an english
sounding out of the sentence by .doc or .rtf file in an attachment? that
was i can see the russian also. hmmm, duel-kukushka. the exoticism is
interesting, maybe it is something purely imagined, though the other
one, wood grouse(i saw a reference to a grouse in a language-teaching
textbook a few days ago) what are called “game birds” (birds hunted for
eating, like ducks and quail, though i know next to nothing about this
kind of dish, and have never hunted birds, right now, i can only
remember the image of hunting for birds in a french movie set in the
1920s. i wonder if such game birds were more or less common in a kitchen
in russia at the turn of the century, the last one.

it is a nice feeling to be able to look at the russian text and sound it
out though of course i don’t know the verbs but i can tell the
difference between nouns and verbs and see a little of the writing
structure, after your help, and it is helping, a great help. maybe
that’s what i was writing about, this view of poetry and poetic
language, which is any language which cares about itself, and cares
about itself first, without external obedience and discipline, and i was
thinking, or am i thinking now, it’s that i am writing now, that the
professional education has little or no access to poetry, that poetry
comes from somewhere else, and cannot be reduced to sum or system. all
it is, this approach to language, is a half-attentive, half-distracted
engagement with words, and words made some way beyond or beside the way
we usually use them, to communicate, to address. sometimes simply to say
hello.

as for translation itself, for myself, i can’t ever imagine it as
anything other than an act of giving closer attention to someone’s
writing, i’m under no illusion that the translation gives even a faint
resemblance to the original. sending sentences of o.m.’s back and forth
is something other than translation, though i don’t know what it is at
the moment.

i know your sentence in english was better than mine, denser, with more
of the original russian in it, and i am looking for another english, i
will never write in any language other than english, but all my recent
writings indicate an extreme displeasure with how the english i have
written in before sounds, now, and i am in the first stages of trying to
imagine another english, one made dense with the weight of other
languages, even one or two other languages. last night i had the
thought, typically hysterically formulated for me, that if i don’t
become fluent in french, i cannot survive in europe. i don’t know why i
had this thought. i know that i am too tired to study anything right
now, and i am a little angry, because what makes me tired is the lack of
resources for teaching, the system makes everything, the least little
thing, difficult and time-consuming, i think you know this experience,
and i am sick of it sometimes, and it takes all the perceptive edge off
living in a foreign country, which should be interesting at least, and
not a struggle.

you, though, know all this, better than i do.

do you know, also, that i miss you?

k.

What are you having for dinner

Thu, 21 Oct 2004 12:41:57 +0200

dear zh, hello, are you still at the job? i just returned from the city
administration residency office at a building called and which looks
like, ‘the palace,’ bad vibes there, as they used to say, colloquially,
but it took me only about 10 minutes to get the stamp i needed so
tomorrow morning i will go to the passport office and turn in the form
called the decicja with the stamp on it that i got today and soon i will
have my temporary residency card, the plastic one, good until the end of
next september, and which will allow me to cross as many borders as i
like and basically to come and go as i please, so maybe the effort is
worth it, and of course most of the effort was psychological, having to
go into strange offices with no Polish on me or in me.

that is the great excitement for the day. i think i will read this
afternoon. it is lightly raining. i had two pieces of bread with jam
this morning, but i am hungry again. tonight i think i will make
eggplant that has been in my fridge for a week. i have been too tired
and too harassed to cook it. does your mother ever make eggplant with
potatoes? if so, could you send me the recipe. i know there is a greek
dish that uses both, and as i have some potatoes, i would like to
experiment. of course, when you receive this email, you will call her on
you mobile immediately, for i cannot cook dinner tonight before hearing
from you on this all-important question.

it’s very nice to have a day finally when all that is the matter is how
to cook something for dinner.

write me about yours, tonight.

k.

Rest

Thu, 21 Oct 2004 17:10:00 +0200

zhenya, dear, as you like this construction, i will use it sometimes,
though i am fond myself of dear zh,

which sounds a little like sshh…

i returned home a little after midday though the day is so grey and wet
and continuing rain, drizzle, wet sound of car tires on the street,
growing heavier now at 17:00, where i am, at which point in time i am,
after a nap of several hours, and this is becoming a recurring feature
of the first day of my days off, i sleep the afternoon away on the first
day, and now i am “splurging” as we say, drinking a cup of coffee at
17:00 and which will probably keep me awake (with both the coffee and
the nap) long past midnight, and i need to go to the passport office in
the early morning, as the line of people waiting is quite confusing, as
there is no system here, more like the chaos of the office you took me
to for registration (by the way the place i went to is the same concept,
city registration, etc). poland is so much like russia that it does
everything to deny that it has anything in common with russia, but
literally, just about everything is about the same, in the daily and
institutional life, with the big exception of catholicism, and the
generally higher standard of living.

i was reading poetry in between my nap, both before falling asleep and
after, immediately after, and i was reminded, distantly, though very
pleasantly, of some of the most creative days of my life when i would
write this way, dropping off to sleep in the middle of the afternoon,
waking up near dark, nothing to do and nowhere to go the next day, no
responsibilities, no demands, just pure open time, and that is the time
into which one writes

and writing is, in many ways, the experience of time, with the spatial
configuration added, the words on the page, and usually there is reading
going on, the writing is reading something, finding its way through or
around the pages of another, whether fiction or poem, chronicle, or
theory, theology or philosophy, writing is always reading something

i hope you are able to sleep deeply and restfully tonight. strange, it
is a little like writing you to tell you i am happy to write you to tell
you that i have rested and feel rested, now

k.

“your” (russian) recipe

Thu, 21 Oct 2004 17:16:59 +0200

zhenya, dear, once again, i am sorry to disappoint you, but you should
know by now that i never cook with more than two or three ingrediants,
this recipe you sent me (though i thank you for it) is far too complex.
carrots? do you think i have carrots? i have potatoes and i have
eggplant, one very old yellow pepper, and ground pepper for seasoning,
and i am wondering how to put them together, without baking them (my
oven is not very clean and smokes heavily). we agree that we both eat
very simple dishes (the simpler the better, this is very strange, these
ingredients, and if i may say so, indulgent. where did you find it? the
reciple must be a western one, from that world: it is bloated.

k.

Hammering this morning

Fri, 22 Oct 2004 08:06:14 +0200

dear zh, as i predicted, the afternoon nap and the coffee when i woke up
kept me awake until 2:30, and busy with trying to convert a manuscript
from .pdf to .txt or .doc format (now that i have figured out how to use
the postoffice) and i can say that i truly regret not having bought a 50
ruble copy of msword 2000 for i found a free pdf conversion kit and one
which converts pdf files to doc files with formatting preserved (this is
the time consuming task, since with the poems the formatting of the
space between lines disappears and one must go almost page by page
reconstructing the original, and due to file corruption, the only
originals i have of my manuscripts are the pdf files i made while in
tomsk.

i remember writing recently of the possibility of Tania’s difficulty in
the u.s., first, from the fact that she does not speak any english and
must learn it to survive, and second, the culture there really is
different, profoundly different, and beneath the appearance of the
luxury lifestyle there is great disharmony and many opportunities for
people to be brutal to one another (speaking of brutality i woke up this
morning at 7:15 to the sound of prolonged hammering into cement, i think
they are beginning to secure the building, and there is probably a
Polish joke here, that once they secure the building, will anyone be
able to get in or out?). i am interested in Tania’s perceptions, if you
would care to write about them, though lately you seem very overworked,
and i do not wish to ask you write any more than you are able to, which,
as i am suggesting, appears to be more less than more.

also, she should be able to read a msword doc file in cyrillic,
compatability in emailers is more difficult to set up for someone who
does not know much about computers, but the cyrillic font should be easy
to install in the computer if it isn’t already there. i am also
wondering if i could set up a small webspace where you could write to
her online in cyrillic and she could read it online (all browsers now
read cyrillic and chinese without installation of special fonts, i
believe). ask her if when she connects to the internet if she can read
webpages in cyrillic, and if she says yes, i will look into what i can
do, for i have about 20 megabytes of webspace i am not using, and i
think some kind of communication space could be set up, like a private
chat room, though it would not be realtime, neither would it depend on
email.

my neighbor who is german and who writes in german asked me to read and
correct a paper he is submitting for publication at a conference in st.
petersburg he will attend in december. when he came by yesterday, we
were talking about the russian immigration into Germany, and the thought
occurred to me that Berlin is a city where we would both feel perhaps
more comfortable than eastern europe, and apparently the rent and cost
of living is cheapest there of all Germany. there is perhaps less
culture shock for someone from Russia in Berlin than in the u.s. city,
any city.

i should on such a hammering day to the passport office but i do not
feel like it, i don’t feel like going outside at all. i was so inspired
by your recipe yesterday that i didn’t cook the eggplant at all, and
forgot to eat, or, i wasn’t hungry. today i will get carrots and try
something with the carrots, the potatoes, the eggplant and something
else. my mind the potatoes should be boiled for a little while before
cooking them on the stove with the eggplant. also, i need an onion. in a
text i was presenting to my dunce class, there was a distinction made
between cook and cooker. one is an object and one is a subject, can you
guess which? must you work all day today? do you have any prospects of
rest? don’t forget to write me a few words.

by the way, you should know that your distinction between “my family”
and “family of mine” is absolutely correct, and the same effect of
formality or pomposity occurs, depending on the context. at the very
least, it is a formal flourish, ironic even, Family of mine, your coat
of arms could be a glass of boiled water.

Again thinking of the timestamp, would boiled water then have been
suggestive of an outbreak of cholera or tuberculosis, would people have
boiled water during a public health crisis? or was it common everyday
practice?

k.

More and more hammering

Fri, 22 Oct 2004 11:02:28 +0200

dear zh, well it’s one of those days which of course arrive without
warning, none given, nor would i be able to ask for such courtesies, as
knowing in advance when there would not only be jackhammering but
hammering and every other kind of hammering … apparently they are
“renovating” a flat on the floor above, and of course it was not done in
the summer, that would require too much planning, and consideration for
the residents, which of course is not how things are done, did people
ever dream that they had any basic rights?

i went out for a little while, to the store, and bought some bananas and
grapes, but i can hardly enjoy them, and i think what disturbs me the
most is that this is supposed to be one of my days off, i have half a
mind not to go to work on monday, in protest, but as you know, in this
world protest is futile, the system is mute, and can just as well behave
without you. oh, hammering and hammering, it makes the walls shake. what
would we do if you were here? probably go to the park. it is, after all,
a nice day, the sun is out, and i could go to the park, but i had not
planned to go to the park, i had planned on staying home, and now i
wonder whether i will be able to …

so i thought you would like to hear a few words from me in the middle of
my day to hear how my day is progressively being ruined today, probably
tomorrow as well, at least no one works on sundays, what a sound, and
right above me, why?

have you any recommendations? and please to not suggest that i go to the
park, i would only miss you.

k.

Notes from a Dumb Man

Fri, 22 Oct 2004 15:02:49 +0200

zhenya dear, do you have an expression in russian similar to, “I should
have my head examined?”

the phone rang and on the off chance that it might be you (who else
would call me?) it was the dunce college.

they wanted to know if i could substitute tomorrow for a writing class
that begins at 9:15 in room 411.

why did i not say no? if you were here, i would only have to look across
the room at you, and you would be shaking your head.

yes, zhenya, i charge you with the task of helping me say no! instead, i
said, “i’ll be there” … am i not obedient?

the hammering and drilling and general cacophany ended about 15:00. when
i wrote you i thought the walls were going to cave in.

now i am listening to classical music and walking my st. bernard. i am
in pretty good mood, though, i don’t know why.

my manuscript, the one there is a nov. 30 deadline for (the same as
abstract for slovakia conference) and in this manuscript i found a
thread of an argument from which i can make an abstract for the slovakia
conference. the manuscript itself does not seem so bad, it has a lot of
deep thoughts.

i haven’t checked my email all day so i have no idea what you have or
haven’t written me, but i do worry about Tania. that is why i suggested
trying to help with a message board. she could use it for corresponding
with other friends also. in fact, and especially if you came to Poland,
such a conference board shared by classmates and family friends could be
quite fun. the only problem is that you have to write into it while
connected to the internet. please tell me what you think of this idea.

i am going to send this now as a kind of goodnight kiss though i may
write you another email after i’ve read yours.

k.

(kiss kiss …

Wake up!

Fri, 22 Oct 2004 18:02:51 +0200

dear zh, i’m writing this for when you wake up since when you wake up
you will not face as I will the unpleasant task of going to a strange
classroom and teaching strangers, though this is Poland, after all, and
the Dunce College, so I should hardly expect for the students to even be
awake themselves. Strange itself to write such a critical comment as I
am listening to avant-garde classical music on the classical station,
they play quite interesting things. No one can ever say exactly where
they are. When the phone rang they were’nt even speaking to me in
English, I am not even sure they knew I wasn’t Polish, I had to explain,
in Polish, that I didn’t speak Polish, so then they found someone after
10 minutes to speak English to me and ask me if I could substitute
tomorrow. What a school. And I still have not cooked my eggplant. I
think if you are considering me for a living companion, you should
accept the possiblity that you may starve. There are many chestnuts that
fall from the trees here, and also, as in Russia, many many wild
mushrooms, so we could become squirrels and scavange. Forage. Scrounge.
Good strong English words. I think you are a little impatient with me. I
think you expect to me to write to you whenever I am not doing any
schoolwork. Should I? There is really not so many other things to do.
Yesterday in the morning for four hours I read. It was a strange
feeling, like remember you know how to walk after walking in the forest
for several miles. You never mention your reading. Are you able to read
anything these days? Why is the office so busy? What are they making you
do? How is this year different than last? Or, as I imagine in my worst
moments, is the contrast between the summer and now too severe (it is,
rather, here, you know). That is why I go to composition class at 9:15
in the morning, for the sense of absurdity and taste of misery.
Wonderful combination. You should try them sometimes. Don’t forget the
curry.

k.

Saturday dunces

Sat, 23 Oct 2004 08:00:03 +0200

zhenya, dear, how is your saturday morning? mine is awful, like a bad
dream. i am too warm, or it is too warm outside, my coffee is not hot
enough, the shirt i put on to go to teach needs ironing (i am very
demanding about wrinkles lately) and worst of all, i am bored, and
annoyed by the fact that i must go to the school. i have materials, for
the class, but the though occurred to me that some of the students may
be in my conversation classes on wednesday, so i will have used these
materials already. more and more i am tempted to quit the dunce college
altogether, and maybe i will at the end of the semester. i will not
write if i have to keep this pace, nor read for myself either.

this time yesterday they had been hammering upstairs already for half an
hour, such a lovely sound to wake up to, and with, in your ears. i have
half a mind to go and buy a hammer and pound on my walls or something
once in a while, just to keep up with appearances. it is almost 8:00. at
8:30 i will leave for the class. in a few minutes my coffee will be
empty. should i eat some grapes or banana before leaving? life is so
full of compelling questions as these.

and you, i don’t know much about what you are doing lately as you do not
tell me, the only impression i have is that you have more work at the
job than you have ever had, as i don’t remember your writing about the
work so much and how tired it makes you. don’t people come by to visit?
doesn’t your colleague bring salo and black bread once in a while? what
happened to the australians? do you ever visit irina nikolaevna?

of course you don’t have to answer these or any questions, i am only
curious, and want to know a little more about your everyday, and worry
that you are overworked. i am also worried about myself. thursday after
the nap was the one time lately where i felt refreshed upon waking,
alert and even, just a little, creative. most of the time i feel like a
robot. i think it is really possible that i like teaching less this year
than last.

i hope these are not alarming admissions, probably it is the effect of
separation from you, and stage of adjustment after the indolence and
deliberation of the summer, the quietest summer i have had in many
years. so i do not respond well now to sudden tasks, or many tasks at
all. maybe this is a little bit what you are feeling also, though i am
embarrassed to admit that you worked most of the summer, unlike me.

i’ll write you again when i get home, which i hope is near 11:00 or
12:00. the terrible probability exists that the saturday class is a 3
hour class. in that case, i will make more money, but i will come home
in a bad mood. the one positive thing is that the substitute class is in
the first thing in the morning, if it were in the middle of the day it
would ruin my whole day. as it is, i will have the afternoon and
evening, and tomorrow, back to work again.

i miss you and wish you were here, or i there, or both of us, somewhere,
together.


k.

Worse than I feared

Sat, 23 Oct 2004 12:01:27 +0200

dear zh, i haven’t checked my email though i am hoping there is a letter
from you, though probably scolding me for laziness. I am just back home
at 13:30 after what I was afraid of, a double class (weekend classes) so
I had to teach from 9:15 to 12:15 and even worse, tomorrow from 8:00
until 15:00. I am beginning to feel like a high school teacher, though I
did see the director today, who speaks English, and I was given the very
clear explanation that there was no explanation, except that the
professor originally scheduled to teach the classes is from Belarus. As
if that explained anything. Apparently this phantom professor from
Belarus is supposed to be back next week, so I will not have these
classes permanently. Why did I answer my phone yesterday? Of course it
is very easy to substitute, because you don’t have to assign any work or
even remember their names, though though students will be rather
disappointed next week if the phantom English professor from Belarus
returns. The students tend to prefer their teachers to be from the U.S.
or England, and in the language classes at least, there is expressed
interest to live in either of these countries (England is a serious
possibility, as there is now no work permit needed, you can just move
there is you are Polish, and there are apparently quite large Polish
communities growing up in London, where, according to my students who’ve
been there, there is a great deal of surprise to find so many people
from Africa and India and China, you read about this of course, but the
language shock is great, because students here find that the English
they’ve been taught doesn’t at all resemble the English they have to use
and understand if they are working in restaurants, which is the most
popular and typical job for Poles going to England.

It is difficult period to leave your country. It’s difficult for me in
Poland. It’s difficult for Tanya in U.S. It would be (will be, I hope)
difficult for you. There are so many senses of the “native” that one
takes for granted, and so many of them unconscious, you don’t realize
how much of and how close you are to a place and a language until you
leave. I am always being reminded how in a strange world I am when there
is such incompetence as at the Dunce College, example: we were
specifically informed that we could order textbooks for our classes (for
us, not for the students) and when I requested one today from the
director, I had the teacher’s manual that accompanies it, he
procrastinated and evaded the question, and my guess is that this is a
privilege not for the language instructor but only for the regular
philological faculty. I was two breaths from telling him I thought his
school was full of it, and he could take my job and find more professors
from Belarus to staff it, and perhaps I would have if I were in the
U.S., which I miss now, in examples of stupidity (though actually
institutions more or less function there, they are efficient, and
everything is pre-organized, from making copies for your classes, online
assistance, computer software, etc., in other words, the department is
organized in a way as to help the teaching staff. Here, they simply put
somebody in a classroom without any resources and attempt to provide
any. I’ve complained about it before, but really, if you will allow me
to sound “fed up,” the whole system seems very rotten and it’s hard to
imagine in changing until these dinosaurs from the soviet period are
given their pensions. In the meantime, they shouldn’t deceive themselves
of the students that they are providing them with an education. Cost is
everything, of course, and when I praise “American” efficiency (the same
would be true in France or Germany or England) it’s the resources
available that make the difference. What I need to decide is not to care
(if I want to imitate my Polish colleagues) and not to pretend that I am
doing anything other than passively waiting out and incompetent and
inefficient system which provides nothing to nobody.

End of rant. I’m sorry. I’m tired and overworked and taken advantage of,
and all for an extra 100 dollars this weekend, and about an extra 300
dollars a month, after taxes.

I’l try to write a more humorous note before you go to bed, which should
be around midnight on a Saturday night, yes?

How are you sleeping? You haven’t mentioned lately, so I am hoping you
had a good night’s sleep last night or the night before, though the
shortness of you letters the past few days and the tenseness of your
tone suggests otherwise.

I wish I was there to hug and kiss you to sleep, it is much better than
tea (and I assume the tea you went to the shop for was for sleeping?)

k.

Goodnight Kiss

Sat, 23 Oct 2004 15:02:50 +0200

Zhenya, dear, do you know that I’ve made one more mistake this evening?
Answering my phone. One of my colleagues from the Institute whose wife
just gave birth called to invite me to a pub for celebratory drinks and
as we work quite closely together I could hardly say no, as I had, of
course, answered the phone. How will I ever prepare for Monday. He is
teaching at the same Dunce College and shares my impressions of the low
quality of the students, though being Polish, he is able to be a little
more strict than I am. So in two hours I’m off to the pub, though I
don’t wish to drink too much, and the colleague who was arrested for
driving while drinking will also so be there, so unless he is with a
designated drive, if he is not drinking much, I don’t think I will
either. But as you know it is not so easy to refuse the offer of drinks.
But I think I will leave while the buses are still running, especially
since I have to be up so early tomorrow morning. Please advise me to be
more strict with myself!

Missing you …

(p.s. sorry if I sound “out of sorts” in earlier letter, as you can
guess I am a little overwhelmed right now, too busy, and I am not
enjoying it).

At least

Sun, 24 Oct 2004 04:57:06 +0200

dear zh,

at least it is not raining this morning, at least there is a cup of
coffee most mornings, at least it is the first day of the classes today
as long as they are, will be, were, yesterday, at least there is a
holiday next Monday, at least you are there, too far away, to write to,
at least you want me to write to you, at least you write back to me, at
least you have a sense of humor (sometimes), at least I am awake, though
I would rather not, rather, I’d rather be asleep, wouldn’t you?

so much for at leasts

the fact of the matter is that I must to the dunce college for 8 hours
today, and then home and to prepare for classes tomorrow, I do not think
it is such a good thing to be wishing for so many days such as these to
pass as quickly as possible, one after all, has only one life, and it is
not a good habit to wish the day to be over, though we do this, all the
time, as though suffering from short-range perspective.

one of my Polish colleagues said last night when I was talking to her
about your worries about being able to work in Poland said that the
Russian language department at the university this year had more
applications from students to study Russian than the English
departments, and they were taken be surprise, as they did not have
enough teachers of Russian, and there is a need for native speakers. I
will try and learn more about this. As always, there are many unanswered
questions, but whenever I talk to anyone here about your coming here, no
one ever says that they think it is impossible, or unheard of. Take the
example, for example, of the English teacher from Belarus. I am fond of
this example, since her absence is making my life miserable yesterday
and today.

Your absence, my dear, is a little different, and a little different
kind of misery. Maybe that’s what it is, though it is a word that is
unfortunate to overuse, so I will say instead, that your absence leads
me to unfortunate situations, such as having to substitute teach for 8
hours today. Everyone recommends for such problems the telephone device
where you see the number calling you, caller i.d. I guess it’s called.
Then simply not to answer as strategy to deal with “post-communist”
craziness, like classes without teachers. Even at the institute, the
first-year conversation students have not met yet with their teacher,
since they do not have one, and they finally complained to one of the
teacher’s on our faculty, asking where is their teacher. The mentality
is astonishing to me. But they do not have what is called a “Dean’s
office” here, or at least one that bothers to answer students’ questions
and problems, like where is our teacher?

Your beloved “englification” is probably just another form of
post-communist chaos, and I wonder if the chaos is not going to increase
rather than resolve itself. These are larger questions than we are
capable of answering.

You may notice that I am not mentioning the theme of the new father and
the celebration. The less said the better. What can be said? As you have
noticed in your life, and in your world, people have children without
thinking, they have them as a form of obeying, and for all the
statements and declarations to the contrary, most people are not aware
of their motivations, and very few have the courage, and self-knowledge,
as you have, to be able to say, “not me”. I always understand this for
your part as an act of great intelligence. So congratulating someone on
the birth of their child is a little like throwing flowers on their
grave.

This is a terrible thought to end a letter with so I should try for
another thought. Do you have any recommendations? Yes, I am drinking my
second cup of coffee. I have half an hour break between two three hour
sessions today. Six hours of teaching. Why do I return to this theme. Do
you know that I do not really complain so much, in real life? Though
your knowledge of how I live, from day to day, is based a little on
unreality, I am thinking of this summer, the unreality of having next to
nothing to do, no demands, no routines. Perhaps I am not such a nice
person (if you think that I am, maybe you do not) when I have too many
demands to respond to, too many places to have to go to. I become tired,
and worse than tired, pessimistic. That is not the thought I wanted
either.

Here is a thought, and a good one: you have nothing to do today? Do
nothing. That is my recommendation. Go for a walk. Read the memoirs
about O.M. without telling me what is in them (though I hope that you do
some day soon), best of all, take an afternoon nap, and sleep for three
hours. Today is your lucky day. Your day is luckier, anyway, than mine.

Missing you …

k.

One day down three to go

Sun, 24 Oct 2004 14:26:35 +0200

dear zh,

the day is over or no, the day is not over, and no i did not go to the
restaurant and yes, i am home, around 16:00, with only about five or six
hours of preparing for tomorrow. one class was quite small, only six
students, very advanced, and this got me to noon, then another 20
students for three more hours. i am a little slap happy now. the weather
is nice, though, golden autumn days, about 20 centigrade, and in my flat
now i am wearing short sleeves. i walked home quite a long way this
afternoon coming home and it improved my mood, as last night from the
pub at midnight i walked home in also warm weather, very pleasant.

you enjoy, don’t you, scolding me. i think you are very sensitive about
the “post-communist” world. maybe yes, maybe no, it’s not important.
even with working with students in their second language state, i never
meet cases of pure illiteracy such as in the u.s., despite all their
resources. you still haven’t written me about tanya’s troubles. i am
curious, and interested, that’s all. and you know i am very tired and
running on empty, as we say, though listening to again very pleasant
classical station with piano, do you like to listen to piano? i never
tired of it.

you, my dear, never mention the prisner or arvo part recordings i left
with you, do you like them? do you ever listen to them. the prisner,
especially, is wonderful for nights when you have difficulty sleeping.
very restful. but if you don’t ever listen to these, or even if you
don’t like them, especially if you don’t like them, you don’t have to
answer this question, actually, there is no question i can imagine that
you should ever feel ‘obliged’ to answer just because i ask it.

now what will you do for yourself tomorrow? you see, don’t you, that i’m
not very good or competent about doing things for myself, like taking
myself out to a restaurant. when finally we are not separated any more
by geographic space i promise you to make up for lost time and go to all
the restaurants with you that i did not go to when i should have.

you see i am chattering about nothing, writing from tiredness, tired
even of the sound of my own voice, tired from too much beer last night,
tired from not being able to take an afternoon nap, tired of eating and
sleeping alone. what is there possibly that i don’t complain about?

i am too tired to cook dinner and the eggplant, still uncooked, really
needs to be cooked soon. this would not be a problem in the event of
your presence as you see i remember very well you know how to peel and
eggplant. what else do you know how to do in the kitchen? whatever it
is, this is one question you will very cleverly refuse to answer, and i
rather admire you for that.

do you mind being admired? missed? anything else? you will tell me what
you mind, won’t you, what’s on your mind, and reminding me, as you
appear to prefer to do, that i can always go “home” somewhere, wherever
that is, when i get too tired of the chaos and disorder. the land of
extreme efficiency is also sometimes terrifying, for its own reasons.
today walking home under the yellowing trees and the warm blue late
afternoon sky, i was rather happy to be here, in Poland, in Eastern
Europe, and i hope that you will share such walks with me soon.

kisses goodnight …

k.

Longest day

Mon, 25 Oct 2004 04:11:09 +0200

dear zh,

i went to sleep, fell asleep, too early last night, slept poorly, and
could not get up early as planned, so i am behind, unprepared, which i
hate, since i like to go into class with questions that i’ve thought
about, and the fault is not mine. so i cannot write you much longer than
to say good morning and wish for you that you have a better day than i
will, today.

k.

Halfway there

Mon, 25 Oct 2004 15:41:15 +0200

zhenya dear, dear zhenya, oh, the quaff of a draft of Warka Strong after
a long day in the trenches of culture and conversation, always in
English, of course, American English! Did I tell you I didn’t answer the
phone twice yesterday evening for fear that it was the Parrot School
this time around or some other emergency at the Dunce College. Turns out
that when I saw my Brit colleague this morning he said he tried calling
twice to see if I wanted to meet him for a beer (or two, or three, or
four, or five), so yet one other night I could have gone to the pub to
empty their barrels of Polish beer. You will think that I am not on a
slim diet, no, not hardly, but I am holding my ground, eating
irregularly, though I did finally get around to the eggplant, last
night, because I needed some nourishment, and tonight I am roasting a
turkey breast which I will have with the leftover eggplant and fried
potatoes (your favorite!). Our favorite, I should add, as suddenly this
moment into my mouth entered the memory of the taste of the frytki at
the beer pub we would go to in Tomsk where you were able to cajole the
waiter into serving you frytki without ordering a full meal. You sound
very persuasive in your native smooth Russian, and I would give you
anything if you spoke to me like that (your English is polite enough
though, but your Russian to waiters is smooth, my dear, quite smooth,
very appealing).

As for the long litany of my many assaults on your capacity for
forgiveness, save them for your memoirs, remember those memories? where
each chapter was going to begin, “tonight he beated me and refused to
feed me.” There is a large audience in the U.S. waiting for these
memoirs, though they will have to be translated, and of course, I will
need to be dead first, so, hopefully, it is a 20 (can I have 30 please?)
year project. I never dream of the possibility that, no, I won’t dream
of that possibility. It is bad luck all around to even joke about one’s
mortality. My teaching went quite well today, almost, I think,
spectacular, I gave one very passionate lecture on immigration history
which I didn’t realize that I knew so much about, but that is often what
happens, and in another class, a conversation class, a third-year
student gave a stunning lecture on Judith Butler, Foucault and Derrida,
on gender and etc., and it was quite amazing to hear this level of
sophistication from a third-year student. She gave a better class on
them that I could have, standing in front of the class and using the
blackboard, and the complex philosophy was explained in crystal clear
(English!) terms. I was so amazed I wanted to weep a little. Very nice,
very nice. In fact, it was this student’s performance which sent me into
my next hour’s lecture on immigration with such energy and excitement.
These spontaneous things happen from time to time, and they bring me the
most intense enjoyment and a deep sense of satisfaction. As if, almost
as if, the ideas and the history were becoming alive, in the room, in
the sense of the urgency and importance of the life of the mind, the
intellect.

In my mind this evening, as tired as I am, I am smiling a little,
because I am more than halfway to the end of the week and a little bit
of a holiday, though I will have to remember that it is only Monday that
I have off, and remind myself to go to my Tuesday and Wednesday classes.
Did I mention that the classes I substituted for on Sunday only meet
once a month, so even if they give me the classes permanently, it won’t
be so bad, and at the very least, I earned an extra 150 dollars for the
sacrifice of my time and a little sanity, because I really did go to
classes this morning utterly exhausted, without sleeping well, waking up
every hour, feeling panicky and underprepared, my books on my desk an
arms reach of the couch on which I was sleeping, yet unable to go back
to them, even this morning, over coffee, I prepared the immigration
lecture which went so well today.

I am tired now but I have to read Robert Frost and Ezra Pound for
tomorrow’s classes, and grade compositions for the Dunce College, and
somewhere, find a composition exercise for tomorrow’s class. I am
running out of materials. It is possible that I will be up until 2:00
this morning. I hope this letter finds you well and forgiving me the
most serious offense, such a short letter this morning, really I was
within minutes of being late for my first class.

k.

Third of four

Tue, 26 Oct 2004 03:45:01 +0200

dear zh, i am up early after another night of poor sleep, by poor
meaning waking up every hour, i went to sleep at 10:30 and woke up
feeling it was near 5:00 (the time i had set my alarm for) and when i
looked at the clock, it was 10 minutes past midnight). the rest of the
night was like that, and of course, i finally fell asleep in the sleep
that i wanted about 4:00 so i feel really like i have had one or two
hours of sleep. i believe you know the feeling. my stomach also seems
very sensitive. after second night of eggplant, garlic and onion (this
time made with fried potatoes, very tasty, though very simple, i don’t
think i’d recognize the spices in the recipes you sent me even if i did
have them and use them) i had stomach ache, and i did not even eat that
much. at one point in the long night i thought i might be coming down
with flu or something, but i don’t think so, it is only either extreme
tiredness or depression or both, insomnia is strong symptom of
depression. it is good that you are experimenting with different
measures, for myself, if this continues, i will try drinking some
different teas in the evening, now i usually have only a cup of juice,
and never coffee, so that i know that when i am unable to sleep, it
isn’t because of the caffeine. for me, the farther i feel from my own
writing, and the more i am only doing tasks for the job, the more
depressed i become, and it is really a kind of anger. example: one hour
yesterday copying materials to use for my classes at the institute, and
two hours yesterday evening looking for composition/conversation
(practical English) materials on the internet. so, three hours just look
for the damn materials which the schools should provide if they were
schools that conformed to any kind of standard recognizable in the world
i come from, and the world, during such wastings of time because of the
monster salaries of bureaucrats and rectors, i am rather inclined to
return to, if i want to ever find time for my own writing. the reverse,
as you will quickly point out, is also true: in that world of resources
and provided materials, one’s performance is constantly monitored and
observed and one must deal with administrative memos all the time from
people who could just as well call you and talk to you, so there are
many features i hate about that world also. the strategy is to teach the
same classes year after year, and then one simply has the materials.
there are polish teachers here using materials from 20 years ago, my
students say. once in a while my american colleagues who have taught in
the u.s. remember with laughter (and some irony, i think) all the free
textbooks we were sent by the textbook companies, and even if you have
the lowest job of first-year composition teacher, textbook companies
send you texts and other teaching materials for promotion. yes, my dear
zhenya, it is the luxury life, in all corners, there is not one corner
in the u.s. that is not filled with luxury, and i couldn’t realize this
until have to survive, on the job, in this gutted world, where, i don’t
think sometimes, there is even the concept of basic “resources”. you put
somebody with a degree in a room with too many students, and you tell
them to say something, whatever it is, it doesn’t matter, and that is
called teaching. no wonder my students sunday at break went to the
dean’s office and requested that i be their teacher, not only because i
am native speaker, but i had clear and explainable and related tasks for
them to do. in other words, i was teaching them something, and that was
a surprise. all of this process is frustrating me though, and it’s not
good for me mentally, even physically, since sleep is physical. my
coffee is finished and i have to grade the composition papers for
today’s class which i would have graded sunday if i hadn’t been
compelled against my will to the substitution classes. once again, i
hope your day, muddy or snowy or somewhere in between, is better than
mine. at least the weather here is marvelous, still golden autumn, much
sunlight and warmth, but i hardly notice it.

k.

Three down of four

Tue, 26 Oct 2004 16:46:20 +0200

zhen dear, just a note in case you are not asleep though i hope you are
that i am home near 19:00 my time here after yet another long day that
began as i wrote at 5:00 this morning and i still have papers to grade
tonight.

i just wanted to send a kiss to you and if you are asleep now, this very
electronic kiss will await you in the morning, when i shall write you a
longer letter.

yes, kiss, do you remember?

k.

Middle of the night

Tue, 26 Oct 2004 23:55:17 +0200

dear zhen, i’m not writing this to worry you and rather i would like for
you to feel only that i am writing you to say good morning to you,
except that it is your morning, not mine. i went to bed at 21:30 last
night and set the alarm for 7:00 wanting, and needing, a good long
night’s sleep, and i awoke, in the dark, not far beyond my custom, and
when i looked at the time it said 1:30, so now i am up, my body whether
or not it is actually rested, and i rather doubt that it is, i am awake,
and rather than lie in bed in the dark as the hours pass and progress
towards daylight, the misery of insomnia that you know as well, i
thought i would write you a few words, to say good morning, and wish for
you as pleasant a day as is possible under the conditions. for myself, i
don’t doubt that this will be the worst of the last four days, since it
is the last day, and the classes i like least, and perhaps it would be
more bearable, more endurable, if you were here, as there would be some
greater and deeper logic to the routine and the work demand, though it
is just as possible that i could not conceal my tension, and you would
sense greater irritation than whatever annoyance you imagine at either
cards or software dogs. as for the cards, you are brave to make fun of a
compulsion, and i would only say that your compulsions are so harmless,
not a serious addiction, though i remember experiencing a similar
compulsion to a software game when i first had a computer, and it is a
very simple software game in a universe of virtual gaming and the
compulsion of a generation, playing them. the slovenian, slavoj zizek,
writes, “Enjoy your Symptom!” and it is good advice. worst is to make
oneself feel bad (which i’m not saying you do) or to imagine another (as
you might imagine me) feeling badly towards you on this or any account
or for any reason, even if that “badly” is only irritation, or
annoyance. you never write about the trememdous pressure you are under
at the job, and as the work i am doing here, this pressure is borne like
a heavy weight during the waking and sleeping hours both. you may notice
that i do not send you any more lines from the “marka” during these past
days, as i cannot bear to be reminded of poetry, at least any poetry
that deeply interests and motivates me, during a time when i must attend
to work duties. you also asked about the “durationpress” part of the
email address i use when i write in the windows side of my own humble
laptop, and the answer to this is very easy:
http://hypobolemaioi.durationpress.com though there are only pdf files
there, and you may or may not be interested, i think i showed you the
design for this site during the summer, or even the site itself, it’s
not important, only a symptom, and one which i enjoy, unlike insomnia,
though i should add that before my 16:00 class i took a big cup of very
tasty capuccino at a cafe across from the institute, and i am probably
complaining of nothing more significant that a late afternoon cup of
strong coffee. by the way, i do not drink nearly so many beers as i
pretend to, at the pub the other night for four hours i drank 3 pints,
simply because i neither wished to leave nor to become drunk. i believe
you practise a similar restrain when you drink cognac, a little goes a
long way, they say, in english. i think i am going to do some practical
english exercise to try to put myself back to sleep, even if only for an
hour or two. i miss you.

k.

Another start

Wed, 27 Oct 2004 07:40:31 +0200

dear zhenya, once in a while I think I should call you be your slightly
longer name? It is 7:30 now, after a shower and with cup of coffee, and
I did succeed in falling back to sleep about 3:00 so I slept for 3 or 4
more hours, and woke up with difficulty when the alarm went off, so I
think I will be able to survive today, though my body is telling me that
it is Thursday, after working Sunday, and I shouldn’t have anything to
do. Thursday has really been turning into my rest day, and the day where
I enjoy at least once, during the week, a long afternoon nap. You will
be disgusted to hear that at least at the institute, we have both Monday
and Tuesday off. This All Saints Day is a pretty serious holiday. In the
evening on either the 31st of October or November 1, I forget which,
many people will be able to be observed in the cemeteries lighting
candles and bringing flowers to the grave of family members and
ancestors. Perhaps it is a day of recognition of the dead, I don’t know.
I’m going to make my conversation class tell me about it today.

Perhaps I will be able to send you another sentence of O.M.’s this
evening, though I rather doubt that I will have much interest. Wednesday
nights are somewhat of a blur for me this past month, I am always so
exhausted, and with these classes especially. Very probably I give you a
worse picture than the reality that actually exists, and this is by far
not even the worst teaching job I have ever had (the worst was in
Cleveland, and next-to-worst, Tomsk). Perhaps I am more anxious about
it, perhaps because I earn more money doing it, I don’t know. I am
limiting my critical ability this morning to enjoying my coffee.
Strange, how the evening taking of capuccino can then keep me awake, or
at least unable to sleep, many hours later. It certainly made teaching
my 16:00 class much easier.

So you see how my moods shift, and I hope this mood is not destroyed by
the dull students at the Dunce College, so that I have the energy to
take myself to the passport office early tomorrow morning to complete my
work residency paperwork which I have been putting off, delaying,
procrastinating, there are many words for it. I am beginning to be able
to hear the workmen at work in the flat upstairs, as they continue
restoring (my flat I think was one of the first to be restored several
years ago and it is quite nice in comparison to some of the others I’ve
visited in this building). Hint, that is, a hint, that you might not
find it not to your liking, were you to find yourself here. Please will
you accept a good afternoon waking (my waking, now) kiss?

k.

Koniec

Wed, 27 Oct 2004 15:01:42 +0200

dear zhen, it’s over, the week, and i am just now home, walking home,
from the british library, where i went to look for, what else, more
composition materials, but i have 6 days off now, almost 7, only one
class on tuesday, so i can breathe a little, tonight, maybe, i will
cook, for myself, maybe not, i am very tired, and you? is your
australian gone? what new surprise of endless tasks awaits you next? is
16 hours a heavy load, where do all the english courses come from? are
you teaching at bldg. 7? or only in the geological faculty? are you the
only one there who speaks fluent english? (i think you must be). maybe
by tomorrow i will start sending you some more mandelstam, though at the
moment i can’t imagine myself reading anything except the signs on the
wall, the proverbial signs on the wall, whatever and wherever they are,
though i am not as unhappy as my tiredness makes me sound, very happy,
in fact, at the progress of even my dunce college students, where all
the faculty at the institute teach, so i feel a little connected, and
rather gainfully employed, which is very important for my self-esteem,
and if i don’t have this, a job that i do and do well, and that is not a
subsistence job, then i can begin to work, seriously, on my own writing.
when i am doing that, i promise you my mood is quite positive, and i am
even sometimes a bearable person to be even with 10,000 miles distance
of, which is about how far you seem to me tonight. shall we go to a
restaurant? my favorite one? it’s just a walk across the park which
begins across the street, the leaves are yellowing here, falling and
carpeting the ground, i think you will find the walk very enjoyable, and
the meal even more so? where are you?

k.

Where are your letters?

Thu, 28 Oct 2004 06:57:52 +0200

dear zh, either you are not writing me or the mails are not getting
through, both equal possibilities, though i prefer to believe in the
latter. what are you doing and if you are able, you better answer
quickly! or? hard to say. already i can hear the sounds of the
construction workers arriving, at it is only 6:30 in the morning. what
am i doing up so early. i went to bed early last night and today to the
passport office, though i don’t have to be there before 8:30, so i think
what is the problem is that i am losing my sense of time, and i can only
divide the time between when i am awake and when i am not awake. i think
you do not approve that i have six days off. not exactly. at least much
of one of these days will be occupied with revising and writing syllabi
for both the dunce college and the institute, and for the dunce college
they are asking that we also writing syllabi for the classes we taught
last spring, when i took over three classes from another teacher who had
quit after the first two or three weeks. i cannot imagine anything that
i would rather not do than write these syllabi. maybe i can find some on
the internet tonight. last night i checked twice for letters from you!

there is always the possibility of course that we are cut off, whatever
the reason. we should have a fallback position. shall i call you this
saturday night? at what time? what are your plans? you have a holiday
coming or not? november 8? you mentioned that it might not be celebrated
this year. i thought i saw yesterday on the news (as in russia they
flash texts across the bottom of the screen) something about your
president visiting Ukraine, and then i realized that i am beginning to
be able to read Polish. i’ve been reading too long the signs on the
wall. streets. shops. et al. i hope they do not make such hammering
noises today as i would very much enjoy reading. it is my job, after
all. and i don’t have a fallback position, something to do if the noise
is too loud to read. i have nowhere to go, no library at which i may
read, and the weather is turning to dark skies and cold, yesterday i
could see my breath. i am still not wearing sweaters yet. or my sweater,
the sweater, the beautiful blue sweater.

i’ll make a deal with you: if you write me i’ll write you. today you
will notice still no sentences from o.m. i am still too tired. even to
care to look. i am too tired today. i will be tired today. i am already
tired. i am getting more tired writing i am tired. i will write you
again when i am not so tired, today.

hoping you are okay (at the very least)

k.

Word for word

Thu, 28 Oct 2004 12:22:30 +0200

dear zhen, i think blackmail is when somebody has what is called
damaging evidence which can be used against you, for example, you are
married and have a second or third lover, and someone has proof and
blackmails you so that you have to pay for the proof. i know this is a
difficult to understand concept since in russia as you say everyone has
second or third lover and the wife or husband usually knows (especially
you said the russian woman always has one or two lovers in addition to
the husband) so maybe blackmail does not work in russia. mostly it is
used in politics. as i have neither second or third lover nor political
career, how can i blackmail you? perhaps you mean, bribe you? a bribe is
i give you something and you give me something, and we have a saying,
i’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine, so that is why i ask for
your letters, since i am not writing to myself, and when i write to you,
it is very nice to know what you are thinking that day. if i wanted to
write to myself, i would write a poem, though oddly, poetry is hardly
about writing to oneself, it is more like writing to the art of poetry.
speaking of poetry, still no sentence from me of o.m.’s as i have just
returned from passport office, it took two hours.

but now i have all the paperwork completed and my work-residency card
which is good until september 30 2005 will arrive in 3 weeks. the
passport officer continues to be very friendly to me, and always speaks
english (she told me before she had taken her degree in english) and
before me in the queue i heard her through the door giving an italian
man who spoke pretty good polish a hard time (she also gave me a hard
time last year). now, for some reason, she is very friendly, though i do
not know if this friendliness will be useful if i take you to the
passport office for residency in poland unless you need a work-permit.
we shall see. there is another rather nice passport officer, a young
man, who also speaks english. i am trying to say that it is not so
intimidating a procedure as in russia. if after my blackmail you are
still interested in my procedures. i’ll look for a letter from you
tonight, even if only a few words, and write to you then. you said
nothing about saturday night, am i to assume you do not wish me to call?

the noise here is tremendous, in the hotel, they are apparently putting
in new cabinets upstairs. my kitchen could use some. i wouldn’t mind the
noise so much if i was going to get the benefit of cabinets for dishes
and food that close (my cabinet doors currently do not close). i am
going to read this afternoon. i am glad tanya is not seriously
depressed. i think i would be seriously depressed if all i was doing was
playing cards and watching baseball on tv. i think i would be seriously
depressed if i was in the u.s., period. here at least there are
interesting buildings, and the old ladies are fun to listen to on the
bus, and even the passport officers smile…

(missing you, and really, glad to hear you are okay, at this distance,
it’s easy to imagine that something happened to you when i don’t hear
from you for a day, an accident or something, which it is always bad
luck to mention, you do look both ways before crossing the street don’t
you? by your own words, you are, my dear, rather absent-minded, and only
a little less than i am.

k.

egg bread milk cheese

Thu, 28 Oct 2004 12:41:44 +0200

dear zh, if you are not totally furious at me could you send me in a doc
file attachment the following words in cyrillic and if you do it will
save me an hour of typing them into my manuscript

egg
bread
milk
cheese

thanks! if you can and if you will
i will send you by mail the bill …

k.

От: <km@hypobololemaioi.com>

Кому: <zhen_l@rambler.ru>; <evguenya_lukyanova@yahoo.com>; <lev@tpu.ru>

Тема: From Poland

Дата: 29 октября 2004 г. 12:27

dear zh, good morning, and it is a good morning, for me, after a good

night’s sleep, though not necessarily a long night, went to bed at 1:00

in the morning, and my alarm went off at 6:00 and soon after that the

sound of the workers in the flat above returned, though they are more

finishing sounds now, screwdrivers and tap tap tap of the hammer,

putting cabinets and drawers in place, not the loud noise of the taking

apart with which the week began. who knows, perhaps they will move on to

the next flat after this one, and the morning concert will resume from

the beginning.

i watched a very good Polish film late last night, unable to read any

more than 100 pages from a novel i have to teach for my american

literature survey class, a novel by Nabokov, Lolita, do you know this

novel or have you read Nabokov in Russian? i read Lolita for a

literature class in my junior year of college, and since then, i haven’t

had much interest in Nabokov, something about his facility and the fact

that he was a well-paid professor most of his life in the U.S. and

before that, Europe and of course before that, Russia, though he is less

interesting as someone of Slavic birth and first language to me than

Joseph Conrad, who comes from more or less the same social class, only

about a generation earlier.

The movie was about (about!) that hardly gives a sense of the quality of

the film, it’s photography, set in rural farm, in Poland, so much of

Poland is rural farm, and two young boys, brothers, decide to escape to

the West, they dream of leaving their farm lives, though their mother

and father are sympathetic figures also, but everyone is being ground

down into the earth, it is perhaps early 80s period in Poland, i don’t

think earlier than 1979, which is apparently a key date in Poland

communist-dictatorship history, though there was martial law period in

early 80s, anyway, they escape by riding underneath a truck, and come to

denmark, and they are trying to sleep in a train station when the police

catch them, and say something to them in Danish (the film up to this

point all in Polish) and the older boys says, in English, “From Poland,”

and this moment of the entering of English, after watching the film for

90 minutes, gave me more psychological insight into how English sounds

to the ears of the rest of the world, i can’t tell you, but certainly

it’s involved in the hatred of English, as you remind me from time to

time, how much you hate English, and you will notice that i do not scold

you for this. there are such things as productive hatreds. i don’t think

that what i felt at this moment in last night’s film was exactly hatred,

more like sorrow, if sorrow can ever be caused by a scene in a film or a

passage in a book, sorrow is more like a long spell of cold weather

setting in, but the material-economic weight of the words, “From

Poland,” in some ways the mood reminded me of the German-Russian film we

saw in Palangas, the one you could not watch to the end, as you do not

care for films that end with a death.

But i woke up this morning with the very strong feeling that i cannot go

back to English-speaking environment, where English is the only language

spoken, it is too ignorant of its privileges, and so strangely i wake up

even on a morning when i should be angry at the continuing noises

upstairs and instead i am more committed to the course of action i

decided upon when i returned to Russia for the second time, the year

that brought me to Tomsk. one makes a decision, and that decision has to

be lived, to discover the necessity for it, and i believed in the

necessity of the decision to leave the second time, even though i didn’t

want to, i didn’t want to but had to, needed to, there was no staying

there, in that language, unthreatened by any other unfamiliar sounds,

and i acted on my belief, and as difficult as the circumstances are, in

the perspective of spans of years, whether the span is measured by 10 or

20 or 30 years, and when i return to manuscripts that are between five

to ten years old, i can see the time in them, and the successes, for the

writing, of not surrendering to the style of the day, which passes so

quickly, and i am returned then also to confidence in my beliefs, and

the actions i take and have taken based on those beliefs. one such

belief was that if i stayed in the u.s. my writing would reproduce

itself, how can it not, surrounded by such stimuli, and resources, but

it would not fundamentally change, and it was the first year in Chita,

and the book i wrote that year, actually my last book, though i’ve

written a series of scattered poems here and there, but i could sense

the influence and effect of the “foreign sky” on the writing, and i

cannot give up this foreign sky, wherever it is, now or again in some

future present.

So i wake up with resolutions and re-commitments to my self-awareness as

a poet, this morning, and i cannot say that it was only the film,

perhaps it was the sound of the Polish in the earphones (i watch tv with

earphones to listen to the language) and the sudden shock of the

English, “From Poland,” that broke like a wave over my head. did this

make me sleep more soundly? for that is why i wake up this morning full

of energy, the achievement of the sound night’s sleep, contrasted with

the unhappiness of the night when we wake up every hour, wondering what

hour it is, and how soon we have to rise to our tasks. i do hope that

your job lightens a little soon, and i wonder if there is any way for

you to share the work, and whether you agree to too much, for you are

rather agreeable, do you know?

perhaps you have told me too many times this or that statement of your

feelings to the place where i can take advantage of them by being, in

your words, cruel, to you, though i think you are joking, either that,

or you do not know what cruelty is, and from what i know of it, the more

jokes, the better, maybe the ward off the real creature, which all of us

carry inside us, and which we practice on ourselves as much as on

others.

very simply, i look forward to hearing from you every day, i need to

hear from you every day, and though it is difficult to imagine anything

bad happening to you, as your life is very protected and secure (i am

talking only about the short distance to the job and the building where

you live), still, i do worry about you, and it is a great help to me to

have a few words from you to write to when i write, since i do not

always like writing to myself. it is not the best comparison, but i

remember your writing from the “ielts” meetings, and i miss this writing

sometimes. i think if you did not have to go to the job every day that

you would enjoy writing to me more. you can see when i am too tired how

my ability to write you is also affected.

writing is something else, isn’t it? now, again, about saturday,

tomorrow, we agreed, didn’t we, that after midnight was the best time

for the best connection, so i shall call you tomorrow a few minutes

after midnight, on your home phone, so please if you are going to be

visiting, please let me know, since i do not wish to wake your mother or

father. what will you do for the november 7-8 holiday, any special

plans?

k.

Day’s news

Fri, 29 Oct 2004 14:32:55 +0200

dear zh, i have the exciting news that one of my lightbulbs recently
purchased burnt out today, and dinner is early, warming on the stove
right now, i seem to be losing track of time, i finished the nabokov
novel, and realize i could read a facile classic a day if i had the
time, now i have a couple of weeks to think of brilliant things to say
about a book in which i am not the least interested, and also, wouldn’t
you know, my washing machine today is not working, so it is taking
forever to do a single load of laundry, perhaps they will be ready to
hang on the line on the porch by night fall.

it is now 16:30 and i am going to eat supper, but i wanted to write to
you a short note to say goodnight and with a kiss, if you choose to
accept such a short letter as a kiss, otherwise, were the letter longer,
i would have to write to you about nabokov, and i don’t have much to
say, except tonally i see some resemblances to bulgakov, maybe because
their last names end on the letter “v”.

Evgeni Lukyanov. no. i am glad you are a Lukyanova, very glad. what is
the weather like in your part of the world? today for most of the day i
read in sunlight. very nice feeling. it has put me in rather a good
mood. maybe i will write you a long letter in the morning (my best
writing time).

kisses

k.

От: <km@hypobololemaioi.com>

Кому: Lukyanova <lev@tpu.ru>

Тема: Cauchemar

Дата: 29 октября 2004 г. 21:24

No, my dear, i did not receive the text of the publications. i rec’d

something else, egg bread milk cheese. thank you. i am preparing a

manuscript, and these words, in russian, are part of it. i could have

done it of course, and i feel badly that you are so busy and i am asking

you for little favors also, hint: listen to prisner, the piano is very

restful. i am very close to buying a small stereo so that i can listen

to music. right now, i have only the radio, and it is only listenable in

the late night. i hope you have a good night’s sleep, and if you are

old, i don’t know what that makes me, older? you are not so old, but

old enough, we say, to know better, and that means don’t let people take

advantage of your abilities. easier said than done, i know. today was a

reading day, and though i was reading for teaching, it was still

reading, and especially after a good deep sleep, it has been a very good

day. isn’t it important to mention the good days too? (miss you)

k.

Кому: <zhen_l@rambler.ru>; <lev@tpu.ru>; <evguenya_lukyanova@yahoo.com>

Тема: Fantasy (Jobs)

Дата: 30 октября 2004 г. 3:20

dear zh, i’m writing you at 21:00 my time so that you receive this

letter first thing in the morning. Today or yesterday (I received the

email today) there was a posting about a new campus in Canada needing to

hire 40 faculty members. It is a graduate program, from the look of it,

and though priority will be given to Canadian citizens, there is nothing

about “internationals” ‘need not apply.’ There is a section that is

being recruited, for Creative Disciplines, or whatever, which from the

look of it, allows someone like me to apply, as a poet. That is very

important in and of itself, to be able to apply to a job as a poet and

not as a language teacher. But what is especially important is that

there are positions in two areas, Geochemistry and Paleocology, which

appear to come close to your qualifications.

Don’t argue with me!

The initial deadline for the submission of a letter of interest is

November 1, which means you have all Saturday night and Sunday to work

on your letter, and of course, you have not translated your CV with the

many publications that your colleagues always include in every grant

request. Most important is, I think, your participation in the Alaska

Environmental Conference, and if you still have the contact information,

you might ask one of the facilitators of that conference for a letter of

recommendation, I remember your saying about how comments of yours were

included in the conference summary – who gave the summary? But that

isn’t a question you need to answer by Monday. Are you sure you didn’t

submit a CV for the Alaska Conference? Do you have anything in English?

And, now, why, do I suggest this?

Because I do not think you are or can be by your nature and by

experience confident in our “Poland plan” and here is an example of the

kind of opportunity that will present itself from time to time in the

future. The important thing is not to act on the basis of an expectation

that anything will come of it, but after a series of such actions, over

time, something usually materializes, something usually happens.

The url address for the job website is

http://www.okanagan.ubc.ca/faculty_staff/prospective/index.html

What is so crucial, for this or any other job like it, for you, is that

you emphasize your Soviet-period experience in the Arctic and in

Kazakhstan, the extent of your fieldwork, unheard of in Canada and the

U.S. and genuinely of interest, because that is what they need to do,

work in the field, and above all, think differently, which this program

looks like it is interested in, nobody in the West goes out in the

field, into the wilderness, the way it is common in Russia for

scientists, and this is a real strength for you, not to mention your

bilingualism, and not to mention that Okanagan looks like it is about an

hour’s flight north of Vancouver, so between Alaska and Vancouver, not

so very far from Siberia.

Don’t argue with me, dear. Let’s talk about it tomorrow night. Dont’

forget to take a look at the two attachments with this letter.

Kisses.

k.

Re: Choices

Sat, 30 Oct 2004 09:24:46 +0200

Dear Zhenya, good morning, and please be patient with me for a moment.
First, about residency, it is the same as my working in Poland, first I
applied for the job, and was offered the job, next I had to do visa and
work-residency applications. So, and I admit it is hard to imagine, even
for myself, and I would have to do the same visa and work-residency
process, I am not a citizen of Canada and it is a distinctly different
country than U.S., both in it’s social system and dual-language culture
(French and English), so this passage you quote does not exclude neither
your nor me. The all-important thing is to send a letter of interest
covering the following points:

CV:

1. Personal information
2. Education
3. Teaching and translation (professional experience)
4. Present or prior grants (this would include any conference trip, the
conference to Alaska, for example, which paid you for your
participation, and there was also a conference in Finland?)
5. Publications (don’t just give a list, mention four or five of your
publications, especially collaborations and anything, anything to do
with radioactivity research (you remember my telling you that the one
paper your were translating and for which you were listed as a co-author
was brilliant practical research science – the number of the controls –
which as you also remember we discussed is not required in Western
science, which is both far more abstract and result-sensational, and you
talked about how surprised you were when you met a young Western
scientist and he described his doctorate research).

Separate from CV:

6. Proposed program of research (I know this is the most difficult for
you, given the limitations of your present circumstances, but couldn’t
you write about the kind of science you were doing before the Soviet
Union collapsed, the field work, which was really mapping, wasn’t it, of
mineral resources? To be able to write something to the effect that you
would like to participate on such teams again, whether they were in the
field or not, most importantly, not to write about yourself as an
“independent researcher” but someone who is trained to work
collaboratively and collectively. It doesn’t sound special to you, but
it is special in the West, and it is a learned skill, and one for which
you have much experience. Basically, what would you like to do in the
best of all possible worlds with the scientific training that you have?

7. Statement of undergraduate and graduate teaching areas(simply what
you are teaching now, with perhaps some enhancement – do you read
doctoral research? do you participate on committees for these
candidates?

8. Statement of teaching philosophy

9. Three references

Dear, it is important not to be defeatist, to give up before you have
even been asked to give up, and I am not pretending that this is
anything but a long shot, for either of us (it is a great flaw in my
professional profile that for all the poetry I have written, I have not
published a book, they are not so very hard to publish, and it looks
bad, and it is very difficult to explain in an letter of interest that
one (meaning me) is – yes, that sounds like a good way to begin – Me is
this: etc. – cantankerous – though I’m not sure that’s a good spelling –
how about ideosyncratic? again, I’m not sure of the spelling – here’s a
word I do know: eccentric). In no way when I write such places do I
appear as a traditional or even trustworthy candidate, rather as someone
who has spent most of their creative life outside an institution, which
always, to institutions, represents irresponsibility, and more
importantly, unaccountability, no one can say for certain what you were
doing, and that is a great threat to the institutional frame of mind.
Even at the unconscious level.

For you, my dear, and for the same reason your director visits with you,
you are a tremendous asset to the faculty there, as there is no one whom
you do not help, you have the magic of the second language, and as you
know your English is better than even those who direct the English
programs in Bldg. 7, that is, you present the paradox of a bilingual
teacher who still remains in the most difficult of circumstances, why? I
do not think you are superior to certain loyalties difficult to name,
not only your mother and father, but to the place itself, the very
building you work in 6 and sometimes 7 days a week is the same building
you were born in and spent your childhood until the great move 300
meters distant.

This would be a novel itself, in Russia: the migration from one street
to the a street 300 meters away, well, maybe it is 500 meters. I do not
think that you live even a kilometer away from the university. No one
would believe this rootedness in the world I come from. In science, it
is very bad, it is knowledge without controls, which produces only the
appearance of knowledge, completely technological, without depth or
substance, but I think, at a glance, such programs as this small
university in northern Canada represents at least the recognition of a
return to more inclusive frameworks for education and research.

Dear Zhenya, don’t put yourself behind the bars of the your present
limitations, the ones enforced by the world around you, remember all our
conversations about the lack of equipment at TPU, that science has
literally been removed from such places by the economics and corruption
of the system, but stand outside of the bars for a moment: what would
you like to do as a teacher? What kind of people, scientists, would you
like to work with on common projects? What kind of projects? Try to
imagine the most interesting and stimulating life and write in this
direction about what you want to do, not what you are forced to do.

If there is any genius in the world I come from, it has to do with this
ability to imagine something else, even if it is only a better rat trap.

So, I will be very disappointed if you refuse to do this, though I
almost expect that you will refuse to do this, and disappointed for you.
The tone of your morning letter, so much an echo of your writing from
the IELTS meetings, gives the smoke of the hearth, the fireplace, and
I’m thinking about your dacha, and the warm fires you would build there,
and this is inside you also, and you might be surprised at the surprise
of a department somewhere looking for innovatory approaches and people
to be innovative and adaptable, to get a letter from an Earth Science
teacher and translator in Russia who writes in remarkable English, and
their surprise could expand into a job offer once they spoke with you by
phone, which is the custom, at some stage of getting to know the
candidate, and learned just how fluent in English you are.

Don’t second-rate yourself, which is the same as berating yourself. The
institutional confinement of TPU (which I repeat, is economic above all
else) has forced you into circumstances which, as you mentioned in our
first meetings, are oppressive.

Olga is going to Canada, why can’t you? Your English is twice as good as
hers. I saw that in our first meeting. You are a very impressive person,
why? Because you do not impose yourself. But you are always watching and
listening, and interpreting (with of course a very ironic smile).

Now, please, don’t smile away my fantasies of our being able to work
together, teach together, and be together, somewhere in the “West”.

Isn’t it strange, geologically there is probably not much difference
between this region of Canada and Siberia, but economically, and in the
stability of its institutions, they are as different as day and night.

I hope that you are able to write back to me as soon as you read this
letter and disagree with it. I always expect you to disagree. This does
not make you disagreeable to me. I wonder why.

k.

Map of British Columbia

Sat, 30 Oct 2004 09:44:07 +0200

dear zh, the city, Kelowna, where the new campus is – it’s to the east
rather than north, my mistake. I thought you might like to see a map of
the region. I have spent a lot of time looking at the map of the former
USSR in your office, which spans Vladivostok to Lodz, I’ve always
enjoyed being able to see where I work in Poland on the map in Russian
in your faculty office in Tomsk. It reminds me of the interrelationship
of world, which we should always try to remember, especially when we
feel the most isolated.

Missing you.

k.

p.s. a “long shot” in horse races is almost like a bluff in cards. A
long shot is the horse that is not expected to win the race. We use it
to refer to almost an unlikelihood, i.e., something not expected to
happen.

Pride

Sat, 30 Oct 2004 14:43:09 +0200

dear zh, no letter from you and it is getting to be around 19:30 your
time, are you home from classes? have i intimidated you from writing me?
remember i am going to call you tonight at your midnight, in a few
hours.

i just did something very difficult for me, writing someone i’ve never
met, though more than most i believe this person is familiar with my
wriitng, and i asked if i could mention him as someone who knows my
writing and it’s value, regarding the job in Canada.

after sending this, i understood the word i was looking for earlier, and
it is Pride. how much i depend on not needing to ask anyone for
anything, and now that i have asked for someone to speak for my work, i
am very upset, and angry, with myself.

on the worst days i see no way out, since one always has to ask someone
for something, and if i do not make an effort once in a while, even if
only once a year, then nothing will happen. is it so much to ask an
established writer to speak favorably of your work if someone asks?

for me, it is to ask everything. it is putting the writing to use
outside its domain, its sphere, of being, only, writing. but as i think
you can tell, i am being consumed here, doing work that i 25-year old
right out of college could do, and should do. there are so many reasons
for trying to change the circumstances of one’s life, and yet they
always seem to lead to dependencies, requests for assistance, of some
sort.

if it is difficult for me, how much harder it must be for you.

please believe me if i say that i understand this, and that i can even
understand, if only a little, the pressure that such letters as i have
written you last night and this morning put you under.

i look forward to hearing your voice in several hours. will you be
there, by the phone, in the office, or do you call it your library?

k.

Last day in October

Sun, 31 Oct 2004 08:10:02 +0100

dear zh, i am writing you in blue this morning, though you will hardly
know what that means, and it is no matter. when all is said and done, my
great accomplishment for the past few months is to provide myself with a
wide variety of “writing pads” in my computer, each one of which has a
different personality, and so the writing is different in each one,
perhaps. that is an unexplored area of my abilities, since the desire to
change the circumstances of one’s life is about abilities, the
perception of one’s abilities.

you were kind enough not to mention last night that i had forgotten
something in my recent letters to you about the school in Canada: you
have no particular interest or wish or will to continue in the work you
are doing, and where you are, it is difficult to prepare for doing any
other form of work, whatever that might be. haven’t we talked about that
before? i forget this, and it is a problem that i forget this, since, no
matter how sincere my expressions of understanding, it is simply
impossible for a foreigner, a westerner, to imagine the hardships, not
in a single family, nor even in a single place, but structurally,
through the entire system, which would engender the reproduction of the
profession itself, so that, literally, you never quite had the choice
other than to follow in your father’s footsteps, and to continue in that
direction, as it was the safest and most secure of choices, for the
survival of all three of you.

my entering into the equation, and especially the appearance of my
mobility, the ability to go from one place to the next, for the job,
doesn’t that threaten your security a little? do we ever talk about
that? is it important to talk about? one can be a bull in a china shop
without knowing it (one can disturb and even destroy without knowing
it). here is an important difference between us: for all of the
hardships i have lived, there was always the perception that it was my
choice, whether through trial and error, or simple failure, or even, as
of course in my own interest i am most interested in believing, the
determination to follow the demands and dictates of my art, no matter
what the cost, to myself or to others (this is the most noble of
interpretations, where the basest would be that i come from very humble
and even, despicable circumstances, and that basically i am a despicable
person who deserves every calamity – one cannot for oneself choose this
interpretation, though it is an interpretation readily available in the
divided world – one might almost say that it is the inevitable systemic
interpretation). more or less, however, whatever the circumstances, they
were always of my own making, i was responsible for whatever
difficulties i found myself in. this you might say is even a luxury for
that world, and anyone in that world, the western world.

i was in russian long enough and met especially enough youths, students,
to understand the structural, systemic limitations, the very limits to
life from within which you have carved a very strong and stable place,
so that there is a measure of predictability which makes it possible to
get up day after day, even if, as today, a sunday, you are getting up to
go to the job one more time during the week. as i will feel sharply
today and tomorrow, before i send the letter of interest to the job in
canada, my life is not predictable, and i cannot with any accuracy say
what i am expecting, or where it is that i think i am going. very
simply, it seems to be from one job to the next, each one getting a
little better. perhaps in the present case i acted against my better
judgement. certainly i have sacrificed some of my pride by writing to
someone, anyone, about my poetry. that is my one possession, and i guard
it carefully, keeping it, as the one element of my life of which i am
sure.

you say that i worry too much. maybe that is so. if the immediacy of the
reaction can ever be trusted, i saw at a glance in response to the
mention of this job something i had thought about vaguely in your
letters about tania in boston. your friend, a highly educated woman, a
doctor, finding herself in condition of dependency, aggravated by the
strange outside, the foreign language. wouldn’t it be similar for you in
Poland? wouldn’t you feel the double strangeness, one stage more intense
than i do, especially every time you were obliged to show your passport,
as long as that passport is from the distrusted country, even, as they
case may be, the looked-down upon national identity? i mean, how unhappy
you would be every time, at every official crossroad, you had to show
your russian passport, as much as in the day to day you could use your
English, still, even that, your English, is a foreign language – that is
what i mean about the double strangeness.

so at a glance, whether it is canada or elsewhere, my glimpse was that
if you were to experience anything but gloominess and pessimism in my
company, and you know very well that i am predisposed to this anyway,
especially on mornings such as this one, rain, rain, dark sky and
continuing wet rain, that this is entirely possible here, in Poland, and
it might be unbearable for you. so i saw the region of the world, its
resemblance to Siberia, even the possibility of your continuing in your
current work identity there (and no, really, i don’t think it’s an
impossible idea – you have no idea how many colleagues from foreign
countries work in universities in the u.s. and i would imagine, in
canada also, they are much more open about hiring faculty from the
foreign country, and you can’t go by the severe insulation which is the
norm in russia, one which i think goes back into the 19th century), but
i cannot presume to be able to give you any directions in this regard.

take, for example, the trip to alaska, your participation in that
conference. this was something you arranged long before you met me, so
it is a sign of your restlessness, or curiosity, your looking
‘westwards.’ you are right, i think, when you say, as last night, that
all places are more or less the same, once you substract the minor
detail of the language difference, and that by suggestion i shouldn’t
worry about your adaptability to any circumstance or situation, no
matter how strange, but the resemblance of the place, this place in
canada, to siberia, i thought, at a glance, how happy you would be
there, and how able to redirect yourself in whatever direction you would
wish to develop, whatever it is that you might wish to do, on which
subject i should have as little influence as possible. what seems
important to me is to give you the choice, to at least make a position
for myself where i can offer this choice to you, whether or not you want
it or choose to accept it. here, that choice does not appear to me to be
much more that a slight change in the weather.

now you see how i worry, as i am a little better able to express myself
than over the bad phone line connection. you are (were, last night)
rather calm. i am not. neither today, nor generally, here, or anywhere.
but, as i mentioned, i am writing you in blue this morning, and as
nicely as the letters appear on the screen, they are still, i think, a
little colored like the sky which is absent this morning, very quiet,
sunday morning, on a holiday, almost no traffic on the street outside.

you write very beautifully at 5:00 in the morning. i enjoy hearing about
every detail of the sky and the coming cold, the deep white snows, the
ice on the trees, the coats of ice on the streets, the daily struggle
for heat in the high-ceilinged buildings, and the smells and tastes of
warm meals in the evening waiting for you when you arrive home in the
deep dark of early evening.

k.


After reading your letter

Sun, 31 Oct 2004 08:26:19 +0100

dear zh, i have just read your letter written after talking last night
and that is the one thing i forgot to mention in my this morning’s
letter so very close in mood to your mood last night, so that we can at
least feel this close to one another, no matter the real distance.

the dacha, you mentioned the dacha, as the one place of shelter, really,
of happiness, and if i may concern myself with your happiness, that is
what is saw (see) in the canada job, the promise of the forest, even in
u.s., though there are many forests, for the most part they are either
heavily crowded official parks or private property (remember how i was
always asking, can we walk here? who does this belong to?) and i think
from what i saw of your life in siberia, that you need many miles of
space around you, especially heavily-wooded space.

this is an aspect of the environment on our minds and bodies, our
beings, easy to overlook, easy to refuse to take seriously. actually,
the thought of the quarter of a million people so easily and
administratively liquidated here in Lodz only 50 years ago affects me
almost every day, it is like a permanent weight, the pressure for which
is nowhere to be seen, but no less heavy for all that.

of course, it is also oppressive, for me to say that i worry for your
happiness, even, to use a less abstract word, your ability to breathe
deeply. perhaps it is not a worry of mine unmotived by the fact that i
am the one proposing the change in your place, your surroundings, your
environment, your life-world (the latter term does not work in english,
though i think it occurs in russian, or german). whatever it is that a
place is, it may be more important and influential on us than the
physical presence of another human being.

thank you again for your letter, and written so late at night.

k.

Dark and darker

Sun, 31 Oct 2004 17:30:12 +0100

dear zh, it’s very dark here and not even 18:00 so the new time, the new
day, begins, the winter day, and long winter nights. i have been working
all day on you know what, and for what ends, i know not what. how was
you day? did you meet with your students? tonight there is a very good
movie on, very old, with actors and actresses from the 60s, Jane Fonda
and Donald Sutherland (who, you would be surprised, plays Russians in
several films, maybe it’s his accent, i don’t know). you would like this
movie, as it is something of a detective thriller. and it does not end
tragically. i remember seeing it once about 10 years ago, but it is
sometimes even mentioned in serious film criticism. i am finding that i
am utterly incapable or talking about my work in any objective fashion,
and as i have no real interest in teaching beyond trying to survive, i
cannot write with much enthusiasm about teaching. but i won’t go on
about this. i wanted to write you a few words before your bed time as i
think you have a rather demanding day on mondays, or is it me that has
the demanding day on mondays? tomorrow, thank god, no demanding day, for
me. and you? you, dear, your words written last night are still in and
around me, so that i can almost hear your voice, which is a comforting
voice, for all your irony and sarcasm, still, there is a light or rhythm
of genuine feeling and capacity to feel that i feel myself very
fortunate to be the addresses of. the one that is addressed, your
addressee, when you write me such letters. it is somehow understandable,
comprehensible, that our conversation ended on, “so”. And so. What next?


i think may i will try to finish my unexpected paperwork tonight so that
i can have tomorrow to prepare a manuscript which should go in the mail
this week. in other words, i am beginning to rush myself. in my own
fashion, which isn’t very rushed. rather, i have been somewhat
negligent, of my own future especially. strange, to worry about one’s
future when one is almost 50 years old. somewhere or other, i lost 20
years. for some of them, i was writing poetry. what a stupid thing to
do. well, that’s what i did, and i want to write some more, sometime, do
you mind?

missing you.

k.

All saints day

Mon, 1 Nov 2004 09:35:58 +0100

dear zh, well, i have slept well, and do you know my secret? i slept in
my bed in very quiet bedroom, rather than on sofa in my office. this was
a very nice, almost strange feeling, to crawl under covers and sleep in
a bed. i had almost forgotten what it was like. i need to start using
the other rooms in my flat more. maybe i will use the third room only
for reading. it is very quiet this morning, a little after 8:00 (though
it is really 9:00, isn’t it, or is it 7:00, for, as you see, the time
changed here, as i think it changed everywhere in the world, wonderful,
don’t you think, that there can be such global agreement on when to wake
the workers up, and make them go to work. i should be at work today, and
something feels wrong since i am not. i trust, however, that you are at
work, so at least one of us is following orders. and now, coffee. my
coffee is sitting to the right of me, on top of a small cutting board
which a local cheese company has been giving away as part of the
promocja for selling their camambert cheese. now i have two of them. as
i rather like the cheese, i think i will keep buying them, until i have
enough small cutting boards (you can fit two cups of coffee on them) to
build a bookcase with. i have recently ordered two books by mail, though
now i am worried they will never get here. my paperwork for the job is
ready, though i have to write a kind of cover letter, even if it is only
for the email, and just as helpful, there is not the name of anyone
given to write to, just an office, and for that office, an email
address, so you can see, it is rather abstract, in the best of
institutional customs. in a way, this has been a good exercise for me,
as i am reminded, rather forcefully, of the importance of what is called
“activity” though how one is supposed to be active on a pauper’s salary
(and my salary is high in Poland compared to Russia!) and the real
kicker, as we say, the grants that one has received, when i am teaching
in a world without grants, in fact, one where the teachers pay their
way. but as i was saying i am reminded how any activity is important, so
once again i will probably make myself apply for the slovakia
conference, since i was invited to. if you want to have a good job, you
need to do these things (i am using the generic “you” which we use in
English). that is, i am saying “you” and meaning “me”. also, i have
decided to send out a manuscript each month, and maybe even some
individual sets of poems, though i have little sense of the context, the
specific publication, which, at least symbolically, is very important.
rereading the manuscript i am going to send out this week, i can see
immediately, one, just how demanding the writing is, even for poets and
poetry, it is extremely demanding, both historical-political and
aesthetic, and two, just what a romance i had with russia that first
year, in chita. the two regions, chita and tomsk, were very different in
my experience. tomsk was full of paranoid people and bad students (i am
talking about until the time when we met and began meeting, which wasn’t
until march). maybe it was just colder there. also, the first year in
chita was my first year “abroad”, and the experience, perceptually, was
intense. then one learns to adjust to strangeness. i am passing well
adjusted now, here, in Poland, and what was i writing that i was
reminded of? i can’t remember. last night my british colleague stopped
by as he was visiting other friends in the building, and asked if i
wanted to be interviewed by someone in the film school here in lodz, a
very prestigious school, and i said no, as i don’t feel at all
photogenic lately, and actually somewhat decaying, or falling apart. the
application paperwork reminded me of that too, that i am aging, as you
never tire of reminding me, for the benefit of the comparison i think,
the older i get the younger you feel, in comparison. i am nearing 50 and
have never had a permanent job. that must make me feel like a poet.
actually, i conform to the profile of the irresponsible poet rather
well, except that it seems they are going out of style, and that is a
comfort, when i do return to my work, my own writing, always there is
this question, did i take shortcuts? did i write badly? and i do not
think so. poetry ages, like cheese. i bought an anthology of french
poetry published in 1971, and the selection of poems was not the
selection that would be made 20 years later. there are many examples of
this. i don’t think i have written badly or cheaply, and i believe that
my poetry has a solid durability, and tries many different ways of
writing, and is itself, while using other poetries, it does not imitate
in the cheap way, but in deeper way of using other poetries to find its
own way. so, no matter what happens, i have this sense of having
accomplished something, having contributed something, to the art of
poetry, and that is a good feeling to wake up with on all saints day.

k.

Re: Toni Negri

Mon, 1 Nov 2004 10:14:56 +0100

dear zh, i didn’t so much forget to write you about toni negri as it
simply didn’t appear as urgent, but in the world of writing and
literature, there is some logic for one writer, myself, to express
concern about the son of another writer, and at the very least to
express (and it depends on how you consider my opinion) my opinion that
toni negri is a very important writer, political philosopher, though i
wrote very strongly once against one of his most popular books, still,
if you were interested, just do a search on the internet for reviews and
notices and polemics about his work and writing. that should be enough
to suggest that you have an unusual guest in your city, perhaps unusual
is not the right word, at least you have the son of a prominent writer
and philosopher in your city, and according to the traditional customs,
shouldn’t he, marco, be looked after somewhat? i do not assume to have
similar perceptions as someone from europe, from italy, but russia
(siberia) is a strange place, you know this, you always talk about how
strange you are, that you both belong and do not belong there, so try to
imagine how it is for the foreigner. yes, he made a mistake by coming to
the country first and then trying to find work, and that is a mistake i
cannot imagine myself making, but did larissa encourage him to come to
attend the conference without the proper paperwork? i think this is a
very important moral question. i remember how many phone calls there
were from her to you about my participation. now, if she did encourage
him to come without the proper visa, then she is a little responsible,
do you think? this is the problem of working with individuals and not
departments, like the international department. whatever the case, i
think you should call him and invite him to afternoon coffee or to the
“Kyet” cafe, as he would enjoy speaking to someone, and you are very
literate, cultured person (you are laughing at me as i write this) as i
know you are not the only cultured person in tomsk, but you speak
excellent english, which is unusual, and which i am sure marco would be
very grateful for. you may tell him you are the good friend of an
american poet who has a very high opinion of his father’s contribution
to political philosophy. please, give him a call, i do not think you
will regret it, only if you do meet with him, be careful about
expressing some of your more misanthropic (anti-human) ideas (which i
always hear as expressions of deep sarcasm on your part, but they might
be misunderstood by a european). once again, i do not like suggesting
anything to you, and i would not suggest contacting marco, visiting with
him, finding out just how difficult his situation is, but it is morally
questionable on my part to pretend ignorance, though i only just learned
he was toni negri’s son on Saturday.

k.

Once more about Marco

Mon, 1 Nov 2004 12:59:11 +0100

dear zh,

if you do meet with Marco Negri, and i hope you do, if only to extend an
act of kindness on my behalf, you might mention the following to ask him
if he knows, i.e., is familiar with, these Italians cultural writers:

Marco d’Eramo (I am teaching here his “The Pig and the Skyscraper”
published by Verso in England in 2003 and translated from the Italian
into English, and I like this book quite a lot)

The Multitudes Mailing List in France, and especially,
Generation-online.org (I once wrote to this list for about a year, and
there was a young pair of writers, Erik Empson from England and Arianna
Bove from Italy, and I was quite impressed with their spirit).

I don’t have much more to add, as I am kind of out of touch with things
globally-politically, but, once again, I wish to emphasize, his father
is a very important political philsopher, and if you recall the line in
Russian that I quoted at the conference in Tomsk (and my pronunciation
was not all that bad?) you may also recall that I said that now more
than ever, political philosophy needs to be defended.

I don’t know if defending political philosophy extends to expressing
concern about a political philosopher’s son, but if you can do anything
to help him out, in any way, it would constitute one of those good and
virtuous actions that add up most of the time to nothing, but which are
important nonetheless.

k.

Yellow, purple and orange

Mon, 1 Nov 2004 17:24:32 +0100

dear zh, i thought i’d write you before you go to bed getting near 22:30
in your far part of the world. i had to overcome a moment’s depression
this afternoon when i looked closer at the press i thought i’d send a
manuscript to and learned that the manuscript can only be between 50-70
pages long, and mine is 160! that was merely amusing. but i went to
another manuscript that i wrote in the very bad period of my life when i
had to sell all my books for food and some poems i wrote then and though
they are very beautiful, about the relationship between poetry and
painting, and i had a wonderful book about pavel filonov i was reading
then, the memory of that time overcame me and i had to go to the kitchen
and start cooking dinner so tonight i am going to have roast turkey with
corn, carrots and beets (separate, not mixed together), even the colors
will cheer me up, as will hearing from you, if, as i hope, there will be
a letter from you waiting for me when i check my email upon sending this
one.

your pension is very important. i, for example, do not have 100 dollars
a month to look forward, and i retire sooner than you, in 15 years. and
i have nothing, having only earned about 200,000 dollars my entire
working life. this is nothing in the u.s., not even enough to get a
social security check to buy more than a little food. so i will have to
work until i die. we still have choices, there are other alternatives, i
mean to uprooting you, we should talk about them. i do worry about
uprooting you to bring you here, to Poland, and yet i am just as
determined not to return to the West for a temporary job or worse, a job
teaching rhetoric and composition, i really think that would kill my
spirit. so the letter i will send tonight, though the effort is
premature, is a step in the right direction, one that will bear fruit in
a few years, if i am able to publish, and attend conferences like the
one in slovakia, and develop relationships, even the professor i met in
the conference here, the german professor, is a valuable friend of our
department, and many people have been able to go to berlin to study on a
stipend which a program he is involved with supports. i need to do
things like this, perhaps even before we ‘set up house.’ (i am smiling a
little as i understand that for you ‘setting up house’ means only 20
kilometer walks daily, a big dog, and waiting for me to serve you
dinner, with constant comments on the progress of the dinner and cooking
recommendations from you, sitting at the table, smiling, in front of
plates and saucers, your knife and fork in hand).

seriously, though, i don’t want to endanger your security, and as today
when the cloud of the past passes over, i remember in just what danger i
have lived in the past, and worry whether such terrible times can ever
return. so, now for corn and carrots and beets …

k.

Get up

Mon, 1 Nov 2004 23:57:09 +0100

dear zh, i am about ready to go to bed and you will be awake in a couple
of hours, so i thought you might enjoy a few morning words from me in
case you check your email. your many questions sounded, at the very
least, emphatic, and at worst, imperious. you must have been in a good
mood before you fell asleep. i did manage to send the “paperwork” and
that’s about all it is. but it is good practice. my statement on
teaching philosophy was very good, but i did not have much to say about
courses (areas) i could teach, and did not expand on work that i’ve been
doing here, because i am still doing it, and the courses are
embarrassingly basic because of the lack of materials, not even having a
permanent internet connections prevents me from building a website with
links etc. which would be a plus in applying for such jobs. so you see i
am not very hopeful, hardly at all. it reminds me of what a precarious
position i actually occupy, most of the times i probably deceive myself
that it is not so precarious. so i ordered some more books tonight with
a view towards this conference in slovakia, i think i pretty much have
the proposal now, but i want to start assembling materials to give
myself confidence that i can write a paper by march. they take a long
time! so that, and i think next year i will think about putting in an
application at this institute in berlin for a semester to work on a
manuscript, i need to try to link together different things i am reading
now, and there is this demand of the dunce college, tomorrow for
example.

i hope you have a pleasant day, and i’ll write you in the morning over
coffee.

and no, i never drink tea now, none at all. but lots of sparkling
mineral water.

(do you need kisses so early in the morning?)

k.

Positives

Tue, 2 Nov 2004 07:28:58 +0100

dear zhen, i am up myself, awake, with coffee, and without alarm, at
7:00, not a bad start for a morning when all i have to do this morning
(all!) is grade papers, and make sure that i have a lesson plan, by
11:00, then shower and shave and dress, take the 10-minute tram after a
12-minute walk to tram, teach for an hour and a half, then return home
to prepare for tomorrow’s classes. after that, meaning tomorrow, i will
then have a few more days to myself, and as this past weekend in
addition to the paperwork i managed to read two novels that i am
teaching for my classes, so that i am a little ahead of the game, just a
little. also, i decided to show movies for two of my classes next
monday, so that also gives me a bit of a break, very much needed, as i
will soon need to begin searching for more materials, it is a vicious
circle.

as for marco, i am only glad that i have never gone anywhere where
someone wished for me to leave. all the many sentimental and
stereotypical expressions of ‘russian’ hospitality i always thought
rather suspicious, especially in tomsk. maybe it was the controversy
that happened in bldg 7 at that time, maybe it was the constant
nervousness of the teachers, so different from my experience in tomsk,
where, as poor as everyone was, no one was frightened into silence the
way that it seemed in bldg 7, and the english teachers knew more and had
travelled more in chita than tomsk! something is wrong there, though it
is probably so much a combination of factors that it is difficult to
sort out. the students were the worst that i have ever taught. there was
one exception, and that was the linguistics (history of english) lecture
that i taught, with a very competent teacher. and in a very different
sense, it was sometimes a pleasure to work at the oil and gas dept.
since the faculty were responding to the pressure of having to learn
english.

i have another plan. if everything goes according to plan, cypress, and
after cypress, your return to tomsk, then, as you remember, i had
proposed going to tomsk for the summer then returning to poland with you
at the end of september. now i am thinking it would be better for me to
come to tomsk in june (first week of july if i go to the conference in
slovakia) and then for us to return to poland at the end of that month,
at the end of july. why? to begin the residency process as soon as
possible, and, if there is any problems, we will know about them in time
that you will not have given up your job at TPU. does this make any
sense? i am trying to imagine as many possible routes to the same
destination as possible. it is not enough for me simply to say that
there will be no problem. by then i will have initiated my own
work-residency paperwork, this time hopefully on the basis of a two-year
contract, and i will be completing this residency process then, and i
think you should be able to be included in this process, instead of
having to initiate your own process, as you won’t be here on the basis
of a job, but as spouse. that should make some difference. it should
make the process easier. but it would be better for us to be doing this
in the first weeks of august, rather than waiting for october, when my
residency card will have expired. does this make any sense? all i am
really saying is that we not think about spending the summer in tomsk,
but returning to lodz together in july.

yes, it seems like a long time away, but time also passes very quickly.
there is still the problem of the documents in the u.s. they had not
arrived when i called saturday. i will call again this weekend. it will
take only one week for them in the u.s., but then there is the problem
of having them sent here, since i have not received two letters sent to
me, whether to the wrong address or not i don’t know. the safer
alternative will be to have them sent to my university address, so that
i should have them by the end of november. should we wait on these
documents before making plans to go to cypress, or go to cypress
regardless, and in case of the best results, then we will have to start
thinking about the following summer, and our returning together to
Poland.

yes, it seems like a long process, but i wanted to write about this with
some determination this morning, after all the doubts expressed about
teaching future the past few days. i can say in all honesty it is better
here than either chita or tomsk, so that is positive enough.

so, positively, i wish to you a positive day …

k.

Amulet

Tue, 2 Nov 2004 07:43:01 +0100

dear zh, i thought you wouldn’t mind hearing a few more words from me
after previous letter, but i am having trouble sending from this address
so i changed the password to see if it works now. also, as you may
imagine, i am not thrilled about prospect of preparing for today’s
composition class. are you, yourself, in class, today? i forgot to
mention that i am glad that you found the amulet you wear around your
neck. i know that it is very important to you.

k.

Pas de paprika?

Tue, 2 Nov 2004 08:06:59 +0100

dear zh, and yet one more message. i just started reading my first
composition essay and it is a recipe, and i had this sudden memory of
writing a french composition many, many years ago, in French, of course,
for onion soup, and my teachers’ single comment when the essay was
returned, “pas de gruyere?” (i had forgotten to add the most important
ingredient to onion soup). this comment found itself into one of my
poems some 15 years later, i think remembering then, as i am remembering
now, the abyss of boredom from which the teacher’s comment originated
(he worked with film and semiotics and his method of teaching us
comprehension by having to figure out what people were saying in a film
sound-band, the voice-track, without watching the movie, just listening
to it, is still one of the best methods i’ve come across for teaching
another language. so now, this morning, in my own abyss of boredom of
the language teacher, do i repeat the comment? do i repeat the boredom?
and you, my dear, are you not bored today? yet another day, of boredom?
can you imagine an alternative?

k.

Last minutes

Tue, 2 Nov 2004 11:28:50 +0100

dear zh, as it turns out i have a few free minutes after the obligatory
shower and shave and donning of the uniform, and i even had time for
carrots and scrambled eggs, so what is left in the spare time, the free
time, than to write you a few words, which won’t amount to much, except
the availing of the opportunity to say hello in the middle of the day.
at least you can’t claim that i am predictable. they are moving
furniture into the flat above now, i want some! the last two nights i
have slept in my bed in the bedroom, both times waking up to the light
rather than the alarm, and i have slept much better, so i think this is
a positive trend, to continue my earlier theme. there is a very nice
light in the flat today, not sharp, but not dull either, bathing
everything in light, and i see my flat from a slightly different
perspective than on the very dark days. the evenings now especially seem
extremely dark, as i am sure they are in tomsk also, and even earlier.
in deep winter i remember darkness at around 15:30 or so. today with
luck i should be back at about 15:00 as i have only the one class at the
dunce college. then about an hour of preparation for each of the three
classes tomorrow, though i have compositions to mark, and today’s took
me 90 minutes or more, i prepared for today’s class from 8:00 until
10:00, that’s not good, two hours preparation for an hour and a half
class, i am losing money if i consider the time spent altogether. i turn
in my hours today, and they amount to 50 at the dunce college for this
month, so i should gross more than 2000 zlotys, about 700 dollars, and
since it’s a private college, they tax, so i may bring home 500 dollars.
not good, not good, for all the time invested, maybe i earn 5 dollars an
hours there, maybe even less. sorry to bore you with these details, but
i need to decide eventually whether the extra classes are worth it.
probably they are, only if they are, then i am thrown deeper into the
rut of teaching way beneath what i know, and it is time consuming, and i
am taken further and further from being able to carve out any kind of
mental and creative space for my own work. don’t you like to hear my
worry about myself? you have given me nothing to worry about for you
since you found your amulet. the problem with the mention of this amulet
is that i am reminded of your neck, especially there, near your ear. and
then i begin to miss you very much. and i wish i had never heard of this
amulet. now it is 11:30 and i must leave in ten minutes. i shall write
to you once more this evening. check your mail around 23:00 or just
before you go to bed, whichever is earlier. bye.

k.

The next hill

Tue, 2 Nov 2004 15:02:33 +0100

dear zh, either you are busy today or my emails have not gotten to your
box or you are ignoring me or all or none of the above. today is one of
the days i feel like writing, maybe because my other alternative is
preparing for tomorrow’s classes. today’s class is over. two hours in
the morning to prepare, one hour total transportation, and 90 minutes in
class: for 80 zlotys, or about 25 dollars. let’s see: that makes four
and half hours into 25 = yes, about 5 dollars an hour, just as i
suspected. time? what does it exist for if not to waste? the woman in
charge of my salary (i gave her this month’s hours) is the one who
speaks a little english and who went on her “honeytrip” this summer, so
maybe i will have better luck this time in getting my salary from there
sometime soon. my original plan was to live off the earnings from the
dunce college, and not touch the automatically deposited salary from the
institute. so far that hasn’t worked yet, but it may – at least that’s
my intention.

this morning’s blanket of strong light has mutated into solid grey once
again. cheerful. i felt like chanting a navajo death chant on the tram
home, it was filled with a lot of tough looking characters – i think the
high schools had just let out. it is comforting to return home and this
morning putting the rest of last night’s carrots into my eggs (i
remember that my scrambled eggs inspired you to order the same dish in
the blinchki restaurant) i had once again the thought (always just a
thought, i’ve never been able to go any further than the thought) of
cooking once or twice a week a lot of items, carrots, potatoes,
hard-boiled eggs, chopped onions in containers, a variety of items like
a salad bar, kept in the refrigerator, and then put together to cook
this or that dish as the dish requires, in other words, doing all the
hard work only once or twice a week, and that might inspire me to cook
more, since it’s the cutting and carving which motivates me to the
restaurant. the one good news is that i’ve stopped eating pierogi, a bad
habit like polmani – the nutrition does not equal the calories, and like
you, i cannot stop eating them once i start.

i must have been inspired by my cold cooked carrots this morning waiting
for me in the fridge. so few cooked things ever wait for me there. what
time does the sun rise now in tomsk? does it make any difference to you
psychologically? i feel a little of the positive difference in the
morning, waking up in light – it is rather nice, and i feel more rested,
and after last week’s insomnia, i am resting well, sleeping deeply. i
think it is the change in the room where i sleep.

i want to keep starting writing about the classes i have to prepare
tonight since i don’t have the slightest idea what to do tomorrow.
sometimes it is tempting to just do nothing, go to class, and just sit
there. i wonder what would happen. the students would probably start
talking to one another, in Polish of course, and enjoy themselves. they
wouldn’t have to do any work, and they would get credit for coming. this
is what they seem to prefer to do. because i am an american
perfectionist, of course, i do just the opposite, and overwork myself
dreaming up work to give them when that is the last thing most of them
want. as 99 percent of the world, they would prefer to get something for
nothing. so, why do i bother? still, i have not the slightest idea,
except for a certain indeterminate item called conscience, that if i did
not try to be a good language teacher, even without the good students,
in fact, with pretty poor students, i would make myself suffer, so as
tiring as it often is, the work is better for me than if i perceived
myself as taking it easy, being lazy, which, despite all the appearance
of laziness in tomsk, i really do not prefer to be. did i appear that
lazy in tomsk? wasn’t it a holiday? i was supposed to have a holiday…

i imagine us in some future dimension (not future life) walking up this
mountain and that, searching for ravines where i may abandon you for the
afternoon. my theory is that you actually prefer being left in the
ravine than being told which place to cross the creek, though the creek
in question wasn’t even a creek, it was a rivulet. i promise never to
tell you where to cross the creek or rivulet, and right now there is
nothing i would rather do than start out over the crest of the next
hill.

are you coming?
where, after all, are
you? and where are
your letters today!

k.

Others

Wed, 3 Nov 2004 07:03:15 +0100

dear zh

I wonder if it isn’t true, what a Polish sociologist who teaches in
England writes, that the conditions of the labor camp, the gulag,
surround us, part of the very air we breathe, as part of this condition
of spectatorship, spectator-culture, brought about (or intensified) by
electronic communications.

Of course, you do not write what, exactly, you wrote, in reply to the
expression of concern in the email from Marco’s brother, so i do not
know, except that you wrote me that you answered the email saying he was
all right, and then you joked (in rather bad taste) about the
helplessness of foreigners.

First, you are involved just a little, as you manage Larissa’s
correspondence in English, in other words, you answer her mail. Now, you
write me that you answered an email from Marco Negri’s brother without
either consulting her, and worse, without consulting Marco. What if he
needs money? It might be possible for his brother to send money by
Western Union or MoneyGram.

Did you write to Marco’s brother that you have never met his brother,
that you do not have his phone number, that all you know about him is
from your friend, Larissa, who tells you that they invite him to speak
at the university but do not pay him, and that she is tired of hosting
him, and wants him to leave at the end of his visa?

I do not think so. And yet this is the truth. So, in a moment of poor
judgement, caused more by the instrument of communication than anything
else, you presided, as a judge, over the welfare of another human being.

I do not scold you like this (and I am criticizing you) to try to make
you feel bad. I know you are overworked. You write that you had to go to
the doctor. I hope that it is just a matter of stress. You know that I
worry about your health, and that you do too many things for too many
people, Larissa perhaps one of them.

Neither do I know who is responsible for Marco being there in Tomsk,
himself or Larissa – how easy it is to say, come to the conference first
and then we’ll find something for you to do here, don’t worry – but it
is just as possible that didn’t happen.

What is very much appreciate about you, admire and respect about you, is
your attention to detail, and your awareness of the necessity of correct
procedures, all very important in any border-crossing, cultural or
otherwise.

But I wish you had written me that you had written Marco’s brother that
as far as you knew he was okay, but you would try to find out more, and
write back to him soon. Did you?

If you think that I only need one more thing to worry about you are
wrong. In the world of writing there are small acts of mostly imaginary
solidarity with other writers, and since I know Marco’s father’s
writings, have read some of them, learned from them, and respect the
life-in-writing or life-in-thought these writings come from, then some
small measure of concern is understandable in the present case.

I was dismayed by the tone in your letter, the way you reported
answering the email, and then you wrote me about going to the doctor,
and I understand also just how much pressure you are under. I wish that
I could do something about this, but I can’t.

You will be angry at my criticism, no doubt, but I hope you will
appreciate that neither could I remain silent, feeling disturbed by
something you wrote, and about another human being.

Angry with me

Wed, 3 Nov 2004 17:47:21 +0100

dear zh, i just walked in the door at 17:30 having had to go the
Institute after dunce classes, very dark very early.

i woke up this morning upset that Marco’s brother might have received
the wrong impression about Marco’s situation in Tomsk, and especially if
there is need of money, he needs to know how to contact him, wire him,
email him, etc.

still, that was no reason to scold you as i did, especially in the
situation you are yourself in, or really, in any situation. you are
doing as best you can with what you know.

i must sound very strange to you sometimes, and sometimes, even, to
myself, i sound strange. now, i am simply very tired, and i wish we
could go to the blinchki cafe together then to a movie.

wishful thinking. i hope you do not feel too badly towards me, as i
equally hope that i did not hurt your feelings (you are easier to hurt
than you pretend?)

wishing you everything and especially a good night’s sleep.

k.

More work

Thu, 4 Nov 2004 07:01:22 +0100

Top of Form 1

dear zh, i read your letters last night after writing you when i got home. you apparently have had a lot of experience defending yourself at the job. it was the perceived lack of compassion that i was criticizing, not the performance of this actual act of compassion, which is being in a position to assure Marco’s brother that he is okay. as for “facts”, in the book i was reading last night, this line appeared: “embarrassed awareness that your own truths strike you as plausible only because of where you happen to be standing at the time” which tends to make every perception relative to its location. there is only my experience of your location, not the location itself – wherever that is, for any place – so any expression of my experience is bound to suffer from the absence of what are commonly called facts, and they are not always the same. the sun rises every morning in the east and sets in the west is one fact, that water boils at a certain temperature is another fact, and these can be proven, demonstrated, though all the time we rely on the notion of the fact to convince ourselves of a prejudice. it is a fact, perhaps, that my own life is growing more desperate here. last night the chair of my dept. called and asked if i could take two more courses of first-year conversation students who have not even met yet one month into the semester. i am not in a position to refuse, needing too many favors in the future, so of course i said yes. there is a growing despair in the awareness that no matter where i am, no matter how hard i work, that i will not be perceived as someone valuable for the poetry they have written and may write (that is of course not the case here) but valued only for the work that i do for other people (sound familiar?) and this is deadly. i have been in terrible situations before, and my response then and now is simply to pace myself, and be patient, and not to expect anything. when i can see how much danger i am in (and by danger i mean the erosion of any time at all in which one might possibly write), in the past, i have been to escape this danger by transforming the work conditions, moving, getting another job, and waiting, of course, always waiting. k.

Exercise in Style

Fri, 5 Nov 2004 08:32:53 +0100

dear zh, as far as typographical errors go, they are everywhere, and
even though it took me a long time to use them (and I don’t use them
when writing you, for example) there are spellchecks even for the system
I erased my hard drive to install. Yesterday, again to mention something
I was reading, I found this line:

“If ideology is language wrenched out of true, then we must presumably
have some idea of what an ‘authentic’ communicative act would like
like.”

And this was in a book that cost 20 dollars, and published by an eminent
printing house in the UK. Does it change the reading? Once, as a
student, I unknowingly included as part of my interpretation a reading
(we call interpretations ‘readings’) of a line that contained a
typographical error, so the problem is this: once the typo is corrected,
does the interpretation based on it disappear?

More to the point, however, is a paragraph on the facing page in the
essay that included such a glaring example of typical and unimportant
mistakes:

” Our most despotic speech acts betray, despite themselves, the frail
outlines of a communicative rationality: in making an utterance a
speaker implicitly claims that what she says [it is the writer’s style
to use ‘she’ instead of ‘he’ for the generic pronoun, I don’t mean to
imply ‘you’, as it could just as well apply to ‘me’] is intelligible,
true, sincere and appropriate to the discursive situation.”

I mean to imply by this quotation that _despotism_ is on the table
between us, as a mutual accusation. Obviously, to suggest, whether
wrongly or rightly, that your response to Marco’s brother was not
adequate to the situation you had conveyed to me, first, on the phone
last Saturday, and then in your letters, was despotic, a gesture of
tyranny over your daily struggle to stay alive in that job and the
million things you are asked and required to do (I found a url last
night that I’ll send in another letter about discrimination against
women in Russia, though it is probably nothing that you don’t know).

You responded to my despotism with irony and sarcasm, an accusation, and
an exercise in style. (I am referring to the three letters you wrote me
yesterday morning). The irony and sarcasm is, always, strangely,
enjoyable, even when I am its subject. But I wanted to write a little
more about, first, the exercise in style, and then the accusation.

The form letter had an effect on my that you could not have intended,
knowing only that I had sent my CV and what I had called “paperwork” to
the email address that accompanied the job posting. My formal form
letter was not as long as yours, but in the same mode, the same style,
and even, there was an unpleasant memory of the day sacrificed (more
like two days) to the writing of the “paperwork” where once again one is
struggling with an abstract, institutional context, and there is simply
no way of knowing what is the right ‘tone’ to convey. Even worse, far
worse, was the short letter requesting very little, almost next to
nothing, but still requesting something, of a writer I have never met
but whom I have reason to believe that he knows my poetry, and this was
very much a “Dear Sir” letter, and one that I absolutely hated to write,
with all the hatred and contempt of which I am capable, and of course
there is no object for this hatred and contempt than myself, and the
situation I find myself in where I must ask for something, no matter how
inconsequential.

It is called ‘asking for help’ in Anglo-American culture, and it is
simply not done. Never, absolutely never. Anyone who must ask for help
of any kind is lowered to a position that is very difficult to raise
oneself from. You mentioned the two different worlds. This is one big
difference. Perhaps because of shared adversity, there is (from what I
understand) no sacrifice involved in your world if one person asks
another for help, and to use an overused word, this effect comes a
culture or at least social-context of solidarity (when everyone or at
least so many are facing or have faced before dangerous, precarious
real-life situations). For example, just think of all the people you do
favors for, and even lend money to. My impression is that there is a
steady flow of former schoolmates and colleagues to your desk asking you
for help of one sort or another. One consequence of my ‘asking for help’
is that I am angry at myself, even humiliated, as well as being reminded
that I am still trying to function, however marginally, in a world (not
your world) of competition, and especially, suspicion.

So your exercise in style, the form letter, mirrored my anxieties about
writing two letters in relation to that job which I now wish I had never
heard about. The first response I received was an automated message, and
the second a one line “thank you” from a real person. The probable
reality is that, especially after an artist had circulated the
advertisement on the email list, there was a flood of applications,
which is typical of every job opening in Canada and the U.S. That is the
harsh social and economic reality. There is no way anyone can even
obtain an interview for such jobs without what is called ‘professional
support’ from other writers and artists. I do not have this support. I
doubt if I ever will. It is an illusion to imagine that I can simply
apply either by email or by writing to such positions (full-time faculty
positions) and I have communicated this illusion to you as a practical
possibility. What happened was that I was engaged in self-deception, and
involving you in my self-deception, not deliberately deceiving you.

But deception of oneself and others is part of the misery of reality,
isn’t it? I learned a very difficult lesson years ago, when I was
accused of being a ‘racist’, that in the accusation are the seeds of the
fears of the accuser, so when you accuse me, the foreigner, or being
“worthless” and “useless”, is it possible that you might also be talking
about (note the modals and subjunctive tense, very useful in English for
avoiding the appearance of making an accusation)

is it possible that you might also be talking about

your own fears of uselessness and worthlessness, or at least of being
perceived as such, by moving to Poland, and if I cannot get a job in the
U.S. or Canada, or even England for that matter, that is our only choice
other than living in Russia, which for me is not a choice, though some
days I am filled with incredible longing for returning to Chita.

The modal and the subjunctive tense are supposed to end on a question,
so that you are invited by the grammar to say, no, of course not, but my
sentence is too long. As always. My point is that there are real fears
and they cannot be avoided or joked away. Real fears, unresolved, can
lead to even more real disasters. “Catastrophe” I believe is a word in
your language, like like “cauchemar.” How many million French words are
there in Russian? I think sometimes as many as there are French words in
English.

I think it would be accurate to say that I am angry at being in the
situation of having to send that application, and that you are an
indirect or direct (depending on your point of view) target of that
anger, since you are involved in the motivation of the action, though it
is false for me to say – or would be false for me to have said – that I
only responded in the first place because of you. That is false. I am
overworked here, and will keep being overworked. A Polish colleague whom
I hardly know, we simply shared a busride together for 30 minutes once,
warned me that “they will take advantage of you for as long as you are
unable to say no.” The senior Polish colleagues work hardest at avoiding
work, but it is their system, not mine. Still, someone needs to do the
work, so that means the stupid foreigners (and foreigners are viewed as
stupid throughout the Slavic cultures). It must have something to do
with language. I am not free to say no, since I do not wish to give the
appearance that I am not helpful. It is a terrible and oppressive
situation to be in. Some of that situation has negatively affected our
writing to each other.

Accusations are more damaging than form letters, do you agree?

k.

ruki drozhat – kur voroval

Fri, 5 Nov 2004 13:41:49 +0100

dear zhen,

250 Euros a month for a flat where in the same building they rent rooms
for 100 dollars a month? And Larissa complained that he wanted a
refrigerator? It is the landlord mentality, no wonder she wants him to
leave at the end of three months, for she will have earned half a year’s
rent in half the time.

You, though, dear, are honest to mention it. The landlord mentality is
not such a mystery, I remember how Larissa repeated Paul Reynold’s
remark at the table in the pub, “I love money.” “He loves money” she
repeated, with admiration in her voice. I thought at the time it was a
stupid thing for Reynolds to say, but typical, someone declares he is
“working class” and then imitates Lord Byron.

Where can we escape such people? I’m hoping that you sleep a long time
tonight. What else is there?

k.

250 francs

Fri, 5 Nov 2004 15:34:55 +0100

dear zh, did I ever tell you this story? I read it in Walter Benjamin’s
Letters. Once he was offered 250 francs by a prestigious publisher, I
think it was the NRF (Nouvelle Revue Francaise) and he wrote the editors
a letter of refusal, saying that his work was worth 350 francs and not
one franc less. They did not pay him the 350 francs, so he was left with
nothing, EXCEPT the clarity of conscience, and expression of worth: this
kind of clarity and declarative commitment to one’s own self-worth means
everything every day right up to the moment of one’s leaving of this
life. I learn more from this simple event, Benjamin’s refusal, about how
to exist in the world than all the volumes of pseudo-knowledge one
worries sometimes about never having read. The NRF story perfectly
expresses my own attitude towards value and 250 francs or euros or
dollars. A form of studied poverty from which I refuse to move. In a
way, I perfectly understand your statement, your concern, about the loss
of the 100 dollar monthly pension 25 years from now. Let’s say you live
for 20 years after retirement at age 65, twenty-five years from now. One
hundred dollars per month for 20 years is 22,000 dollars. That is an
enormous sum of money, and one that I am not confident I will ever be
able to earn in one year in the U.S. economy. Did you know that is
considered a low yearly salary in the U.S., 22,000 dollars. It is the
salary of an office assistant, or part-time faculty. I have earned that
sum of money before, and I refused to keep earning it, for what I
believed than (and now) were very good reasons. If I surrender the
determination of this refusal, worse things might happen to me, inside,
that inside you are always talking about. I am sorry to sound so
obstinate about this.

k.

One hour’s worth of writing to you

Sat, 6 Nov 2004 09:10:42 +0100

dear zh, of course I have no objection to your calling if you can and
you needn’t, ever, ask “permission.” Neither do I agree with your
interpretation about telling you to take a hike, which seems like an
appropriate proverb, given your association with the wet ravine. What is
important for me to say and to keep saying, and what I was reminded of
in the past week, is that I am deceiving myself and you when I make
claims to the effect that I am capable of earning an income that will
support us. Perhaps I am earning enough now, but it is damaging me, that
part of me which, in the past, simply snaps when too much pressure
builds up, and I turn on everyone and everything around me, and clear a
space so that I can work, write, which I everything to me. Isn’t it
important to try to be clear about one’s weaknesses? Flaws? Infirmities?

If I suggest that we are in a difficult situation, that doesn’t mean
that I wish to cancel the situation. More simply, as the events of the
past week demonstrated, I was imagining a door where there was a wall,
and once again I can recognize that I am in a room without doors,
without windows, without outside. I have been here before, most of my
life has been lived in this room. A lot of writing has been written in
this room. But it is not the flat in Stepanovka, not even the miserable
cell in the hotel on Arkadi Ivanova Street. Shouldn’t you know of this
chamber, dear, if you wish to know me as you know me now?

Or I am simply trying to say that every effort towards my trying to live
responsibly has always ended in disaster. I dream of going further into
Eastern Europe, the Balkans, or even the Caucausus region, like
Kurgestan or Kazakhstan, not returning to the U.S., or even the West,
sometimes. It is not the foreignness of the culture that bothers me
here, it is the cheap imitation of consumer lifestyle. Or it is quite
possible that I have no idea what I am talking about. This flat is the
most comfortable I have lived in for five years, and that was only for
eight or nine months that I lived in a decent space in a city in the
U.S. Even there, during that time, I had one teaching job, two evening
classes, that ended at 22:00, and since this college was very far away,
about 20 minutes by car (I was reading in the book about Chicago by the
Italian, Marco d’Eramo, that Americans are punished daily if they do not
own a car, and it is true), but the bus stopped running by this time,
and I had to walk five miles two times a week to catch the last bus
going to the next city where I lived, in rain and in snow, and I
remember one night walking in the cold blowing snow where I had to keep
stopping for fear of frostbite and almost missed my bus, and I would
have been stranded 20 miles from my flat in a blizzard, all for earning
income necessary to afford my 700 dollar a month flat (you spend all
your money on rent in the U.S. – Larissa has the right idea).

There is nothing worth remembering, when I remember things like this.

So, I am only trying to be realistic, as they say, and most of all,
because I respect you, I don’t want to create false ideas about my
abilities. Part of this is just the typical isolation anyone who commits
themselves to an art must undergo from time to time, if you were here,
you would experience it (these turns in my days) as withdrawal, refusal
to communicate, etc. I don’t think you would interpret it as hostility.
At least I hope you wouldn’t.

I think I have a good idea for the Slovakia paper. Working with the
concept of Jetzeit (Now-Time) from Benjamin, I’m going to reconstruct a
chronicle of the former republic of Yugoslavia which exists in English,
journalism from the region written between 1993 and 2002. I have read a
great deal of this journalism before. It’s that scene in Farenheit 9/11
that suggests the purpose of the essay to me, the scene of the Vampire
in association with “Romania!” I want to approach this moment as a
hieroglyphic which encodes developing territorial competition between
U.S. and Europe for Eastern Europe, even premonitory of future war in
the region. But I will try as much as possible not to talk about the
future wars. What is drawing me to this essay is the glyph of the demon
and demonizing that is part of the techno-irrationality of the U.S.
political culture, which does not have a discourse for the
socio-political apart from what Slavoj Zizek calls “ultra politics” and
in these ultra politics the first faultlines of the new fascism begin to
appear.

Here are some remarks by this philosopher from Slovenia on the media
representations of the Bosnian war (which is represented in another way
in the translated Balkan journalism):

“The first thing that strikes the eye is the contrast to the reporting
on the 1991 Gulf War, where we had the standard ideological
personification:

‘Instead of providing information on social, political or religious
trends and antagonisms in Iraq, the media ultimately reduced the
conflict to a quarrel with Saddam Hussein, Evil Personified, the outlaw
who excluded himself from the civilized international community. Even
more than the destruction of Iraq’s military forces, the true aim was
presented as psychological, as the humiliation of Saddam who was to
‘lose face’. In the case of the Bosnian war, however, notwithstanding
isolated cases of the demonization of the Serbian president Milosevic,
the predominant attitude reflects that of a quasi-anthropological
observer. The media outdo one another in giving us lessons on the ethnic
and religious background of the conflict; traumas hundreds of years old
are being replayed and acted out, so that, in order to understand the
roots of the conflict, one has to know not only the history of
Yugoslavia, but the entire history of the Balkans from medieval
times…. In the Bosnian conflict, it is therefore not possible simply
to take sides, one can only patiently try to grasp the background of
this savage spectacle, alien to our civilized system of values…. Yet
this opposite procedure involves an ideological mystification even more
cunning than the demonization of Saddam Hussein.’

Then, typically, I don’t agree with the interpretation by Zizek that
follows, as I often feel that he is wrong, politically, though elsewhere
he uses a very helpful term, “organicist populism” which describes
exactly my disturbance at the Farenheit 9/11, not to make too much of
what is a simple propaganda piece, but it is a sign of deteriorating
public sphere, where proto-fascist techniques appear “progressive” and
they always do. I remember discussing this with you, and we do sometimes
agree, didn’t we, that the reactionaries come from the left, not the
right, they make themselves look left, they use their language, but
crudely, crudely.

What is see in the translated Balkans journalism is a very high level of
public discourse and analysis, almost unheard of in the West, or at
least in the U.S. And I am thinking about how to write a paper to show
this, against the tendency towards demonization and mystification
typical of the U.S. media and political discourse and military
rationale, i.e. the 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia. Even Russia tried to
get a piece of that action.

By the way, yesterday I read a very interesting academic article about
the television coverage of the 1991 putsch attempt by the right-wing
plotters which served to help bring Yeltsin to power. I remember
watching on allnight CNN the tanks pounding the parliament in 1993.
Wasn’t that when Yeltsin came to power? What is interesting is that the
academics do not doubt in their article, they are nowhere uncertain,
that the 1991 failed putsch is a victory for democratic forces and
tendencies in the new Russia. Another interpretation would be that only
under the disguise of a “democratic” process could the conditions be
established for the return to totalitarian controls such as are in
process now. What I mean is that the article nowhere anticipates the
current turn of events in Russia, the tightening of controls, so in an
article which in effect celebrates the progressive role of the media and
media journalists, they nowhere anticipate the closing of opposition
stations 10 years later.

Well, there is a lot to think about. I have to write you this way. Don’t
diminish yourself. Don’t act like it is none of your concern. Or you can
if you wish but it is unnecessary.

Are you going to visit with Marco? I really want to find out whether or
not he is Toni Negri’s son. You are right. This is a great difference
between us. If he is not Toni Negri’s son, then he is someone who simply
made a mistake, coming to Russia without the proper papers and
protections. But if he is Toni Negri’s son, and if he is in trouble, I
will not hesitate to try to help him. I won’t try to argue with you into
understanding the difference, perhaps it is for private reasons. But it
is very important to me.

How is the snow shovelling going?

k.

Bottom of Form 1

Top of Form 2

Bottom of Form 2

Sun, 7 Nov 2004 09:22:56 +0100

Snowflakes soft as lambs wool

dear zhen

it took me all day or almost all day yesterday and some of the evening
before to figure out how to save a number of pages from a website for
one of my classes, typically, i was trying to download them the
difficult way, when there was a very easy solution which i didn’t figure
out until yesterday evening. needless to say, it doesn’t make me feel
very intelligent. quite the opposite.

it has been raining for the past two days, and this morning it is grey
and feels, strangely, warm. last night when i went to the store after
talking with you it was both rainy (drizzle) and cold, and i was
reminded that sooner or later winter will be here, though i still have
yet to wear a sweater. apart from all our talk about being able to
support ourselves, the idea of living somewhere where there isn’t snow
until december is the most attractive of all, isn’t it? do i remember
correctly, didn’t you say that you always hated winter, and you have
lived all your life in Siberia?

i would think that Siberians would go into ecstacy at the first
snowflake, but come to think of it, i was never that fond of the tropic
climate when i lived in Florida. heat can be as oppressive over one’s
moods as cold. light can be too bright as well and the dark too grey.
the sky can be oppressive in its bright and glaring cloudlessness as the
permanent cloud cover of the Siberian winter sky. i sound very
philosophical this morning on the question of extremes.

through some great foresight i am showing two films for two of my
classes tomorrow, so i really do not have much to prepare for tomorrow.
in fact, if i wanted, i could pretty much take the day off today. let’s
return to the “if you were here” game, i am rather fond of that game,
though i think it is cruel to you, and you will agree that i am
sometimes cruel to you (it is your lucky day, as i feel philosophical).
but, dear, if you were here, we would go for a long walk and have lunch
at the restaurant, and i would complain about tomorrow and you would
listen to me and laugh at me. laughter can also be philosophical.
perhaps we would go to a movie (there are several small theaters which
show artistic films here, one of them is called “Charlie’s”. Or we would
rent two videos, and that would give us something to argue over. though
as you know i can watch Tarkovsky films over and over. actually, i think
you have rather good taste in films, the collective housing comedy film
notwithstanding (that is a very good example of cultural difference, for
i wasn’t able to understand the humor at all – interesting to think that
the ‘thaw’ period in russian social and cultural history is rather
opaque to the outsider, as it is difficult to only imagine all that was
forbidden before – one almost has to have lived that experience?) what i
started to say was our shared experience of viewing “the mirror”
together with “russian ark” and seeing immediately the inferiority of
Sokurov’s film.

i think it would be delightful to explore East European and Russian
cinema with you, and one of the better books that i ordered from Krakow
is about Soviet-era and perestroika-period visual culture. what are your
memories of the 91-93 years? there, that should give you something to
write about. if you wish, always, if and as you wish.

k.

Post-advice

Sun, 7 Nov 2004 09:48:52 +0100

dear zh,

i am answering your advice letter to let you know that i am now bored
with roast turkey and find it dull, though i don’t wish to return to
chicken, though one of my students at the dunce college wrote about a
very good recipe for chicken cooked in white wine. i think it is the
wine that attracts me. i am in somewhat of an improved mood, maybe only
due to the fact that i slept until 9:00 this morning. whatever the mood,
don’t worry about it. i promise that i won’t drink wine in cypress in
the hotel room! better to go the cafe, and better yet, to the seashore.
what else did i forget to mention in my previous letter. yes, dinner
last night was dull, though late, near midnight, there was a film by
Andrzej Sekula, who was both the director and photography director, and
though it was typical Hollywood style “tough guy” script with American
actors and actresses, the photography was very European, or I might even
say Polish, if you remember several of the Polish films we saw in
Palangas. Great attention given to emotive/expressive angles from which
the scene is viewed, layering of frames and narrative sequences, so that
a typical plot tended to dissolve beneath the visual interpretation of
it. I wonder if there is something to the idea of hybrid cultural forms
resulting in meetings of genre pieces, like the action film, with some
attempt to mute the action in favor of its visual re-interpretation.
Anyway, i enjoyed the film, though i don’t remember how it ended.
perhaps i fell asleep, as i woke up in the middle of the night with the
lights on, and fully clothed, on my sofa. then i went to my bedroom and
slept for another five hours. this is one method for sleeping in. sleep
one turn in the study (for that is what i call my office) and the next
turn in the bedroom. to return to the “if you were here” theme, i think
this habit would annoy you very much (like the night i want to go to
sleep upstairs in your dacha, and you thought it was too cold – it
wasn’t the cold so much that i wanted but to fall asleep reading and
with the lights on, i very much like to do this). sometimes i wonder if
it doesn’t represent a protest against having to fall asleep every
night, though if you have been having trouble sleeping lately, you will
not appreciate this protest.

finally, once more about marco, if you meet him at your office so that
he can check his email (very good idea and very nice of you) you can
simply mention that someone you know very well from the West and with
whom you correspond has a very high opinion of Toni Negri’s writings
about politics and philosophy, and you can ask him what he thinks of
TN’s writings, since he himself lectures on politics and philosophy.
Chances are, if there is any family connection, he will mention it. So
you needn’t fear about being impolite.

Doesn’t this sound like good advice? (I’d better stop while I’m ahead).
Do you know what that parenthetical proverb is? Actually, it’s not a
proverb, more like an idiomatic saying, though I’m increasingly unclear
about what is the difference. As always, in English, we have a
compromise expression: it is called a “saying”. English, as you know,
has very simple solutions for all such problems. So it is a saying, ‘I’d
better stop while I’m ahead.’ What does it mean? I think it means that
so far I’m winning (in a card game, for example) but if I keep playing
the chances are, I’ll lose, so I’d better turn in my hand now. Of
course, at this point, the other gamblers disagree, since they are
losing money, and one of them threatens to shoot you if you stop
playing. So then you say,

I’d better stop while I’m ahead.

You do and you’re dead.

That’s so? Well, so what.

(Then everyone goes back to the card game). I am very inspired by
popular culture this morning. Maybe there will be a Western on tv this
afternoon. In the mornings the Pope is on every channel. I forget what a
strange place this is sometimes.

Write me two letters today?

k.

Argue with me

Sun, 7 Nov 2004 22:36:33 +0100

dear zhen,

I am writing you in writing you I am writing you now, in the evening,
this evening, writing you, why, and why shouldn’t I write you in the
evening, when you are sleeping, soon to be waking, and on a holiday.

And I have nothing to write except that I am writing now and not in the
morning, I think I want to sleep in in the morning, yes, I can write
that, I can sleep in in the morning, a phrasal verb followed by a
prepositional phrase, how can you accuse me of not continuing you
continuing education in English, though my English is not the FCE.

Strange, I am using FCE materials here for my dunce college students.
The dunces are the ones who are not at the Cambridge First Certificate
level, and we are supposed to bring them up to that level by the third
year. The students at the institute have been studying English since the
first forms in their public school, so their level is very advanced, in
comparison.

When you mention about the FCE scandal at TPU it reminds me, with only
one or two exceptions, I could never understand what the English
teachers were saying whenever they spoke in English. There was one
elderly teacher there who used a cassette tape I was told (in
confidence, by another colleague, from their school days in the early
70s). The students would complain that they couldn’t understand it. So
much for English.

My life is not so bad here tonight I am thinking and why am I thinking
suddenly that life could be worse, on a day when I was supposed to
prepare and did not, or did very little, and yet, it would appear that I
am prepared. Or, I have always hated Monday classes. It reminds me of
all the Mondays in my life when I have had to go to work as soon as I
woke up, and that, in truth, is what I must do tomorrow, so that is why
I write you tonight. Do you mind?

Apparently, we are not arguing now, so we soon must find something to
argue about. I do not forget that you are at a disadvantage arguing in
English. It is one reason for me not to learn Russian. Maybe you should
find an arguing partner in Russian, even by email. It would be good for
the long winter nights. The problem is, one soon runs out of subjects to
argue about.

Tonight I do not feel in any particular need to be right about anything.


k.

First long day

Mon, 8 Nov 2004 07:08:21 +0100

dear zhen, I didn’t sleep in for as long as I wanted but I did make an
effort, the alarm going off at 6:00 so I stood up, turned it off, looked
around, and reset it to 6:45 only to get up at 6:30 as I kept hearing
the footsteps of passersby below my window on their way to the bus. As
soon as my coffee is finished, I will be on that bus. Not the same bus
of course, but one nearly identical to it. Have you ever noticed how
identical are buses? They are the essence of repetition in our lives.

Speaking of which repetition, another Monday, the beginning of a now
three-day process which will leave me exhausted by noon on Thursday.
November is a very long month here. There is something called an
Independence Day on Nov. 11 or 12, but that will fall on the weekend and
it won’t affect my classes. My classes won’t be affected until the last
week of December. So it is week in and week out for the next six or
seven weeks, like rowing a boat in the middle of the Baltic.

Perhaps what I dislike most is the sense that I turn into something like
an automatic drive when I go to either the institute or the dunce
college, and feel very little of or even near myself and thoughts,
almost as though it were a state of having no thoughts, only a
prescribed set of behaviors and actions which I apply to a predictable
set of coordinates, the students. At least by this point so much of it
is automatic, even the humor. But I am never actually involved in
anything that remotely resembles my mental life.

That life, of course, is nowhere except in writing, whether in the
margins of books, or in a notebook, but somewhere, the pressing of pen
to page, and accumulation of words and phrases and sentences, like
clouds. It is very cloudy this morning, or fog, the fog is very heavy,
good old London fog. I have only one wish. That many of my students lose
their way on the way to the university. They are always looking for some
excuse, and this is a very good one: to get lost. We also say “get lost”
if we want someone to go away.

And yet, one wants almost to be lost in writing, when writing, it never
feels good when the writer knows what the writing is about, and that is
one reason why I do not like writing essays. Writing an essay is like an
act of extortion, something we are made to do by the institution of
literature, and there is nothing instrinsic to either poetry or the
larger entity called literature about the essay. The institution can’t
handle (tolerate) the specificity of all authentic writing, and it has
to contain it by disciplines called Philology. This is a good attitude
to have as I am about to step out the door to teach for one of its
faculties, the beast, Philology, or just good old plain study (study!)
of Literature.

k.
Bad start

Tue, 9 Nov 2004 04:44:20 +0100

dear zh, i am writing in case i don’t have time in the morning to write.
i’ve been up since one a.m. after falling asleep from tiredness before
21:00 and of course, not knowing what to do, my body insisted on waking
up four hours later, so i have been marking dunce college compositions
and preparing for tomorrow’s dunce college class and suddenly i realize
that it is 4:30 a.m. which means i have just spent three hours working
for/preparing a one and half hour class, for which i get paid for two
hours, which means i don’t want to know what it means, except that i
think i am the true dunce for doing this stupid job. point: if you find
yourself doing stupid work, it means you are stupid (for doing it). i
can’t justify this nonsense much longer. not that i’m reaching a
breaking point or anything, it’s just easier to express frustration in
the early hours before dawn. i hope that for you it is only the magnetic
storm that is affecting you, though probably it is a combination of
factors. existence is pretty unbearable sometimes, isn’t it? the only
thing that is worse is no existence at all, though grading composition
papers makes one wonder. and of course you know i am only joking,
darkly. and i have absolutely no advice for you as to how to get better.
not that i don’t wish to give you any advice. it’s just that i don’t
have any. i won’t be able to write to you later today for i will arrive
home late this evening, after you are gone to bed. so you will have to
trust to the routine of things as they are that everything’s okay here,
which it is, more or less, with a little more emphasis on the less.

k.

Before you go to bed

Tue, 9 Nov 2004 16:48:27 +0100
dear zh,

there were rector’s hours from 3-6 this afternoon so my class was
cancelled and i had thought that i would get home early enough to write
you before you went to bed but my tram broke down and it took me an hour
to get home and then just as i got home the phone rang and i thought
that it might be you but it was my colleague in the country who called
to invite me to thanksgiving dinner and we talked for some time and now
i find myself writing you almost at the time that i anticipated getting
home if i had classes to begin with, though that’s an exaggeration, it’s
16:40 so unless you are ill you will probably check your email and read
this before falling asleep and i am sure that whatever i have to write
is of such profundity that it will affect your sleep and your dreams and
what otherwise would have been a regular night will now become somewhat
irregular and as unpredictable as teaching at a Polish university,
simply because i wrote you when i had said previously that i would not
be able to write you. There it is. One can never know. Maybe i am in a
good mood, though why should i be, i have to spend the rest of the night
preparing for tomorrow’s classes, but i did get paid today from the
dunce college, 1600 zlotys out of 2000 (400 zlotys went to taxes) so
that’s about 550 dollars after taxes from my extra job, in addition to
the Institute’s 800 dollars, though after phone, internet and rent i
only bring home about 650 dollars, but at a conservative estimate, i am
for the moment netting (after rent and taxes) 1300 dollars a month,
though the figure won’t stay this high since i substituted during the
weekend that one time, though even today i was asked if i could teach
one of the classes (a small class, the students liked me and asked if i
could be their teacher). tired as i am, the money is gratifying. and it
makes cypress all the more possible. please check out the possibility of
a money transfer, not bank to bank, that would be too difficult to
arrange, but moneygram or western union, and i can send you the amount
for the hotel, as i now have about 2000 dollars in zlotys and almost
another 1000 in euros, so the hotel is not a problem. one should have
something to look forward to. i am not against your suggestion of
staying at a two star hotel (a low rated hotel) but the best of all
would be a private cottage or studio. what do you think? it’s getting
cold here and today for the first time i wore my blue sweater. time to
go to the beach.

k.

Still awake

Wed, 10 Nov 2004 01:11:07 +0100
Dear Zh, our letters are crossing, I am writing you trying to write you
before you go to sleep and you write me before I write to you telling
you are going to sleep, so it is fitting that I am writing you now as
you are about to awake though I doubt whether you will read your mail
before late morning or early afternoon, as your holiday is over, isn’t
it, and you are back to work tomorrow, that is, today?

It is near 1:00 a.m. and I have just finished watching on “kochana kino”
(beloved cinema) on the public television channel here which shows some
good films sometimes, and tonight it was a film called “Clockers” which
I had seen from the side without paying close attention to it, about
ghetto in Brooklyn, New York, and I couldn’t remember how it ended, and
as it did not end tragically, I found myself somewhat relieved, and
wondering if I caught from you in Palangas your fear of tragic endings
(I’m remembering you putting your head under the blanket before the
Russian boy poisoned at Chernobyl died within sight of the white cliffs
of Dover).

In my earlier letter I wrote at length once again about money, and I
hope you understand this as an expression of confidence on my part, and
relief, the reward, after the long hours, all the teaching, it is a
pleasant feeling and makes me feel happy to write to you about it, and I
hope you do not interpret it in any other way. I was very pleased today
when I received my salary. I believe you know this feeling.

You did not write any more today about how your are feeling, and I hope
you do not forget to mention it, whether the turn depended on the
magnetic storm, or not. It is getting quite cold here, though nothing to
compare with where you are. The wind was very strong today, and the
skies slate grey. I ate scrambled eggs for supper with sparkling water.
Tomorrow morning, wheat bread with jam, and orange juice. I mention this
to assure you that I do not forget to take care of myself, though I
hardly ever cook, and the kitchen is getting drafty and cold again, not
a nice place to spend much time in when winter sets in. Once again, I
will probably be too lazy to insulate the windows.

Now I must try to fall asleep, always a problem when I am the least bit
agitated, as I am, after watching the movie. The worst is (as you know)
lying in bed with only your own thoughts, and the hours pass without
sleep. Actually, last night I woke up after 3-4 hours of sleep, prepared
for classes for 3 hours, then went back to sleep for 3 more hours. It
was a strange night. Now, I am prepared for tomorrow, and though I will
be very exhausted, I still have to keep a 16:00 appointment with a
hopeless student who needs a signature and who never came to my classes
and the one paper she turned in was copied from the internet, so
tomorrow I must babysit and give her extra work, all beyond my teaching
duties, at least as I perceive them. I hope after a long day I am not
too harsh with this student, who made me very angry last week
interrupting one of my classes to beg for a signature (they do this, you
know, hoping you just want to get rid of them, and sign, and most of all
they want to avoid having to talk about what they don’t know). So
tomorrow I will point to this student’s “essay” and begin with saying,
‘Now, what exactly do you mean by “milieu”? And of course the student
will lie. The system is rather corrupt, you see, or, better, as you well
know. It is a pity.

k.

Wed, 10 Nov 2004 07:57:03 +0100

Morning surprise
dear zh,

this morning i woke up in full daylight and for a moment i had the
thought that i’d overslept, my alarm did not go off (so i thought) but
i’d wakened five minutes before the alarm and now, showered and almost
dressed, i have both coffee and a few minutes to use to write you and
say hello. i won’t be checking my email until about 17:30 or 18:00 so
you have plenty of time in which to write me, and i suppose once again
when i get home you will already be asleep in Tomsk. for whatever reason
of divine intervention there are clear skies this morning and sunlight,
warmth, no wind, so no sweater today, and wool jacket, not leather one,
which, at this point in the autumn, near winter, is enough of a luxury
to improve my mood. that, and the fact that my classes today are so well
prepared that they will almost teach themselves (i hope). the only small
obstacle is the next seven hours. now that i mention it, that is a
pretty big obstacle, so i am going to stop writing by wishing you a
pleasant afternoon, already near 13:00 in your corner of the world. cold
today?

k.

От: <km@hypobololemaioi.com>

Кому: <zhen_l@rambler.ru>; <lev@tpu.ru>

Тема: Between extremes

Дата: 11 ноября 2004 г. 14:36

dear zh,

i did not write you about the icq as i had not checked that mailbox for

a couple of days. no, i do not yet have permanent internet connection

and probably will not until the end of the month at the very soonest

since i am waiting for my laminated residency card to use for

residential identification, which is of course required, like showing

your passport for books that you ordered. always these reminders of that

other time.

like larissa’s behavior towards “her” foreigner. my first reaction to

what you write about is that now finally i realize this weird place,

Tomsk, is really part of another planet, and there is only the illusion

of communicating, when there can be no real communication at all. it is

the labor camp syndrome. half the time you are the prisoner, and then

half the time you are the prison guard.

then, coming to my senses, recovering from my anger and disgust at such

behavior, i remember your lovely passage from your writing about the

butterflies pinned in their office boxes, and i remember more

particularly your very careful, logical, and perceptive analyses of the

conditions which victimized your father, the scheming and manipulation

that seems to be a constant in the university bureaucracy (remembering

as well your own remarks about your ability to survive there) and

larissa’s behavior becomes more understandable for me.

does it not seem to you that the entire situation between her and “her”

foreigner is that his visit did not turn out as expected, especially for

her personal hopes, which i do not imagine she has shared with you, but

which it is not too difficult to suspect. after the disappointment, the

punishment. that is what i mean by the labor camp mentality. all of this

also leaves in my mind a very bad feeling about having spoken at the

toleration conference, except, and it is a very important except, i was

very happy about the small meeting you attended in the morning with me

and the participation of Galina Petrova. so there is always good in

every bad thing.

[after speaking with you so briefly]

it is one thing to say you are still alive, and another to say that you

have no time to go to the doctor. you cannot use me as an example, since

i live in a country where i must find a doctor who speaks english, and

you have no such problem, so you should go to the doctor as soon as

possible. at least i hope that you are soon able to. the best therapy of

course is a holiday, and i have two such days today and tomorrow, then

about five weeks until the christmas holidays. also as i have told you i

have been invited for thanksgiving dinner and this will be very pleasant

and uplifting also. so the holidays and the salary keep me going,

without too long depressions. there is nothing wrong with depressions.

as long as they are specific in their effects, and do not last for a

very long time and most importantly, do not keep us from sleeping. when

you write that you are going to bed early, i am very happy, and yet i

wonder how many nights you are unable to sleep. i am sure that very

often you do not mention it to me. last night i fell asleep about 22:00

and woke once again at 1:00 so i read for two hours and then fell back

asleep heavily, and slept until 8:45. very nice feeling, and when these

nights happen, i know that the worst has passed, at least for the time

being.

the other therapy, of course, as i just mentioned, is cypress. what a

lovely word. also i will enjoy taking the train to prague to catch my

flight there. it will be enough of an adventure for me. we must however

be very careful about dates, and i still do not know the date of the

american literature exam which i must participate in writing and

evaluating, i only know that it will be during the exam week, which is

the week last winter i left before, which is why i was able to meet you

in mid-january. the 23rd of january will probably be the earliest i will

be able to leave this year.

last night among other thoughts i had the very pleasant memory of my

taking leave of your parents and our moment around the table in your

flat and this memory fills me with warmth and happiness, and i do not

think that i tell you very often just how different not only you but

your father and mother also appear to me, among the common run of

humanity, you are rather different, though i do not imagine that you

appreciate being blended into your family in such a manner, but i am

trying to identify, in this sentence, a perception of your singularity.

the thought that i had last night was that i trust you. i do not imagine

that you are always able to feel this way towards me, and i think i have

even given you many reasons to feel otherwise towards me. trust,

however, is a very good problem to continue to work on.

always a very big problem for me is the relation between trust and

obedience, and in our earliest conversations on the walks you spoke of

your obedience, and this is a curse for me also, a behavior trait, and

symptom of my own private system of oppressions, and i when i am most

obedient, that is when i cannot be trusted, because i have shown in the

past an ability to revolt against the obedience, so i have to be very

careful, about the question of the salary, for example, as happy as it

makes me on the salary day, it is still a symptom of obedience. perhaps

it has something to do with writing. all very good writing is an

experience of the utmost extreme disobedience, even revolt, and the

overcoming of oppressions both inside and outside. this is the dynamic

of which writers speak when they use words, in english, like tension and

turbulence. one cannot ever expect to be free of these forces, and when

there is peace, such as peace of mind, even well being of the mind and

body, it is always temporary, after the completion of a set of problems

posed by the work of art in progress.

i am entering one such period now when i am beginning to conceive of new

work, and i am trying as much as possible to be patient, deliberate,

even slow and stupid. it is deadly to expect oneself to be clever at the

very outset of new writing. now i have only notes, and glimpses, of the

new work.

you, dear, are very kind to me to remember this or that manuscript, and

you don’t know how helpful this is, because i always forget, and i

forget even that i have made these things, and they need to be

published, and they need to become a more concrete representation of my

creativity and production, so that i can continue to exist. this is the

problem that agitates me and depresses me at the same time. today i am a

little between both extremes, so i began this letter agitated by the

news of torture of the foreigner in Tomsk, and now i am calm and looking

forward to a day of reading and working towards the proposal for the

slovakia conference, and if the stores are closed for the holiday, then

i have only two eggs, half a bag of beets, yoghurt, an end of stale

bread (i recall that you like the ends of bread loaves – strange girl!)

and two cans of peas. what concoction i will make from these ingredients

you would not care to observe, trust me.

i miss you.

k.

Thu, 11 Nov 2004 17:39:39 +0100

Good night with stale cubes of dried bread

zhenya, dear, is this your preferred form of address?

i am writing to wish you good night and a good night’s sleep. i have
been reading for the past seven hours, about a hundred pages each into
two books, one of them on Benjamin, the other on Kant and Lacan, so i
feel like i’ve been floating in and around the clouds of ideas. now, it
would be nice if i could think, rather i feel more like a spectator,
though the first sentence of the book on Benjamin begins with a very
close formulation of my “How can I see my time?” in an essay i wrote in
chita, so i feel like i am on the right track with Benjamin, that i am
reading him closely, and as accurately as any writer is ever read. most
of all, both books excite me mentally, and this is a very good feeling.

sounds of construction an hour ago drove me to the store where i bought
food (including a chicken!) – kurczak here – though no tongue, as i feel
that i have been overdoing it on the tongue lately. earlier, not knowing
the stores were open, i cooked my last of the kitchen meal: stale bread
cut up in pieces and fried in olive oil with the two eggs and a cup of
canned peas thrown in for ballast, and do you know, with the right
seasoning (soup seasoning) it was actually rather tasty? americans make
this dish called “stuffing” for the turkey day dinner (thanksgiving) and
that’s what it tasted like, so i got all nostalgic and wept for an hour
after supper (only kidding, i don’t have those kind of emotional
resources lately).

so now i am going to send this and hope there is a letter and a
goodnight kiss from you, and maybe tonight if i am lucky they will play
for the Independence Day a very good Polish classic, Ashes and Diamonds.
they played it on this day last year …

k.

Fri, 12 Nov 2004 13:30:56 +0100

Needle in a haystack

zhenya, dear, yes, once again, your preferred address, and to thank you
for calling, isn’t this a good plan? i do not write you, and if i do not
write you, you will call me. very good.

i have been searching for needles in haystacks. i am sure you have this
saying in russian. the search for books is also a microcosm of
international economic competition between u.s. and europe. there are
excellent bookstores of course especially in u.k. and paris, but the
prices for shipping are extremely high, and guess where the cheapest
shipping is? the u.s. of course. strangely, it is cheaper to order
french books from canada than from france. the borders (economic) are
more strict the closer, than across the ocean.

and all this because i wanted to read some newer books in french,
planning (eventually) to begin my french lessons at the school here,
which since it is govt. sponsored, the lessons are said to be quite
inexpensive. also, as you (painfully) know, french is my only ‘other’
language, and here, as deprived as i am of language, there is a nice
feeling reading french, at least i understand most of it. well, not
most, but a lot more than Polish.

doing the searches, one comes across very good bookstores, and in Paris
there are several, so yes, your suggestion is correct, one should simply
go there for a weekend. there are buses and trains, i do not think it is
terribly expensive, but still, it is not something i will do for a
while, maybe in the spring. i very badly need books to write, and i like
the idea of reading through another language, trying to find my own.

there is also, as you might expect, a bewildering proliferation of
bookstores with websites and catalogues on the internet, and it is
impossible not to think about what, exactly, a book is, when doing such
searches. a book is neither a collector’s item, nor a cheap tradebook,
paperback, and then where, in between these extremes, is there a book
that will speak to one, even across languages.

for example, i read one sentence in translation some time ago by a
french author, Roger Laporte, which i liked, and then i find there is a
collection of his books in a single publication, over 600 pages, and
this books sells from a bookstore in Paris for about 25 dollars, but
then 20 dollars shipping! (it makes you think, about the object itself,
the book, which, of course, is an object). and it makes me think also of
my own, unpublished, books, and what it means to publish a book. i don’t
think i have ever really thought about this that much.

in the meantime, i simply am needing some newer books to read, and
preferably in another language than english, and there is this obstacle
about just how hard they are to have shipped here. my little bookstore
in Krakow is very friendly, and they ship for free, but they do not have
much poetry, and their books are mostly english. i dream someday of
ordering books in Russian for you from around the world, which is what
one can do now, if you can afford the shipping. Some of the largest
collections of Russian-language books are in the u.s. why?

k.

Y menya est horoshi novosti
Sat, 13 Nov 2004 02:17:02 +0100

zh, doragoya, y menya est horoshi novosti dla tibya: ya domu. tepyer,
hochish tibya, y ti? mi? ya videl amerikanski kino y potom, kravat. gdye
tibya?

k.

Sat, 13 Nov 2004 09:10:25 +0100

Good news

dear zh, my first inclination is to write you about what i must do today
as i have to turn my attention to classes next week, always after
holidays one feels a little more chaotic, and this week i have to teach
a novel for one class, which i have already read, though i should read
through it again today, two long essays for another class, and poems for
yet another class which due to the Rector’s day last week we have not
met now for three weeks. But i have gone to all my classes, and each
time i am prepared, so i am keeping my end of the bargain, whatever the
bargain is (i am not sure). i should also create some essay assignments
today or tomorrow for one of my classes, which is always time-consuming.
in other words, once again my time is not my own (as on thursday and
friday). next week and for the weeks up to the christmas holidays it
will only get worse. or, i will only get more tired.

also, i think i am going to finally give up on the idea of the slovakia
conference. as hard as i try, i just can’t make myself think in that
direction (the theoretical essay direction).

perhaps i am too impatient to be able to absorb myself in my own
writing, which the too many classes prevent, and in place of that,
content myself with trying to get a sense of future concerns, as far as
that is ever possible, and really all it involves is reading widely and
i am not able to do that yet, because of the lack of books.

there is a very good word for this: intermediary (i think it means ‘in
between’ and that is the space i am in right now). if i allow myself to
become frustrated with this condition, it only aggravates matters, so
that is why patience is such an important attitude to remember.

at least it is very quiet today, and i have no idea again what time it
is, due to the heavy grey sky. yet, it remains rather warm. as though
winter were hesitating about whether to arrive or not. i walked home
last night at midnight at the streets were so empty of people and cars
and in thick fog that it was rather beautiful, and difficult for me to
think that there is ever any danger anywhere in this city. by Western
standards, and even by Russian standards, i do think the city is quite
safe and even if it is not very attractive, since it is said to be one
of the ugliest cities in Poland, there are still very positive features
about it.

you might wish to know more about these positive features, as my mother
called yesterday evening to tell me that my document requests had
arrived and that she had forwarded them with the necessary fees. it
should take about 7-10 days for the documents to be returned, and then
the big question will be when they arrive here, probably it will take
two weeks, but i should have them at the latest by the middle of
december. it will make a nice christmas present, for both of us.

good news?

k.

Sat, 13 Nov 2004 16:18:45 +0100

Quiet in a calm world

dear zh, i did not go to the store as i had thought that i would since
it has been raining all afternoon (this is the result of 10+ c. and grey
skies) and then, i fell asleep a couple of hours ago, reading, and
waking now to the encroaching darkness, at 16:00. so literally i have
done nothing since talking with you except to take a shower to get the
smell of cigarette smoke out of my hair and eyes, read about 50 more
pages from a book that i shouldn’t be reading since i am not teaching
it, falling asleep, and now, waking to the thought that i had better
write you instead of continuing my nap as i had said that i would write
you in your evening and without a letter you may draw some other
conclusion about why i have not written you other than falling asleep.
so today is a quiet day and getting quieter (the world is very quiet
when one sleeps, have you noticed?) i could write you about the cursor
on my screen, my hands on the keyboard, the popular song on the radio,
the wires connecting my computer to the electrical circuits of my flat,
or would you like to hear about the milden on the ceiling of the
bathroom that i always notice after mentioning to you how much you would
like it here, and then, there’s the mildew, not to mention the dishes
that i have not washed in the kitchen sink. the rain, also, keeps one
inside, and there are no movies on tv tonight. what is there to do on
such nights either than read and sleep, or sleep and read. i think i am
beginning to fall asleep again. i cannot find any bookstore in the world
where there is more than one book that i want from it. this is a strange
problem. there are big problems and there are small problems, and the
big problem right now is that i have nothing to write to you about
except for the fact that i have nothing to write about, and yet you seem
to enjoy hearing from me whether i have something to write about or not.
i don’t feel like cooking dinner tonight. was there dinner waiting for
you when you got home this evening? i hope so.

k.

Sun, 14 Nov 2004 09:08:30 +0100

A warm day without rain

dear zh

it has stopped raining and it is still rather warm, somewhat warm, at
least in comparison. to you know where. where you are.

a strange thing happened to me yesterday. i found websites for
bookstores, one in prague and one in frankfurt, both cities about the
same distance from lodz-warsaw, and in the prague bookstore, there are
about 2500 english titles, and as they had a catalogue that could be
downloaded, i scrolled through the catalogue and recognized many of the
books, and when not the titles, the (for the most part) u.s. publishers.
large trade publishers. in the frankfurt bookstores, which had a
catalogue of some 9000 books (i only downloaded about 2000 as even i
have a limit of how much tedium – the needles in the haystack – my eyes
can stand) there were of course very few english titles, more french (so
a trip to frankfurt would be worthwhile, especially if i can find at
least one more bookstore to visit) but with so many german titles i
found myself reading the german titles and descriptions in an almost
kind of gestalt way (filling in the missing blanks) and i have never
studied german, though i have read german poets in translation with the
german on facing pages, though i don’t think this is the reason, more
the resemblance of german to english itself, the two languages, that one
is wandering blind, among a strange language (and this is partly what is
so difficult about either Russian or Polish – they are so fundamentally
different from English that you can’t piece things together) where
German and French both have this borrowing and borrowed relationship to
English – not only vocabulary but also in the grammar – and even more
interesting to me than the linguistic experience, if you can call
scrolling through thousands of book titles an experience, and if it is,
i’m not quite sure what kind of experience it is, anyway, the titles
themselves, and maybe it was this bookstore, but i was reminded,
forcefully reminded, by the titles, of the GDR, and that of course after
the fall of the wall, and the reunification of Germany, there would
still be the embarrassing remainder (the excess) of the Marxist studies,
the political culture, in the books themselves, the titles, as there was
no book burning, though the contrast to the titles in the “U.S.”
influenced bookstore in Prague is so strong in my mind that i woke up to
this sense of having, yesterday, found myself looking at two different,
even diametrically opposed, worlds, and this only 4-5 hours in each
direction by train from where i am. perhaps i will try to go to
frankfurt around the christmas holidays. the prague bookstore i will
visit on my way to cypress, though they offer free shipping for orders
over 60 u.s. dollars (about 4 or 5 books, depending). you see it is
difficult to build a library. i have sworn myself to greater care than i
have exercised in the past, though on which principle this care depends
is part of the unpredictability of one’s reading and one’s desire. i am
not a researcher. and yet i cannot write without being involved,
intensely involved in reading, which is always circular, and like a
labyrinth. personally i experience almost all fiction as fatally clever,
and i hate this in writing, in the writing i want to do, and really it
is as though one searches for words themselves and always there are so
very few, and then there is also the desire for the historical image,
which is necessarily fragmentary. yesterday i probably read for more
than six hours and if you were to ask me what i read, in addition to
reading a too-clever novel which naturally is great for teaching, and
that is what i am using it for, i also read from one of my “theory
philosophy” books that i have lately bought, and i was very much
interested, in passing, in a story about Shostakovitch, and how close he
came to Mandelstam’s fate. do you know anything about this. appararently
there is a book translated into English, with the (English) title,
Testimony. What is strange is that this is also the title of a book by
Charles Reznikoff, a kind of anti-immigration myth epic, a
collage-montage, of the suffering of immigrants, mostly lost to history,
the singularity of their fates, blurred in the all-encompassing totality
of the myth of immigration, very powerful obviously even today for the
u.s. and how it imagines itself. at this point among the catalogues i
can feel only that i am looking for language, more than single words, it
is almost like looking for fabrics, the woven density of the material,
to which sometimes there are even attached thought or thoughtfulness,
though i think more and more this is to be found in the gaps, the
spaces, separating one word from another between different languages.

perhaps you have already been to the job and are home again. i hope that
you are. your day is already waning as mine is just beginning. doesn’t
this difference bother you sometimes? it is a feeling of being on one of
those automatic sidewalks in airports and you are going one direction
and i am on another, in another direction. what did you do today, that
is the question i must ask, in view of the time, and you in turn must
ask me, what am i going to do. there is a very strange distance between
the contrast in tenses.

(of course, it would be nice if you were here. and that is a very good
idea, to think positively, about what would be the best to happen).

k.

Sun, 14 Nov 2004 13:00:53 +0100

Airfares
zhen, dear, i have been looking at airfares for the past hour and found
the following

Warsaw to Larnaca and back : about 980 dollars

Warsaw to either Milan or Rome and then separate ticket to Larnaca :
about 750 dollars

Berlin to Larnaca (on Lufthansa) : 8500 zlotys which i think at the
current exchange rate is about 2500 dollars.

hmmm …

do you think you could find out other information from Luba? for me, the
advantage of going on separate tickets first to either Rome or Milan is
that i can break up the ticket cost, pay small amount in cash at the LOT
airline office here in lodz to Rome, for example, and then charge the
Air Italia ticket and either have it delivered or most likely, just have
it waiting for me when i get to the airport (eticket). the important
thing of course is to book the flight. Luba might also remark that the
airfares are high now and will be until after the holidays? there should
be a three week window, so that means i probably don’t need to book a
flight until the 1st or 2nd of january for a 21 or 22 of January flight.


what do you think? (what do the airfare prices look like for you from
Moscow?)

missing your voice today

k.

p.s. train fares do not appear to be cheap enough to justify going by
train to either rome or milan. warsaw to frankfurt for example is 130
euros one way.

Sun, 14 Nov 2004 15:15:10 +0100

ich du er sie es wir ihr sie
zhenya, dear,

did i tell you that it is only 97 cents cheaper to fly to Milan rather
than Rome. this is the new world we live in. imagine us in Poland with
U.S. passports (the Shengen accord) being able to go to Rome for 235
dollars round trip, wouldn’t it be nice to spend a week in Rome once a
year?

i am untied in place, my awareness of place. i had thought Frankfurt was
just across the border from Poland (there is a town called Frankfurt on
the map there, but the big Frankfurt is much farther away, and it is not
a border town, so the closest large (large!) German city is Berlin, six
hours away and about 50 dollars each way – obviously the best choice is
to buy a yearly or seasonal Euro-pass, and then travel among many
countries), so I do not think I will be going to Germany before the
vacations.

and i have no idea what is going on with Czech airlines, they do not
have so many flights to Cypress as in the summer – oh, yes, there is
greater demand in summer, so why fly in winter? still, there was a
direct flight from Prague to Larnaca in January when i checked last
spring and now it has disappeared.

i have conceived a new reading project: reading the catalogues of
bookstores with no intention to buy a book, just to read for the
language. for example, i love these titles:

“Atini Sirpsi” by Detlev Hartmann, or “Toter winkel, blinder fleck” by
Anselm Gluck, or Sprachlupe by Ulrich Holbein. But all my future poetry
is contained in the title:

ich
du er sie
es wir
ihr sie

you should be here now. i am about to devour chicken roasted with rice
and peas. it looks very tasty. there will be other meals for us to –
shall we say – discuss who gets what?

how has your day been, now that it is well into your evening …

k.

Sun, 14 Nov 2004 22:40:10 +0100

Re: Airfares
dear zh,

try http://www.opodo.com which came up when i was using the second url
you sent me. there’s a 178 dollar roundtrip flight on aeroflot from
moscow to cypress, and i found as well the italian airline flight for
408 dollars, so i guess this means we have to keep looking, but do be
careful about booking too expensive of a flight as part of a “package”.

have a good day tomorrow. my day will be too long to notice one way or
another.

k.

Mon, 15 Nov 2004 18:27:12 +0100

The long day is over
dear zh, i am very tired and just now home after 18:00 and i think i
will turn off the lights and try to sleep and then wake up early to do
my work for tomorrow in the morning. it was just a very long day, that’s
all, and perhaps i tried too hard. now there are only three more days.
that is all the great news i have to tell you, though i did go to bed
happy last night after finding the low fares. we should be confident and
expect only the best to happen to us. i wish you were here as i badly
need your arms to rest and i think that even now you would not make fun
of me. no need to go to prague bookstore so you should not worry. they
ship books for free. i do not think though that i will buy any more
books until after february. a long ways away. you were very right about
the imagining what is inside the titles without reading the books. that
is most what writers do anyway. i was just very surprised at finding the
titles suggestive, and they make me imagine. a small wonder right now as
i am so very tired.

missing you.

k.

Tue, 16 Nov 2004 02:50:56 +0100

Mid of night thoughts

dear zh, i am awake now at 2:00 a.m. having gone to sleep immediately at
19:00. so, whether or not one is rested, one begins again.

one reason why i think i am so exhausted is that at least for me,
teaching (the teaching here, which is always influenced by the
displacement, that one is teaching to foreign students, however
bilingual they may be) is also a form of trying to both work through
ideas and bypass ideas, and that i am always in some way working with
ideas of America, and trying to translate them down to the most
introductory level, and yet as today, in a concluding lecture to the
first part of an American culture course, i found myself involved in the
shaping of a thesis that i was only half aware that i have been
developing.

i cannot say, in class, of course, that “there must be no more America”
and i am not even sure that this is something i say very often to
myself, an idea that i live day to day, but this is something i wrote a
long time ago, in one of my first books, and now i understand that i
keep orbiting around this proposition, so that, in working for example
with a series of texts and materials about immigration, i am beginning
to be able to conceive of the idea that – and this is the nature and
character of all ideas – no expression, no formula, is adequate to them
– and so every thesis is false – but what is happening today there, in
the U.S., and it is part of a process of which your schoolmate Tania is
part – is not immigration as it was known a century ago, to which
experience i had direct contact with through stories about by
grandparents – very simply, leaving one world to enter another, leaving
the old world to enter the new world – but movement of vast numbers of
people, movement that is economic and not lingual or cultural. under the
pressure of this movement any prospect of there existing a “national
identity” such as needed to be constructed by propaganda in the WWI and
WWII eras in the U.S. is impossible, and this is a very comforting
thought for anyone (i am speaking about myself, have you noticed that i
am always speaking about myself?) concerned about the conditions and
sometimes very apparently similar conditions between the present time
and the pre-World War period(s). (here i am not really making a great
distinction between WWI and WWII as they were experienced as more or
less the same war in the U.S. and i know how different this way in
Russia).

what i worry about is that in the absence of the kind of organic
conditions of assimilation such as existed in the U.S. in an earlier
historical period, that repressive measures by the govt. will be both
more total in their attempts (“total regime”) and more sudden, more
violent.

the only paradigm (model) i can think of at the moment of the antidote
to this threatening process (it is a process i know you worry about all
the time where you are) is that of the emptying out of the content of
any unified nation or people – as always, we have no language yet for
the reality of what is happening everywhere – movement (migrations)
freed of enforced (assimilative) identifications.

we should always celebrate the foreigner in our midst, as the presence
of the foreigner always calls us back to awareness of the illusion, the
deception, that we are any different from her or him.

the opposite, the call to national identity (in so many of the materials
i work with, which are given to me, in textbooks, to teach) tries to
articulate some idea of what it means to be “American” and nothing could
be more reactionary, more retrograde. neither is the alternative to be
found in some blurred notion of “global identity.”

in some way, we are in a process, a social process, by which we become
“transnationals” and this term appears (and it is the idea my lecture
ended on as i was reading from Marco D’Eramo’s book about the city of
Chicago).

you should know that part of the anxiety i have expressed about the
foreigner in your midst, Marco Negri, has come from both my experience
there in a place which, as so many places, is fundamentally hostile to
the foreigner who does not assimilate (they say this is the case in
France also, though i don’t know, in russia i attributed it to the
harshness of the life-world conditions, and the sameness of the
inhabitants) but also because i have been learning from an Italian
writer.

so i write about these worries without any real hope that you, where you
are, have any ability to do anything about the mistreatment of a
foreigner, even though you speak English, and are in daily
correspondence with another foreigner. we are in fact surrounded by
victimization, and we are ourselves part of that process (the daily
sense of being destroyed by an institutional process which i think is
what both of us are experiencing). so i have 200 students where i should
only have 20 if i hoped to teach at all. i do not teach. i simply
function as part of a system which manages a mass of people.

and yet, i woke up this morning (this night – it is so quiet in these
hours and these have always been my favorite time for writing – to write
into the dawn, looking up from one’s words in the early daylight) to the
memory – was it Nekrasov? – of the Russian writer whose works were very
influential on a later generation of Russians, but whose own life was
that of an obscure teacher. that in the very conditions of the struggle
with (and against) obscurity, the sense of almost-disappearing, of
having no existence in the present at all related to the worth of one’s
writings, are found a kind of purity, or if not purity (in English this
word cannot be disassociated from cleanness and innocence) at least – or
there is not a noun, not a name for it, it is “trying to become other
than where one must be” (trying to find in one’s writing the cause for
movement, for motion, from one place to the next) or “trying to become
otherwise.”

simplicity, always to be recalled to simplicity, not the basic words,
which are the words that are used to oppress, even destroy, people, but
the parts that make up the words, the bits and pieces we seize and form
whole words and sentences with.

maybe.

k.

От: <km@hypobololemaioi.com>

Кому: <lev@tpu.ru>; <zhen_l@rambler.ru>

Тема: Your mailboxes are not working again

Дата: 17 ноября 2004 г. 22:21

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Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2004 18:07:57 +0100

From: km@hypobololemaioi.com

To: zhen_l@rambler.ru

Subject: Sleepwalking

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dear zhenya

i am home now at the other end of the day that was rebegun with your

phone call (i don’t think i was very awake, yet, neither was i asleep)

and all i can say now is that i wore the blue sweater today and it kept

me warm, and i am still wearing it now

and i did thing well: i graded tomorrows papers this morning as well as

today’s so i do not need to do any marking tonight, only maybe an hour

or two or preparation (maybe)

i feel like i am sleepwalking

(and you?)

k.

[so you see, i wrote you, not much of a letter, but i wrote. i am too

tired and too spread-thin to be able to try to be either very amusing or

amazing. my students (some of them anyway) are in shock from recent

footage of u.s. soldier executions of unarmed iraqi combatants. there is

no possible humor for this. what is hard for me is that i am in a

position of being viewed as “american” and so associated someway with

the stormtroopers. that is very much what they look like (i have

pictures of the former ones in my lodz ghetto book).

so you can see that tonight i am humorless. colorless. freud says all

jokes have a deeper, even pathological content. things are getting very

bad all around, and it is probably not the best timing to remind me of

the hatreds that are intensifying everywhere around the world. that is

what war and the spectacle of war does. it is like this great tear in

the symbolic order.

silly questions about cooking? no. i am trying to make some beef rib

soup tonight with rice (it has been raining all day and it very cold and

i am tired of being viewed as ‘american’ and being in this teaching role

of explaining a society and culture i have nothing but contempt for.

last nights movie on the Tuesday “kocham kino” (beloved cinema) was very

soothing in this regard: 2003 Polish film set in countryside, the

beautiful countryside, all the emotion portrayed through the filming of

delicate movements and expressions, very fragile, very lyrical. there

was a falcon (hawk) and a young girl and two brothers, and others, much

random (to me, as the film was in Polish) but their struggle with

boredom and the beauty around them. You are right. Polish cinema is very

advanced.

i do not ever want to leave central europe on days like this. as bad as

the work is, the reminder of that other world where the murderers come

from is even worse. sometimes i can’t believe that i ever escaped it.

thank you for your calls. they are very important.

k.

От: <km@hypobololemaioi.com>

Кому: <lev@tpu.ru>; <zhen_l@rambler.ru>

Тема: Wishful thinking

Дата: 18 ноября 2004 г. 13:10

zhenya, dear,

i did a smart thing last night: sleep, falling asleep while reading at

about 20:00 and now just dragging myself out of bed twelve hours later

with sleep in my eyes, and the satisfying memory of waking up after six

hours and falling back asleep, waking up after eight hours and falling

back asleep and waking up after ten hours and falling yet once again,

back to sleep. i think i could have stayed in bed another two or three

hours, except my back began to hurt.

speaking of pain, how is your tooth? thanks to soviet-era neglect of its

citizens dental life, and you will not care for this comparison, but it

is comforting to me that we both have a history of poor dental care, no

one who has suffered this can know what this is like. in the u.s. it is

extremely expensive, and very few people have insurance, so maybe there

is some parity, and it is not a pleasant subject to talk about. i only

remember as a child and teenager there was never any money to go to the

dentist. imagine growing up in a country like that. perhaps it was also

from the fact that both of my parents were from the country, where

dentists and doctors are not trusted, and viewed as (money) thieves. as

you know, health care in general in the u.s. is for the rich only.

you see that i am very sour on a particular topic lately. i only think

that it can get worse. yes, i make fun sometimes of russian and

russianness, but that is partly from trying to think about the

phenomenon of the foreigner (which anywhere, is the one who does not

speak the same language). general poverty and common experience of

hardship has very beautiful results sometimes and this also i

experienced in russia. there is a difference, perceptible, palpable,

tangible, though i cannot write exactly what this difference is.

what worries me is that i am in a situation, here, of increasing

anti-american emotions, and i do not quite know how to respond. it is

caught up in generation gap also, as the generation of my colleagues do

not share this growing hatred, even if they may be against the war, they

grew up in a time when the u.s. symbolized freedom (it sounds so

ridiculous, but that was the collective fantasy under soviet

domination), and now the invasions and the brutality, and the continuing

economic hardship, first the near impossibility of travel to the u.s.

and the experience of prejudice and even worse when students go to

london, and there is as a result growing antagonism against anything and

everything English and especially, the u.s., the land of lies and bad

movies. (i am paraphrasing student comments in my classes). so the

number of students in the classes declines, etc. i cannot say that i

have ever been in such a situation before. all of my american colleagues

are nervous about talking about the deteriorating situation. one

colleague who lives in my building and who is half-jewish (like you,

which means that he is interested in jewish culture and tries to teach

it) gave as a composition topic something about jewish history in poland

and the majority of the class wrote they were very glad the jews were

gone from Poland. (no one remembers that 250,000 were liquidated in the

very city).

these are terrifying moments. and dark and darker days. literally, the

wind is howling this morning, trees are leaning in the cold wind, and i

have a few hours to read before meeting new students (i had a dream

where one by one they came to me at my desk to tell me they could not

attend class today – talk of wish fulfillment in the dream!) have you

ever read Freud’s “Interpretation of Dreams”? i am sure it is translated

into russian. it is a great book.

k. От: <km@hypobololemaioi.com>

Кому: <lev@tpu.ru>

Тема: Your rambler.ru mailbox is still not working

Дата: 18 ноября 2004 г. 13:12

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Date: Wed, 17 Nov 2004 17:21:43 +0100

From: km@hypobololemaioi.com

To: lev@tpu.ru, zhen_l@rambler.ru

Subject: Your mailboxes are not working again

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Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2004 18:07:57 +0100

From: km@hypobololemaioi.com

To: zhen_l@rambler.ru

Subject: Sleepwalking

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dear zhenya

i am home now at the other end of the day that was rebegun with your

phone call (i don’t think i was very awake, yet, neither was i asleep)

and all i can say now is that i wore the blue sweater today and it kept

me warm, and i am still wearing it now

and i did thing well: i graded tomorrows papers this morning as well as

today’s so i do not need to do any marking tonight, only maybe an hour

or two or preparation (maybe)

i feel like i am sleepwalking

(and you?)

k.

[so you see, i wrote you, not much of a letter, but i wrote. i am too

tired and too spread-thin to be able to try to be either very amusing or

amazing. my students (some of them anyway) are in shock from recent

footage of u.s. soldier executions of unarmed iraqi combatants. there is

no possible humor for this. what is hard for me is that i am in a

position of being viewed as “american” and so associated someway with

the stormtroopers. that is very much what they look like (i have

pictures of the former ones in my lodz ghetto book).

so you can see that tonight i am humorless. colorless. freud says all

jokes have a deeper, even pathological content. things are getting very

bad all around, and it is probably not the best timing to remind me of

the hatreds that are intensifying everywhere around the world. that is

what war and the spectacle of war does. it is like this great tear in

the symbolic order.

silly questions about cooking? no. i am trying to make some beef rib

soup tonight with rice (it has been raining all day and it very cold and

i am tired of being viewed as ‘american’ and being in this teaching role

of explaining a society and culture i have nothing but contempt for.

last nights movie on the Tuesday “kocham kino” (beloved cinema) was very

soothing in this regard: 2003 Polish film set in countryside, the

beautiful countryside, all the emotion portrayed through the filming of

delicate movements and expressions, very fragile, very lyrical. there

was a falcon (hawk) and a young girl and two brothers, and others, much

random (to me, as the film was in Polish) but their struggle with

boredom and the beauty around them. You are right. Polish cinema is very

advanced.

i do not ever want to leave central europe on days like this. as bad as

the work is, the reminder of that other world where the murderers come

from is even worse. sometimes i can’t believe that i ever escaped it.

thank you for your calls. they are very important.

k.

От: <km@hypobololemaioi.com>

Кому: Lukyanova <lev@tpu.ru>

Тема: Re: are you at home?

Дата: 18 ноября 2004 г. 21:32

dear zh, where does it show on the transcript that i sent it to the

wrong address? sometimes the rambler.ru address does not work. i didn’t

send it to the wrong address. i know how to write zhen_l@rambler.ru. it

is not that difficult. sometimes the mailbox does not work. it is a web

address isn’t it? not dial-up? sometimes they malfunction. i had the

same problem my first year in russia with a webmail account. they are

not very dependable.

i am very sorry about your tooth. believe me. this is one thing i can

sympathize with on the basis of experience. do not try to call me if you

are in much pain. tomorrow i will try to buy an internet card. i have

just come home from teaching. one group is very clever, the other group

dull as ditchwater. the dull-as-ditchwater group asked me to change the

meeting to 8:30 on thursday mornings, and since another teacher came to

the class in the middle of our meeting (they scheduled two classes at

overlapping times, apparently the office workers neither know how to

tell time nor to use computers – they were hired in soviet period) it

looks like i will have to accomodate them, and have 3 hours on thursdays

between classes, just what i like – time to kill. what a life. only

there’s no life to that expression, so i can’t use it with any

conviction.

what will i do tonight? what else? wish that i had another life.

k.

(p.s. good luck tomorrow at your very nice dentist. at least he is a

nice man. i hope he is also skillful. i will worry about you, and call

you saturday if i can)

От: <km@hypobololemaioi.com>

Кому: <lev@tpu.ru>; <zhen_l@rambler.ru>

Тема: Snow

Дата: 19 ноября 2004 г. 14:12

dear zh, today’s the day of the first snow, and it is snowing now,

wind-driven, at an angle, blowing across the space of my window, and

white is surrounding, enveloping, covering, everything. how should this

affect my mood? if i can stay inside all day, perhaps it is not so bad.

yesterday morning the wind was howling, and the rain continued through

most of the morning, though by the time i went to the institute the sun

decided to come out for an hour or two. now we have snow, and thick grey

skies.

i know you have already been through the sessions, transitions, from

snow to mud to ice and back to snow again, and now you are probably

settled into a foot or two or early winter snow, here, however, the mud

is yet to come, mud and slush, and only later, continuous freezing and

below freezing temperatures. my favorite snow was the first days in

palangas, when we went to the shore of the Baltic, and there was heavy

snow, driving snow, in the wind, as today. i did not have such a warm

sweater then. did i tell you that i am quite fond of my blue sweater? i

was never so warm last year. you are a very clever girl. just as the

weather gets cold and colder and my mood begins to darken, lengthening

towards depression, i put on my sweater and i am reminded of you and

your thoughtfulness. that is a very rare quality, thoughtfulness.

i do not think you will deny that you are as thoughtful as you are

absent-minded. i think the two qualitites complement each other very

well.

now, today, i am afraid that you are in great discomfort, even pain, and

do you refuse to take any drug to help the pain? do the dentists

prescribe codeine there? would you take if it you were able to? i rather

think your “system” is intolerant of such drugs, if even coffee and tea

can disturb you. so, what do you do? i hope that you can stay in bed.

there is no better reason for staying home, though i seem to remember

the last time you went to work on the same day, in pain. why?

perhaps you know of herbal teas that are good for you at this time. i

regret that of course i do not know any, being very ignorant of such

things, though i seem to remember that camomille is good for such pain.

today i hope that i can read and only read, though i should go to the

institute, to rearrange classes for one of the new classes, and perhaps

i will in the afternoon. for right now i am going to finish my coffee

and continue reading a very good book by a french writer, Henri

Lefebvre, this book was written in 1960, when this philosopher broke

with Stalinism, and he writes very critically of Stalinism and its

influence among intellectuals in France of his post-WWII generation, and

yet he does not give up his Marxism.

this is very helpful to me at a time when events in the news make me

want to feel anti-american and of course this is always a false feeling,

a false thought, perhaps there is nothing more false, than to generalize

a nationality, or to confuse a military with a geographic and social

space, and especially one such as the u.s. where to live and work there

all you need are a few documents, so it is not so much dependent on

language and culture, still, the pictures of the military are very hard

to assimilate into one’s daily life.

in a way, this war is ruining everything. remember that i am writing

this, now, and how in the future, this war will lead to worse and wider

wars.

we have every reason to be concerned for the future, nothing can be

taken for granted. nothing can be assumed. does this affect the rhythm

at which i live day to day? no, not really. perhaps what is best about

being here is that i feel rather protected, secure, even in the

over-work, and that is something of a paradox, or contradiction.

the more work i do the more indispensable i become. even yesterday in a

brief conversation with my dept. chair, she is extremely friendly

towards me, and i believe, appreciative of my work. i think perhaps my

students and my polish colleagues say nice things about me. this feels

very good, to belong just a little here, even if it is based on over

work.

a little too much work sometimes never killed anybody, only the weapons

of war kill, and i am very grateful to be so far away from the news of

the war which must be almost unbearable in the u.s.

rest today. i will call you if i can tomorrow night. late.

k.

От: <km@hypobololemaioi.com>

Кому: Lukyanova <lev@tpu.ru>

Тема: First steps

Дата: 19 ноября 2004 г. 18:16

zhenya, today i am taking no steps outside. the snowstorm is the worst i

have seen since i have been here. there was nothing like it last winter.

so i will stay inside all day, wishing you were here, so we could crawl

under the covers together. now however i am making chicken-noodle soup

as i want something warm. fortunately, i went to the store last night

and bought a few things. the snow is so thick you can hardly see

outside. and there is howling wind. it is a good excuse to do nothing. i

hope we have a week long blizzard as i need a vacation from teaching.

tuesday i will find out about the exact dates, and then i hope to go to

warsaw to buy the plane ticket like i did last time. if the prices stay

the same, i will buy a ticket on the Italian airline as that is the

cheapest price. there is no need to go to England first, though it is

incredibly cheap here to do that. about the same as taking the train to

Prague. the wind is picking up again. there is like a tunnel of wind

that blows through the hallway, and when i am in the kitchen, i can hear

it. the sound is like a tornado. i wish i had some brandy to put in my

coffee.

why do you not mention your trip to the dentist?

k.

p.s. there was no mistake sending to your rambler.ru box on my part? did

you check? should we attribute it to “foul play” (how do they translate

that in the russian detective novels – do you know what is foul play?-

strange, it is not exactly opposite of “fair play”)

p.s.s. and why do you never send me the copy of my essay on the cd? i

don’t need it right away – i am only curious.

От: <km@hypobololemaioi.com>

Кому: <lev@tpu.ru>; <zhen_l@rambler.ru>

Тема: All whiteness

Дата: 20 ноября 2004 г. 13:31

dear zh, it is quite beautiful this morning, the snow has been soft

enough to blanket the branches, and it does not appear that it will melt

soon. so the surrounding world is quiet for the moment.

around noon today i promise to venture out as far as the local poczta in

search of a phone card, the one i intended to obtain yesterday at the

larger poczta near the institute, though i did not go to the institute,

not wishing to go out in the snowstorm, so please do not be too mad at

me if they are out of phone cards at the local poczta. i will buy two if

they do have them (that is what i did the last time).

i only want to read today and read for myself, not for my classes. that

i will do tomorrow. i do not always teach uninteresting materials,

sometimes even literature, but my heart sinks every time i try to

prepare even poems and other works of literature to the appropriate

level of the introduction, the beginner. as i have written to you

before, what is especially disheartening and disappointment is that i am

in position always of patiently explaining the most basic things, and i

cannot ever simply think aloud, which is what teaching literature,

especially poetry, should be like. that, and i never receive even the

least comment that helps me to think, always only very basic things

which, in answering, always makes me feel like a pedagogue. this is a

stifling feeling.

as for cooking, you do not need to worry so much about soups. when i say

that i am making a soup, what i mean is that i make a broth and

sometimes it cooks into the rest of the ingredients in the pot, such as

yesterday, when i made noodles with chicken broth and tomato compote,

but the end effect was nice warm noodles which absorbed, perhaps too

much, the chicken broth. still, what i suggest is this, before you set

out on your great adventure away from your home kitchen, instead of

traditional dowry, or gift, you should have your mother write all your

favorite recipes and keep them in a special notebook which you will

carry and keep with you always, for my reference. this way i will know

in advance all your preferences, though in my experience you are more

discriminating in theory than in practice.

the evening you went down to the shop for a can of pork to add to the

pea “soup” was a great moment for me, since anyone who likes pork and

peas will not complain too much dinner to dinner. my greatest worry is

that i really do not have any regular habits: i never eat at the same

time, and on long days, i often just have cheese and bread, very

unsatisfying, even for myself. we will have to practice the restaurant,

especially the Chinese restaurants, which are quite good here, and

inexpensive (unlike Tomsk).

you will say that my letter is making you hungry. i can’t help this, as

i have just woken up and am only drinking my morning coffee. as usual,

you are far advanced into the day and related matters. you should allow

yourself more time off, i will say this once again, and only go to the

office on saturdays when you must teach, which is not every saturday,

yes? on the days off, you should stay in bed as much as possible, in

your room, lying down, reading, or watching a good movie, which, as you

can play dvd, gives you more choices.

in a book i was reading a few days ago about a Polish director whose

films i have never seen, Krzystof Kieslowski, there were some pages

given to Tarkovsky’s “Stalker” as the greatest of his films, and you

will remember this was the film i was not interested in seeing! well, if

you are bored, i can give you the reference to the film so that you may

take an interest in it:

“If, then, Stalker (1979) is Tarkovsky’s masterpiece, it is above all

because of the direct physical impact of its texture: the physical

background to its metaphysical quest, the landscape of the Zone, is a

post-industrial wasteland with wild vegetation growing over abandoned

factories, concrete tunnels and railways full of stagnant water in which

stray cats and dogs wander. Nature and industrial civilization are here

again overlapping, but through a common decay-civilization in decay is

in the process of again being reclaimed (not by idealized harmonious

Nature, but) by nature in decomposition. The ultimate Tarkovskian

landscape is that of a damp nature, a river or pool close to some

forest, full of the debris of human artifice (old concrete blocks or

pieces of rotten metal). The actors’ faces themselves, especially

Stalker’s, are unique in their blend of ordinary ruggedness with scars,

dark or white spots and other signs of decay, as if they have all been

exposed to some poisonous chemical or radioactive substance, but still

emanates a fundamental naive goodness and trust.”

Where did i write that line your were translating from the science paper

about tests on the radiation levels in the hair of children?

k.

От: <km@hypobololemaioi.com>

Кому: Lukyanova <lev@tpu.ru>

Тема: Re: All whiteness

Дата: 20 ноября 2004 г. 21:59

dear zh, so that was you! i was afraid to answer the phone for fear that

it was the dunce-college in need of a substitute, then i went out for

the phone card, and found two small ones, but i just tried to call you

on your cell phone and the message told me it was the wrong number. is

your cell phone charged? should i try to call you on your home phone.

did you send this email from the office? i don’t know whether your home

phone is working yet. i will try to call after midnight.

k.

Кому: Lukyanova <lev@tpu.ru>

Тема: Re: again, yes, again

Дата: 20 ноября 2004 г. 22:01

dear zh, yes i will call you tonight on your home phone, after midnight.

k.

Кому: <lev@tpu.ru>

Тема: More positives

Дата: 21 ноября 2004 г. 16:24

dear zh, now I am in my study with coffee and of course my first wish or

will (volition, you might say) is to write a few words as afterthoughts

to the very pleasant feeling of having been listening to your voice for

the last 40 minutes.

yes, I think we should try to go to Israel for a day when in Cypress. I

would like to try to see one or two places mentioned by the French

writer, Flaubert, during his visit to Jerusalem. The current situation

should not deter us, and perhaps it is no different than the danger in

Egypt that you remember. How much I should like to visit Cairo soon

also.

and about thinking positively, what i mean by my employability is that

as long as I am teaching I am always in a good position to obtain a

teaching position somewhere else, and especially my practical English

courses are good in this regard. I should be very direct (even to

myself): directly speaking, I am increasing in my teaching skills and

ability to communicate with students almost spontaneously at this point;

I am more and more familiar with different teaching methods, and I am

getting more skillful at noticing what will and will not work with a

particular group of students; and most important of all, I get along

very well with colleagues, and so I am proving to myself, despite all

the loneliness and depression sometimes, that I am adaptible in a

variety of surroundings. I mean all this by my “employability” – that

is, that I am not about to change professions at any time, that I fully

accept the prospect of teaching for the next 20 years. that is not a

problem.

as far as choices, there is much talk here in Central Europe about the

entry of Turkey into the European Union, and they have some of the

better universities with English programs in them, especially in

Istanbul (Constantinople). also I have noticed before that some

universities in England hire American teachers, though it is most based

on merit. China is always an option for both of us (as would Turkey).

and here you will laugh at me (or perhaps with me) but especially in

China you would probably find yourself asked to teach English. the task

facing you, about work, and your worries about work, for you, could it

perhaps be that the kind of work that is facing you is that of a

language teacher, either Russian or English? in that case, what are the

certificates that one would need to obtain. maybe that is one thing you

could do in a year or two in Lodz, so that you would not feel that you

had nothing to do. I don’t think we can know a lot about this in

advance, my only sense is that Poland is a very popular place for people

from both former Soviet Union zones and the East (India, Africa, the

Middle East, etc.) so you should not feel that you are the only

“foreigner” coming to move here, nor should you expect hostility. you

might even experience some unexpected friendliness, especially from my

colleagues and the chair of my department. I can assure you of one

thing: that I am working well here, and that I have the respect of my

Polish colleagues, so we can in turn expect them to be very helpful.

but I am also not adverse to the idea of teaching somewhere else,

especially in Turkey or China, eventually. very helpful word,

eventually. meanwhile, my salary is higher than I ever expected when I

was in Russia. the great big push in my life which lately I tend to

associate with eliminating the distance between us and leading a life

together, is study of languages. I am not asking that we study the same

languages together. but I realize that when I read the French newspaper

and understand 90 percent of the words, that I need to practice at least

two languages on an almost daily basis. I justify to myself that I am

too busy now, when really I think I am still adjusting to living abroad,

and that it takes many years. yesterday and the day before I was reading

a book by an American writer who did not visit the U.S. for 30 (thirty!)

years and she mentions over and over again just how many years it takes

to adapt to the space between languages, cultures. this book reminds me

that I should not be so impatient with myself, that I am still learning

to be “elsewhere” and in foreign lands, and that each year will improve.

it is so very important for example that only this year, the first in

four years, am I able to order books in English from foreign bookstores.

it is very important for my mental well-being and my intellectual life.

as for living in the U.S., I truly feel sometimes from you that you are

indifferent to this, and it is important for us to discuss. it is

something of course that I am capable of doing, but I am always very

worried about what will happen to me, and I think sometimes that if I do

have to return to the U.S., that I will experience it as a defeat, as

something I failed to do, that I was unable to live abroad, to work, to

travel, to write, to publish. This is how I imagine my 50s (do not laugh

at me!) (you are very lucky to have all – ALL – of your 40s to look

forward to) (and as I mentioned in Tomsk, at 40 that is when many women

and men in Anglo-American culture make decisions to change their lives,

so it is a very good time, and a very young time, so you should not let

the “Slavic” or “Russian” tendency to make women especially feel older

than they are to convince yourself that all you have to look forward to

is retirement and the company of a very absent-minded poet who loves to

take long walks with you as much as he loves to say that he doesn’t want

to).

yesterday, surrounded by the snow that reminded me so much of Palangas,

I wished very much to take a long walk towards the darkening evening

with you, as the wind was warm on my face, and the snow so very

beautiful and reminding me of the very best days in Palangas.

you can see from this letter that I am today hopeful and positive about

the future, and that I am very happy to have wakened to speaking to you.

this is the best way to begin a Sunday morning, which is actually the

title of a poem that I have to teach on Tuesday.

k.

От: <km@hypobololemaioi.com>

Кому: <lev@tpu.ru>

Тема: Patron Saint of Stray Dogs

Дата: 21 ноября 2004 г. 18:01

dear zh, i thought you might enjoy if by chance you check your email

today this very simple and charming poem by your favorite

Jewish-American poet, Charles Reznikoff, about, it would appear, nothing

more momentous than a stray dog …

Excerpts from “By the Well of Living and Seeing”

                  7

The highway I was walking on

Went through a marsh. There were no houses:

nothing but the marsh.

No one else was walking on the highway

in the blazing sun.

I saw the dog a hundred feet away–

a burly fellow, half chow, I thought,

half German shepherd,

shaggy hair plastered with mud.

The dog saw me, too, and came running towards me.

I walked on, afraid the dog would bite.

I could hear the nails of his paws

clicking on the pavement.

But he passed me–never looked at me–

and ran along as I walked;

ten or twenty feet ahead,

ten or twenty feet behind.

I did not like his looks at all,

the heavy brow, the square jaws–

a shaggy dirty fellow.

The road was as lonely as ever:

marsh under the blazing sky

and the motorcars speeding past.

I could see the pavement of a street on the other side

and the bright blue sea. It would be cooler there,

and I might be rid of the dog.

The dog looked up, after a while,

saw me on the other side,

and came towards me, straight through the traffic.

I stood stock-still,

waiting for the dog to be hit.

Sure enough, the second or third card struck him

and sent him sprawling on his back, squealing.

The brakes of the car screeched;

the dog leaped to his feet,

and was knocked down again,

and then came running towards me.

“You dope!” I said.

But I was touched at his devotion.

Now we went on side by side:

the dog close to me and I no longer afraid.

Now and then we came to a stairway

leading to the beach. Below, other dogs were running about on

and the dog was eager to go down. But he stopped,

waiting for me at the head of each stairway,

and as I went on he followed.

The street turned at last and we were back on the highway.

Now I was afraid to cross for fear the dog would be hit.

He stood beside me, looking up at me,

watching my hands and feet,

ready to spring forward.

At last there was a break in the traffic–

only two cars coming. I could cross easily:

go part of the way, let the cars pass, and then cross over.

But I was afraid the dog would rush on

and be hit. “No,” I said to him,

“no!”

And we walked along the edge of the highway without crossing.

As the dog ran on beside me, sturdy and true,

I thought of his lifted face,

the deep brown eyes watching mine;

yes, I should like to keep him.

Walking so together, we came to some houses.

These were at the sea–

cottages, refreshment stands, even a small merry-go-round.

I stopped at a stand.

“What should I get my dog to eat?” I asked the pleasant girl

behind the counter. She smiled at me,

and leaned over the counter to smile at the dog

as he stood beside me, wagging his tail.

“Hamburger,” she said. “Dogs love it.”

“All right.”

“One or two?”

“Two.”

She took the fresh cakes out of the icebox

and put them on a square of wax paper.

I walked to the corner of the stand. The dog followed

and I put the meat down.

The dog looked at it;

his tail drooped, his eyes were glazed with fear,

and he was off

as fast as he could go

bolting over the sand hills.

От: <km@hypobololemaioi.com>

Кому: <lev@tpu.ru>

Тема: Beofe work

Дата: 22 ноября 2004 г. 12:15

dear zh,

we both have long and uneventful days today. what a thing to have in

common. i spent half an hour this morning just trying to find a piece of

paper. of course it had something written on it for one of my four

classes today. actually five, five classes, not five pieces of paper.

though the pages were stapled. i call it a piece of paper though it was

actually more than one. i hope you don’t mind.

i am drinking my cup of coffee before going out into the cold and the

ice and snow to the bus where the people on the bus will be cold and

they will look cold. of course i don’t know if they really are cold.

already the ones passing by on the street outside my kitchen window

which i noticed while making coffee are dressed very warmly, so that is

a reminder that i must wear today my blue sweater.

now it seems that i am tired before the day already begins. there is a

discrepency between what i plan for a class and what i am actually able

to do, and somewhere in this middle area something, there is something

to do with energy, the situation, itself, is not producing energy, but

rather the reverse. i should think some more about this. right now, the

only thought i am capable of is that i have already combed my hair

(actually, brushed, as it seems this morning that i have lost my last

comb) and now i must put on my sweater, which i must pull over my head.

i wish life were always this complicated.

you should know that i do not expect a very long letter from you today

as i know that you have a very long day and that all you will wish to do

at the end of it is to return to your bed, which i think is a very good

solution. maybe you will simply write me goodnight tonight. that would

be very nice. i will try to write you again when i come home this

afternoon, and as there are no appointments, i should be home about

16:30. though i know that you do not care for soup, i made a very good

one yesterday for supper, though i forgot to add the canned corn and

peas in the refrigerator.

k.

От: <km@hypobololemaioi.com>

Кому: <lev@tpu.ru>

Тема: Sharp sauce

Дата: 23 ноября 2004 г. 12:38

zhenya dear, i can’t write a very long letter as i have overslept and

must mark compositions this morning etc. etc.

it rained last night and all the beautiful Palangas-like drifts and

wafts of powdered snow have melted, and all that is left is ice and

water and mud with most of the green grass almost obscenely exposed.

i want the winter to be as in palangas, always, as i have very sweet

memories of being there, with you. last night coming home i had to stop

by the british council library to return a book and it was

raining-snowing and unpleasant, so i went to a chinese restaurant i had

never been to before and had a pleasant meal of hot and sour soup, a

bowl of glass noodles, and a dish called ‘sharp sauce beef’ which was

quite good. the soup was nothing to write home about, as we say, but the

main course was good enough that i will return there. the menu was in

Polish and English, and when the waitress heard my pitful attempts to

pronounce the dishes in Polish, she spoke a little English, though at

the end of the meal she asked me “smakowa?” and i at first shook my head

“no” and then realized she was asking whether or not i found the meal to

be tasty (smak) and i corrected myself and said “dobje, dobje” though at

such moments russian words like “xorosho” want to jump out of me.

also, last night, when i came home, i found my comb, and this was a

great relief to me, so i went to sleep very happy, even after marking

compositions for two hours, because i do not like to lose my comb.

forgive me this short letter, though i think you will be pleased to

learn that i have found a new restaurant not far from my flat.

k.

От: <km@hypobololemaioi.com>

Кому: <lev@tpu.ru>

Тема: Cypress dates

Дата: 24 ноября 2004 г. 12:26

zhenya, dear, we had agreed on two weeks? the exam that i need to stay

for is on the 27th of January and the following day we will evaluate

them so Saturday, January 29 (our stay beginning on that Saturday night,

check in, i mean) and then i will need to return on Sunday, February 13,

though Monday is also a possibility.

The Czech airline flights are for these dates very low, less than 200

dollars, so getting there, even from Warsaw, is not a problem. how about

you? of course, with two weeks, we will have to do the three-day process

(though i will be responsible for the fees). perhaps two weeks will let

us get a slightly nicer hotel, and be easier for your “conference”

forms.

otherwise, i am suffering a little from exhaustion, you might even call

it white out, as there is once again, after yesterday’s thaw, stormy

weather, strong winds, blowing snow, and i have to teach today, and very

soon. i have next to no energy for it, and so i feel rather gloomy. on

bad days, such as today, all i want is a decent job with regular hours.

i miss you.

k.

(i will try to write a longer letter tonight, i should get home about

16:30).

От: <km@hypobololemaioi.com>

Кому: <lev@tpu.ru>; <zhen_l@rambler.ru>

Тема: Back out into the cold and to the store

Дата: 24 ноября 2004 г. 21:57

dear zh, i am home for the moment and missing a letter from you though i

suppose as i am you are going in too many directions at once, i have to

go to the store now as i have nothing to eat and have had nothing to eat

all day until just now, a few dates, thinking of cypress, where, i

imaging there are many such dates, now though i would like to eat

something warm, and i must cook a dish to take to the dinner tomorrow,

though before i get there i must teach two classes, and friday yet

another class that was cancelled today, or rescheduled, so i am working

all five days this week, it is too much, but i won’t write about it, and

yet you must know that i am nearing once again the end of my rope as we

say, just needing to rest, sick of teaching, sick especially of teaching

poetry (you should never teach poetry to anyone who does not want to

read it, and most of the world does not read it) how dangerous for me to

be in a position where the poetry occupies a superfluous position, and

the all-important, the only important matter, i am feeling so far away

from that at the moment that i am distressed, almost, certainly just

very tired, and more and more hopeless. the winter that has suddenly

arrived does not help. so i am off to the store now to commit a further

series of mechanical operations, like the robot that i am being turned

into here is becoming, soon to become, or already am – the mechanical

steps one can literally count (even in one’s sleep)

i hope you are happier than i am today, though i imagine that you would

laugh at the very concept – happy? do you know the word “scoff”? it is a

very good word for your reactions to such pitiless ideas

i miss your scoffing, i.e. life is a bad joke but not as bad a joke as

the only other alternative …

k.

От: <km@hypobololemaioi.com>

Кому: <lev@tpu.ru>; <zhen_l@rambler.ru>

Тема: Back from the store

Дата: 24 ноября 2004 г. 23:14

dear zh, i am back from the store and though my hands are weak from

carrying the bags i am not as cold as i was afraid of becoming and there

are some pierogi cooking on the stove (i cook them in a very lazy way –

steaming) and i have an evening to more or less prepare two conversation

classes so life could be worse – i didn’t want you to think that i was

at a total loss – though it feels like that some times – and the wind

has been so cold lately – maybe i will be in a better mood tomorrow

morning when i write you – hoping to hear from you yet tonight

k.

От: <km@hypobololemaioi.com>

Кому: <lev@tpu.ru>; <zhen_l@rambler.ru>

Тема: Lemon and sugar?

Дата: 25 ноября 2004 г. 12:11

zhenya, dear, of course i always feel better in the morning as what

choice does one have? i almost never get up on the wrong side of the

bed. that expression is used for waking up in a bad mood. or perhaps the

problem is that i have no one to be in a bad mood with (until my morning

class). maybe i will be in a bad mood with them, though that is not a

liberty that a foreign teacher takes very often. if they do not come to

class, of course i will be in what is called a “foul mood”. but i am not

in so bad a mood this morning, especially because

“I have good news for you”

as i spoke with my mother yesterday evening to wish her a happy holiday

and she said one of the packages with the documents had arrived at her

address, and i think it is the most important one. we are going to wait

another week for the other one. there is certainly plenty of time.

last night for the dinner tonight i cooked beets to make a salad dish

with beet and walnuts and first, i forgot that i have only one rather

small pot so i had to cook beets in turns, and then i forgot what one

flavors them with, so i used lemon and sugar (do you agree? or do you

use vinegar?) sometimes i put too much olive oil and vinegar on such

dishes and though it suits my taste and general sour disposition, i was

suddenly concerned because other people would be tasting it and i hope i

did not ruin it with lemon and sugar. what do you think.

it took me several hours to make a simple dish of beets so from this

fact you can see how much stress i am under lately.

i only hope it is not the same with you. and what of you? no words from

you last night? how are you?

k.

От: <km@hypobololemaioi.com>

Кому: Lukyanova <lev@tpu.ru>

Тема: This day two years ago

Дата: 25 ноября 2004 г. 12:18

dear zhen,

thank you for writing. i almost forgot to mention. do you remember?

wasn’t it two years ago today that you first saw me sitting in a corner

(one of many such corners i am afraid)? has your first view of the

miserable foreigner lived up to your expectations?

very strange to think that i was going to 8:30 class then and today i am

going to 8:30 class. this should suggest to most sane people that i need

a new job. more on that theme later, though you should (and i think you

do) accept all my pronouncements about being only able to work in EU (or

only wanting to work) with a grain of salt.

did you notice that i am practicing idioms and sayings on you? most of

them are not very useful, so don’t bother about them, i hope.

i miss you.

k.

p.s. 900 euros per person for two weeks, isnt’ that about 150 dollars a

day for both for a hotel room? this can’t be the correct figure? at

about 1000 or 1200 dollars a week for both, yes that is about 75 dollars

for the hotel room – maybe it is correct. do you remember what you paid

before?

Кому: <lev@tpu.ru>

Тема: Unexpected reprieve

Дата: 25 ноября 2004 г. 15:56

dear zh

and so is the way of things here that i find myself home at 10:45 after

being informed by the department secretary that there is a mobilization

of the students by the university this afternoon in support of the

democratic opposition in Ukraine, which is huge news here. from what i

can tell from the few reports that i’ve read, russian and the u.s. are

fast becoming enemies again, and this time around it is the matter of

competition for trade influence and etc. as you may well imagine, there

is all-out support for the u.s. side, and perhaps it is the more

progressive side, what is discomforting is the drawing of lines, and the

perception that any one side is less corrupt than the other. i don’t

like being asked to take sides. anyway, the manifestation planned for

this afternoon resulted in my coming home, where i have a few hours

before going to big dinner tonight. i will describe every mouthful to

you. the problem is, at such dinners, i am always too shy, and i cannot

eat with abandon such as we might if we had the meal all to ourselves.

to eat until you can no longer stand up, that is the ambition of

thanksgiving. instead, i will take very measured portions, and perhaps

even refuse seconds. impossible! you protest. i believe you are fond of

gravy and sauces, and that is the nicest thing about this meal. i hope

my beets are not too sweet. have you ever heard of adding lemon and

sugar to beets? write me when you can. i always enjoy the least word

from you, it doesn’t matter, and i know we are both equally stressed and

exhausted at this point. i had a thought about cypress. the prices are

probably so high because of the christmas season which usually extends

to the middle of january, so prices should be significantly less by the

end of january, and it is probably in our favor to take the vacation the

first two weeks of february. if you wish, we can even make it a few days

later if you wish to be with your dear mother on her birthday on the 1st

of February. didn’t you say that february was the cheapest month to

vacation in cypress? but let’s not worry about it. i look forward to

being with you, and the cost of the trip is not all that important. we

have a very good expression for this in english, “whatever it takes.”

that is how i feel. what i would not give some nights to be able to go

to bed and for you to be there, welcoming me. did i tell you that you

are a very warm jenya? i do not write like this often because you have

told me you do not like it, such language. seriosne?

k.

От: <km@hypobololemaioi.com>

Кому: Lukyanova <lev@tpu.ru>

Тема: Re: This day two years ago

Дата: 25 ноября 2004 г. 16:17

dear zhen,

and do you know, what almost makes me weep is that someone there went to

all the trouble to obtain a squash in late november and deep winter in

siberia and to make a pie from it and serve it with very beautiful and

expensive paper napkins? as i told you, i had just finished teaching a

class reading aloud from some “sample” of native american language and

we had been talking about how all the surviving words more or less

amounted to the same thought: “please don’t kill me” so i was in near

tears that morning, not because of the day, or even the beautiful pie,

the russian gesture, always symbolic, but the words in my ears.

k.

От: <km@hypobololemaioi.com>

Кому: <zhen_l@rambler.ru>; <lev@tpu.ru>

Тема: Waking up

Дата: 26 ноября 2004 г. 12:45

dear zhen, my alarm went off at 6:30 and I lay in bed for another 45

minutes surprisingly without a hangover, I thought that I drank enough

wine for one, but maybe it wasn’t (the wine) strong enough. I can’t say

that I’m disappointed, that I have no hangover. Worse, I was terribly

bored last night, by the conversation, (except for the one comment, “all

it is about is who gets the contracts”), even by the guests, though they

were known to me, and I think I am suffering from the “splitness” or

division between one’s mental life (what I do when I am home, my

reading, and trying to work in the direction of some set of ideas that

may develop somehow, either in creative or intellectual or both kinds of

manifestations, what I mean is writing, my writing, which, as you will

come to know or as you may already know, is all that I ever really think

about, and I hope you do not mind this, for it will never change, and

this kind of concentration on a single idea, it always pushes all other

ideas and realities aside, even one so mundane as a dinner, but I am

finding that I am no longer capable of simply slipping or sliding past

such events, that they affect me negatively, and so, this morning,

somewhat unsurprisingly, I find myself negatively affected. Maybe I even

wish that I hadn’t gone. It has something to do with the ‘American’

effect, a stray comment here and there, often just a form of nostalgia,

but the comments about what is happening in Ukraine for example, and how

people who even profess that they are critical of the mass media repeat

its slogans, “international observers,” “pro-democracy candidate,” etc.

The basic problem always is that both sides of the issue are false, in

the appearance, and we simply cannot see what is really going on, and if

we cannot see it, can we understand it? Did I mention the academic

article I read recently about the events around Gorbachev’s house arrest

and the CNN shot of Yeltsin proclaiming something or other “democratic”

on a tank in that street in Moscow? The right-wing coup attempt in 91.

What is so very interesting is the investment of the academic article in

a book about visual culture is that it simply cannot conceive of the

other end of the Yeltsin process, that in the emergence from the strict

state controls and the democratic struggle (by this I mean simply masses

of people stopping their daily lives and filling the streets until they

get an answer of one sort or another) that was needed to make a very

minor structural change in the state, must lead to sharper and sharper

territorial and ideological conflicts with the West – Europe and America

have been locked in a conflict that has already spanned two world wars.

We are entering the very early stages of widespread instability,

economic as well as social-institutional, and as the old title of the tv

documentary series I remember watching as a child, “The World at War” is

a good caption of the narrative just beginning to develop.

I don’t think these remarks of mine are very helpful either to myself or

to you. We want to do something very simple. Make some kind of quiet and

predictability and especially, to make our lives a little less lonely.

But what is the background? What kind of “world” (what an impossible

word in English) are we trying to do this simple thing? Meanwhile I am

functioning like a sleepwalker or robot, and at least I know it. What is

disturbing is to hear other robots talking as though they believed they

were not. I have a class to go to this morning, so it will ruin my

morning, I will go to the institute briefly, a question of paperwork,

perhaps I will even try to pick up my identity card at the Passport

office, I will go to the British Council Library, I will try to get my

hair cut, I will do a number of errands, and at 6:00 I will go to a

concert with a British colleague. I should get home about 21:00 or 22:00

and have tomorrow exactly one day to myself and to my reading before I

must begin the next round, the next week.

Yes, if this sounds like stress, it is. Deep tiredness, and intense

boredom. All very bad ingredients for me, and yet disturbingly typical.

It is work, and worse, working for others, and not for yourself and for

your own work.

I hope you do not mind this by now familiar note at the threshold of

tolerance for the daily life.

k.

What is ugly in Ukraine

Fri, 26 Nov 2004 00:09:26 +0100

dear zh,

i heard a very good comment from one of the Polish dinner guests about
the situation in Ukraine: it is all about who gets the contracts,
Russian or EU/US.

that is all it is about, and we will see this repeated again. yes, you
are right, it is very bad.

k.

От: <km@hypobololemaioi.com>

Кому: <lev@tpu.ru>

Тема: What questions (with irony)

Дата: 26 ноября 2004 г. 19:47

dear zhen, i don’t know what to say about russian sites though they must

be less trustworthy than the cypress sites. maybe we should write the

cypress site. i have just been looking at u.s. jobs. there are a couple.

the pressure here is getting to be to much, and i am pretty sure that i

am going to throw in the towel (quit) the dunce college after this

semester. that will mean a loss of about 1000 dollars in the spring. i

just can’t keep doing it, too humiliating. i asked a. salska my chair

today for a reference in case it is needed for applying to u.s. job, and

though of course i will be invited to return next year, there is also

stong pressure on the department, all departments, to cut back on

faculty, though this was implied in my conversation with her, though the

topic of choice at dinner last night. everyone is under pressure,

strain, stress. myself included, myself especially included. if i do get

a job in the u.s. it will probably be a frustrating one as i have been

so remiss in practicing poetry “professionally” and yet there is a

chance that, since i have been teaching at this university, that i might

get something that would enable a start (once again, a start) there.

then we would have other options other than cypress. i just don’t know

what to say at this point. when one is tired, and feeling more hopeless

than not, everything appears insurmountable. but i will not be the one

to suggest “litva” for february. it is not what i wish. but we are in a

very precarious situation, and i do not wish to be foolish, either. i

hope that you are able to write me again today. i won’t stay out very

late tonight, so please don’t worry.

i miss you.

k.

Home

Sat, 27 Nov 2004 01:02:24 +0100

Sat, 27 Nov 2004 01:02:24 +0100

dear zhen, because i know you do worry about me i am writing you to tell
you i am home at 1:00 a.m. after going to very bad schlock-gospel
concert and then winding up at a pub listening to very good Polish
musicians playing Balkan music for 4 hours (i arrived at 21:00 and they
started at 20:00 and finished at midnight) there were students from
Belarus and Bulgaria there, and a lot of dancing, very good spirit, and
my mood is totally changed. i felt so very good listening and watching
the dancing in small smoky room. also i met a French colleague (actually
he does not work right now) and we spoke about my taking French lessons
and this maybe i will see about on Sunday. i so very much like to hear
talk French. my mood is very good and i have had three very nice strong
Polish beers listening to very good Balkan music. i hope you can call in
the morning. but i thought you would like to know i am okay and home and
warm and even, just a little, happy. Balkan music sounds so very nice.

k.

Saturday beginning

Sat, 27 Nov 2004 09:48:32 +01

Top of Form 1

dear zhen, i noticed you did not call this morning, did you try? perhaps you are apprehensive of my mood, or my hangover. Of the hangover, i have none, though i did rest in bed for the first time this week until 9:00 and the first thing i did was to look again at the print-outs of 4 u.s. jobs and the prospect this morning does not appear impossible. typically, they are all over the map, so i cannot even begin to go about this idea of teaching next year in the u.s. with the idea that i will (or want) to live in a particular place. one job is in illinois, one job is in pennsylvania, one job is in washington (on the west coast) and one job is in missouri. the salaries range from 27,000 to 41,000 dollars year, and so you get some insight as to why these jobs are so competitive. and these are not even the highly visible “power” jobs. rather i like them and their kind for their low visibility. for some of them i need letters of recommendation, and my american colleague here i am sure will write one and he is in the typical position of the requirement, since he is head of the american culture part of our department (divided between literature and culture). what else is there to worry about. the deadlines are not immediate, so i have some time to activate my personnel file at the university i graduated from. why this sudden change (i am very changeable in my moods, did you notice?) because i am beginning to think it is romantic and foolish to propose to you to come here to Poland to live. it is that simple and of course it never is, but i cannot say to you that i have a secure job, and without a secure job, i am asking you to leave your secure job. do we agree that the question of the economic is the most important, because if that question is ignored, it is possible to be exposed to all kinds of dangers and hardships which destroy people. you have lived this experience much more deeply and completely than i have, and yet i think you understand that i have also survived some hardships, enough to know that without attention to the economic, and in the undergoing of hardship, one’s very self is assaulted, and the person becomes less and less in their own eyes, and becoming less and less and even hated and contemptible to the person’s own self, such suffering turns on the partner, the companion, the friend, and blames them, and i do not ever want this possibility to even exist between us. that is what i have learned in my life about the importance of the job. it means everything, even though it is a dead weight we carry around our necks. so that is why i am turning my thoughts to trying to obtain a teaching position in the u.s. next year: economic. for some measure of security and predictability beyond the one year, even, i hope, for some health care, though even for teaching that is more uncommon than not. the good thing is that it is early in the year, i do not remember beginning to worry in Tomsk until late January or February. if i am not offered a job by the end of February this year, i will probably choose to stay in Lodz one more year, as from what i understand, if i leave at the last moment there is likelihood that the department will lose its visiting faculty post (the one i have, though of course no one is clear about this, and the visiting faculty are for the most part symbolic, even to attract students, but we are not regarded as serious participants in the teaching process). for myself, i need more responsibility, or more sense of substance, more belonging, or participating, in a place, in a process. that is another reason for even beginning to think about teaching in the u.s. thank you for your very lovely letter yesterday. yes, i know that nothing happens as though for the first time, and the very thing that i accuse other american writers of from time to time, “historical innocence”, i am most guilty of, but neither should we look away from the seriousness of the repetitions, and crises, the one essay i read about the coup attempt in moscow in 91 reminds of this. the irony is the ‘democratic freedoms’ really mean a great overturn in the life patterns, greater levels of exploitation, movement of foreign capital, with more money leaving the country than investment entering it, and greater inequality among citizens, so hatreds, especially national and race hatreds, begin to multiply. this is the fatal historical process in which we are all little pawns, and though it does not prevent me from getting up in the morning, neither does it give me the least reason for any feeling of joy. one should more or less be glad to be alive. and yes, dear zhenya, are you “still alive” today this day? if you cannot call (and it is not required you know) i hope you have time this evening to write. k.

Bottom of Form 1

Top of Form 2

Bottom of Form 2

От: <km@hypobololemaioi.com>

Кому: Lukyanova <lev@tpu.ru>; <zhen_l@rambler.ru>

Тема: Oops – no long letter

Дата: 27 ноября 2004 г. 23:31

dear zh,

i have been reading and writing since noon and as the evening fell (not

very suddenly, as it is a rainy wet day) i kept reading and just now

looked at the clock at it reads 18:30 so chances are, unless you are

reading or watching a movie on tv, chances are, you are asleep, and

without my letter! well, here is my letter, such as it is, which you may

accept as a goodnight kiss, even if you read it in the morning, in which

event, the morning, i hope you forgive my not writing earlier, as

perhaps it is compensated by the two letters you read that i sent before

you called this morning.

it has been a pleasant and restful afternoon, improved by hearing your

voice this morning.

look for a letter from me tomorrow morning, as i expect to be in a good

mood upon waking and taking my morning coffee and writing to you, and

perhaps you may even send me a few words in return?

k.

От: <km@hypobololemaioi.com>

Кому: <lev@tpu.ru>

Тема: Desultory

Дата: 28 ноября 2004 г. 15:19

dear zhen, yes, you are right, you have guessed correctly, i have slept

late, after going to bed at almost 4:00 a.m. disobeying routine, the

rules, the daily laws, reading until almost 23:00, when normally i would

have gone to bed, only i watched two movies instead, one about a good

guy who remains a good guy and catches the bad guys who are both real

bad guys and bad guys pretending to be good guys. the scenery was filmed

in new mexico, so there were very beautiful landscapes of gorges and

ravines, such vast ravines, that i would never think of leaving you in

one such ravine, especially since the creeks are very fast rivers

impossible to wade across, so i do not think we would find ourselves in

a discussion as where to cross. the second movie was a comedy

distressingly set in the suburbs, which could be anywhere, and is. but i

was treated to four hours of two american movies with recognizable

actors, William Dafoe, Samuel Jackson, Mickey Rourke, Steve Martin, etc.

and though such names are meaningless to you, their roles operate as a

kind of index of all the films one may have ever seen with one of these

actors in them, so there is a pull into the culture, the movie culture,

despite oneself, all the films that one absorbs, half conscious, just

living in the space in which the films and their faces, the actors,

exist. now i am back to a day where i must read not for the sake of

reading but for teaching, and in general feel vaguely anxious about

classes tomorrow, part of the anxiety coming from their very

formlessness. when i saw my british colleague friday night i learned

from him that he never prepares, teaches almost all the same materials

in all the classes, and enjoys himself immensely. so, it must be my

personality, why i take teaching more seriously than it deserves to be.

basically, i hate sitting in a room with people and talking about

nothing or listening to words about nothing, and as you know, that is

mostly what happens in the classroom. in about two hours i will visit my

French colleague upstairs in this building and meet briefly about

arranging some lessons. i am hoping this will distract me, and send me

in some new direction in relation to language, mostly i am hoping to

work on pronounciation, first, and then to develop just a little my

conversation skills (i have none) in French, with a view towards going

to Paris in the spring to buy some books. that is all i can think about

the spring for now. i am not at all worried about the expense of

cypress, so let that be the place in February, and we shall see what the

prices are like in a couple of weeks. neither am i sure that joining the

EU raised prices, as i don’t think that it has here. maybe this is not

as long a letter as you would like today, so strange to think that your

day is more than half over already and i am only awake and moving around

sleepily in my flat for less than an hour, we are definitely ‘out of

sync’ don’t you think? (that is not a very funny rhyme).

i miss you.

k.

Better late than never

Sun, 28 Nov 2004 16:36:20 +

dear, zhenya, zhenya, dear, i know i am writing you late in your evening
almost night and you may have looked in your mailbox to find nothing new
from me but i have been meeting since 14:00 my French colleague and we
had a good beginning lesson in French as he praised my pronunciation in
general though we worked on some features of silent letters in French
and particularly difficult dipthongs for me accueilli for example and
the common but always difficult temptation to either pronounce the _re_
ending to many nouns, like Place du Tertre or not pronunce it all both
of which are wrong, there is a sound there, at the end of the word, but
very soft, French is so full of soft sounds, like Russian, though there
are not so many silent letters in Russian, and after working for an hour
we visited for another hour, his wife Marina is from Bulgaria and she
speaks Russian in addition to English, so we talked about Russia some
and I talked about would it be difficult for you, being Russian, living
in Poland, and yes and no, there is always the language difference,
though Poles can understand Russians and the reverse, but in such
smaller difference there is greater difference if that makes sense, than
Polish compared to French or English, which are viewed as ‘Western’ and
so there is greater permission in the society in general. Very probably
it would be harder for Russian person than Anglo-American or French
person in Poland, in the everyday matters, and so we talked this way,
and I enjoyed his company very much, and think I will be able to do some
good work on improving my French, which, I think, even if going to the
U.S., it is important that I begin by developing the one language which
I know at least a little, and then building from there, but always
working from now forever on working with foreign words, languages. Well
this is my letter I hope there is a good movie on tonight though I
should prepare for tomorrow but I think I am going to try to relax a
little since every one else does, and do you know your long letters are
quite lovely and I can almost hear your speaking voice in them, your
speaking voice which I like very much to listen to, and do you know you
are a very good friend, that is how you write to me, and I like this
very much and trust in it very much. It is also very different from most
“friendships” with women I have had, but then you are rather a different
person, that I suppose you know. That is as much as I will say about
that topic as I do not believe you care for compliments. Today has been
a quiet day, good reading, even a little writing, though it is always
critical writing now, at least for the time being, and this evening,
more reading. I am eating roast turkey with beets and carrots tonight.
Wish you were here.

k.

p.s. the question you mentioned about Luba’s concern I don’t think is a
problem here as there are flights everyday from Warsaw to Cypress. But I
will try to check again either tonight or tomorrow.

От: <km@hypobololemaioi.com>

Кому: <lev@tpu.ru>

Тема: Blue Monday

Дата: 29 ноября 2004 г. 12:30

dear zh, yes, monday is here again, another monday. everything should

happen as it should happen, and if it happens otherwise, how can i

prevent it? mostly what i expect to happen is my own boredom and

increasing tiredness as the day goes on, from one class to the next. at

least these students are not hooligans. also, i am prepared, as much as

that means anything. i have clean shirt, underwear and socks from doing

laundry on saturday, and i have read all the materials that i will use

in six classes today, thankfully four of those meet for only 45 minutes.

technically, then, i am in class from 8:30 to 3:00 with 30 minutes break

from 13:00 to 13:30. isn’t life wonderful? this morning i see everyone

walking by on the street outside my kitchen window with umbrella. so i

shall have to walk in the rain. this is certain to improve my mood. it

is almost getting light outside now. there is still not the total

desolate feeling of the early dark mornings in Tomsk when i used to

watch the ‘animal kingdom’ nature program that was on at 7:00 or 7:30

and then go to teach FCE and related English-language concerns. my own

animal inclinations are to lie in bed longer, and read widely and

vaguely with open notebook. i don’t like not being able to do this, and

it makes me cynical, perhaps because the temptation exists here, unlike

Russia, since i do have some books, and there are English-language

books, and some very good ones, in the institute library. the

embarrassing fact is that i have very little to complain about, in

comparison, and yet i complain. perhaps i am suffering as you suggest

from an accumulative effect of four years, especially since i did not

return to the u.s. last year, and so really, as embarrassing as it

sounds, this is the longest i have ever been outside my native language

environment. how long have you ever been away from Russia? there is a

difference between a few months and months turning into years. neither

do i think it is about any subjective identification. rather there is a

kind of effect of being removed (distant) to everything, and when you

are in the familiar, native environment, there is the luxury of opinion,

especially it is very comforting to be “anti” and critical, but you lose

these coordinates in a strange language and country, and yes, there is

some difference if you can speak that language, but that is only part of

the picture. i don’t think i am able to say exactly what are the other

parts of the picture right now, but there are other parts i believe. so

i wake up on monday already tired, and wanting another cup of coffee,

which, if you don’t mind, i think i will make right now.

and now as i return from the coffee maker i remember that i am

forgetting (have so far forgotten, having just remembered) that i need

what i call a “discussion article” to put in the library for my new

conversation classes, which i had almost forgot about, and which i may

or may not have. so now instead of writing you, or enjoying my coffee, i

must attend to finding this article which is part of the irritation of

the two extra classes. we have the expression, “straw that broke the

camel’s back,” which is i think what happened, after i was asked to take

these two extra classes, i suddenly understood that i was not in a good

place here, not for my writing, and that i need eventually, and the

sooner the better, at the end of this year or next, to change the

circumstances of the job, and begin to live in slightly more predictable

environments, so that i may return to my own writing, from which i feel

very far away at the moment, and so the gloominess …

k.

От: <km@hypobololemaioi.com>

Кому: Lukyanova <lev@tpu.ru>

Тема: Re: Blue Monday

Дата: 30 ноября 2004 г. 12:09

dear zh, no at 6:44 i was lying in bed hating the fact that i had to get

up. you will have to be a little more patient. is that possible?

On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 11:44:17 +0600

“Lukyanova” <lev@tpu.ru> wrote:

> aha, i see you ignore me, you do not write me, you even do not ask

> about marco. bye zh