4.02.04

nacha kino

dear zhen
well here i am again writing you here in this space whatever it is you
are at work again, the office? wednesday morning, yours, vache.

vacha.

well you can see i am writing now to you at night full of thoughts or
words or both? are they the same?

well you can see now that i am here, that i am “home” (where i live)

the train arrived in fog. how familiar, warsaw, and the train to lodz.
rain and light snow, melting snow everywhere, very warm here. it is
very warm here.

are you “there” ?

well you can see that i am writing you, and i am glad that we did not
call, for the saving of future calls.

in an emergency, there is a need to call. if you did not call, that
means there was no emergency. if i did not call, that means there was
no emergency. emergency, for me? me? (i have u.s.a. passport!)

we crossed the border around midnight, the border guards, from poland,
when they saw my passport, wearing military clothes, said, with great
emphasis, U.S.A.! (like i was a god). the travelling companions then
took great interest in me (until then i spoke in russian, and with my
hat, looked russian, i think they were afraid of me?) and the traveller from litva, from klaipeda, gave to me picture with amber in it of sea shore (not naked woman) or, are all sea shores women without clothes? i do not know, after watching my video of the baltic this evening …

but one traveller was from litva and spoke very good russian, his
daughter lives in washington (though first he said chicago, but
“washington” is the city of great name now, like moscow once was, for
those who live in the ‘buffer zones’) and the other, from small village in poland, very broken english, but when he learned i was from U.S.A. from polish soldier-borderguard, he was all questions, for over more than hour. he graduated from high school in 1996 and he said there was no many good english teachers, though he speak very well
english me.

“doch”

i remember doch, and the gift of a picture of the baltic with amber in
it. the traveller from litva gave to both of us “presents” (he said it in english) and then like pure litva, when the three of us, after we left the train, were going to the elevator, he said to me, again, in english, “first” …

you know that slavic beauty, ‘your first’ …

now i am home in poland, thinking of slavic beauty politeness …

U.S.A.!

do you think that i am so very U.S.A.? i do not think so, but i am not
so very confident in my ability to know what i am.

what my passport says, that i am. acute pain now, remembering you
looking at your passport (the ‘fifth’).

now you see i am very so much alone, and write to you alone.

i am so very much alone now.

the phone just rang. is it you? this has happened before. the ‘russian’ phone card. it is too late for you to call, and you know that i said that i did not think you should call, though you said you would try to call, if
you could find a card. but you should not call, you should wait until
the weekend, yes?

we should wait, yes?

maybe you will call me this saturday or sunday, you know that i will
call you feb. 15 (day before classes begin).

the photography from palangas on the tv screen is very beautiful,
muted colors, more snow falling. i walked around vilnius on monday,
climbing the hill, with the old fort. the photography is what we call
“uninspired.” not like the images on the baltic sea. of the baltic
sea. they are very mysterious to me. i am now in unknown world.

i am now in unknown.

i am now.

i am missing you.

you are very warm.

person. you are.

bye.

04.02.04

seascapes

dear zhen
we should get used to, should we, interruptions, disconnections. it
will be a long five months. perhaps you think the 15th too far away.
do you? it did not feel very good to end your call on this informational note. but then, how many people have before been able to write each other every day, and it helps that now i know you do not read my letters, so i will not write very long ones, though you also said that you tell lies, do you?

i am drinking first cup of coffee this morning to the background sound
of sanding in the hallway, the painters have begun their morning’s work. they do not wear ‘breathing masks’ and the air is full of dust from the sanded paint. it cannot be very healthy for their lungs.

this morning as i said i will buy a small portable cd player and look for one or two cds by the estonian composer i mentioned, arvo part. you might look to see if you can find any of his music in tomsk. it is music with much space in it.

The traveller on the train from poland was returning from vilnius also, his first trip. he said that riga is also very beautiful, and like vilnius, smaller than warsaw. talinin also, so these three cities, talinin, riga and vilnius, perhaps they may represent for us cities to dream about visiting. as i said to you this morning, vilnius was wonderful to walk around monday afternoon, and really i felt that no matter which direction i turned, i could not get lost, and some of the streets are extremely of another century, before the modern one.

when i was waiting at the train station, after dark, about two hours,
reading at the far end of the station near the arrival and departure charts, i sat next to two old women speaking in russian about train schedules, and i understood them to be ‘sellers’ though of what i do not know, maybe flowers, they both had very large bags with them, and then a train to a nearby town came, and they left. in fact, i heard quite a lot of russian in the train station, and i wonder if this was your impression also, though when you were there i was there with you and we perhaps do not pay so much attention upon our surroundings when there is someone to talk to.

the trip to the sea was a very good idea and you should take full
responsibility for it.

after watching the images of the sea, the seascapes, i am sorry now
that i could not walk longer with you, as i was very cold, as you may
rememember. viewing the images, i wished i had been able to walk more than two hours at a time. the snow is quite beautiful to look at, as
is the sea.

snow and sea, they even mean something a little different to me now in
english, after this visit to the baltic in winter.

last night, i found myself wishing to travel even farther north in the
winter with you sometime, perhaps in ukraine? the warsaw-kiev express
arrived at the same time as my train to lodz when i was in warsaw.
also i saw in the morning there was a train from warsaw to st.
petersburg, so as you suggested, this may be a very good idea for
travelling to russia in june.

we have a lot of time for writing now, though sincerely, if long
letters are too much for the time you are in your office, i will write
shorter ones. i am eager to continue working with zabolotsky, and
kharms. only a line or two at a time. perhaps this weekend. it will
take me a day or two to adjust to the sound of the painters, their
‘gavarit, gavarit’ and their radio, very loud, american pop music and
polish commercials among the sound of sanding, sanding.

suddenly this occurs to me as very strange, a trip to the sea in the
winter when the sand is sheeted in snow and ice, and when i return,
the sanding of old paint replaces the word for what there was not
beside the sea in litva.

the images, apart from the appearing of one or two figures, are
distinguished by a study of two or three horizontal planes (snowshore
and sky and sea, or sky and sea–horizon, threshold area, space) upon
which color appears from time to time, green boat, blue fishbox.

these images mean something deep and strong to me, like studies for a
kind of poetry that i have not yet written. this is such an important
idea for writing, that one works with studies, culminating process in
sustained work, after the paramaters have been identified. as i talked
about in palangas, the camera is becoming for me a form of journal,
which i ‘read’ or ‘view’ for what i am thinking about, as more and
more i feel that i am thinking visually, where there is a space that
is not so much important what is the language surrounding the object
being viewed.

i hope you do not mind these thoughts this morning, after your call.

bye

05.02.04

satet foment

dear zhen

today (this morning) (and late this morning) (it appears i have slept past 9:00 a.m.) (am i used now to our time-rhythm in palangas) (alarm at 8:30, breakfast at 10:00?) anyway, beyond the parentheses, today (you will remember that i began by writing you, “today”) (and i even know this word in russian!) today, as i was saying, it is quiet, no painters, no sanding, no radio, so i slept, and now, making my morning coffee, i am reminded how much more i prefer to have coffee with you in the morning, though it does not have to be only morning, as we also drink coffee in afternoon, after long walks. yesterday in the evening my doorbell rang and i answered to be presented with package of spaghetti bolognese mix made by knorr which says “gratis” on it, which means free. here, for promocja, workers go door to door giving away free products. so i must be living in post-socialist country, where it is still safe for young women to go door to door in the evening with products to advertise. this would be impossible in a city in the u.s. but social commentary is rather boring, don’t you think? “safe” is also a relative term. when i went to the shopping center yesterday morning i was impressed once again of the method of the ‘undercover’ bus police, who board the bus in everyday clothes, pretend to be passengers, and then suddenly flash their identity cards and go person to person checking to see if they have a bus ticket. my thought yesterday was that such practices in social space represent something like an internalization of state terror. when i lived in new york, the new jersey metro police also travelled for random passenger checks, but they always wore uniforms. maybe there is little difference. and maybe ‘state terror’ is too strong a word.

i did not buy a music player, as the prices were higher than i had imagined. and now it is quiet in my flat, so i would not have needed the music anyway. neither could i find any recordings by arvo part. but i did go to some bookstores, which i did not do at all in the fall, and in the afternoon i wrote a little, and i am sending you what i wrote in the attachment. there are some polish words in it, because i am reading a polish translation of a french novel. you will ask me how can i read polish when i do not know polish? “very slowly” is the answer. now i am very interested in the very slowly. to read and to write one word at a time without the sentence ever forming remind me of my visual record of litva, splashes of color against various fields of white, though snow is never entirely totally white. there is a strong longing in me to write something very long (a book) very slowly, working with many words whose meanings i do not know. the book of kharms’ poems is open beside me, but every time i read some of the very short poems i feel like i am riding a very bumpy bus or train. he is a poet of superlatives and also comic rhymes? the poetry seems very external and performative to me. but the level of the russian is much more accessible, like spoken word poetry. everyday conversation.

maybe to take responsibility for litva is too strong an expression. what i meant is that you had a very good idea, you acted on that idea, and the result was two weeks of time together for us and even though there was more cold and snow than you expected, the days there were very good, were they not? my idea was for you to come here, and i do not think you would have rested here. although there is no snow here. it is about 10 degrees c. but the city is very dark, old buildings, but painted with scrawls and scrawls with hooligan slogans. i was very much impressed by this when i first came back here tuesday morning. maybe it is not so safe to go door to door with spaghetti sauce promotions. maybe there is no choice in the matter. always there is no choice in the matter. when i went to the market, tuesday, i bought package of ground beef and an onion, and i have pasta, but no tomato mix, now thanks to the surprise promotion, i know what i will make for dinner tonight. i am reminding you of how uneventful my life is now, painters sanding in the hallway, and in the evening, free packages of spaghetti sauce. these are perfect conditions for either writing poetry or doing nothing, both activities at which as you know i am very skilled. yes, you are right, i will write you regardless of whether you read my letters, as i enjoy the time that i am writing you, though often i imagine that you do read them. i am not thinking anymore about fingerprints, though the article i read to you has provoked much discussion in the “world” i refer to sometimes as “english.” for the curiosity though, can you tell me when (what year?) russian govt. removed the 5th question, the Jewish identification, from the passport?

i miss you

06.02.04

thit-that here-there

dear zhen,
i thought i had woke up too late for breakfast as i looked at my watch which i have not set to poland time yet and now with the computer on i see that it is 9:30 so you see i am still on the palangas time-rhythm and without breakfast and my coffee is my coffee only. yesterday i went to yet another supermarket complex and found a portable cd player made in warsaw for half the price of all the sony, jvc, panasonic etc products. also i found a recording of arvo part (much of my writing has been written while listening to this composer from estonia, and seeing vilnius reminded me very much of the music landscapes. there are also sounds in the hall of the painting kind, so today i think is a day for the earphones, if not more walks around lodz. it is so warm here that i may need to buy an iron to press my shirts which for the past three months have been worn beneath worn-out sweaters, and the heavy sweater i bought in palangas may not even be needed now.

now. tepyer (forgive phonetic spelling) (that is how i would pronounce it). the piece of writing i sent you (one writes beginnings and ends of beginnings, more than anything as trying to sound my way into sustained writing, and the kind of writing i can return to around the demand of teaching tasks) what was important to me yesterday was that the page had ended on the word, now, (teraz, which i was looking at one a page of polish writing, and i actually did look up in your dictionary the russian equivalent (that is the reason for all the equal signs, this illusion that there are equal signs, and yet there are sometimes) and i found of course sei chas (in polish it is czas) (more or less “hour” but of course something much more) and also i found “tepyer” and paging through Kharms i found “netepyer” and this is the poem that is attached to this letter and which i would like to ask for your help with. as an example of how impossible translation is, here is a version of first 7-8 lines:

This is not this.
That is that.
This is not that.
That is not that is not.
All that’s left is either that or not that.
It’s all either that or not that.
What’s not that and not this, that’s not this and not that.
What’s this and that, that in itself is ITSELF.
What self itself, that might be that, yes, nor this, or this yes not that.

i wouldn’t recommend reading the english against the russian, it will make you feel cross-eyed (an expression when both eyes meet towards the middle of the nose). so how can i interest you in this poem (the russian language one). it appears to me to be a very serious and playful philosophical poem, not about ideas, but about all the thought that language does in its simplest forms, and the russian etot, to, tyt and tam are not equivalent to the english this, that, here and there are they? by the way, why does Kharms use only the neutral form of etot (eto) throughout the poem. i also very much like this poem for the linguistic reality, you may even remember me asking you about etot since i used it all the time, in fact i think i know this word (which in my mind is always said, eta) as well as any in english. this one and that one. it can mean both, yes? as tyt can mean both here and there? in english, this is never that, and here is never there. the boundaries around these words are severe (as so much else in word-meaning in english). and do you know, even though i called you a “broken record” i very much appreciate your daily satires on the english language, its poverty so to speak, though to call english “poor” is to give it more dignity than it deserves. but i won’t draw any larger conclusions, only i wanted you to know that working, in writing, i share your suspicion of english, what might be called the domination of semantic limits. this is what i understand you are poking fun at, the absence of words in english to express what you are thinking. it is not a question of whether or not you know the words, or are the words simply not there? and if the words are not there, how can the thought be there?

what is thought anyway, that is what Kharms is writing about in Not Now. (Only, Netepyer would never be said in Russian as in English it could be said Now? No, not now. For this, in Russian, “sei chas” would be used, yes? Once in a library in Chita i was asking for help and the librarian said “sei chas” which i understood to mean, Yes, I will help you now (though of course not absolutely immediately). In the essay about Moscow in one of the two volumes by Walter Benjamin in your flat he writes about “sei chas.” Kharms is not writing about “sei chas.” He is writing about “tepyer.” Is “netepyer” ever said in conversation or writing for that matter, or is it an act on Kharms part of negativity (the negative, in writing, is not merely to say no, but to cancel the meaning of a word).

in english, tsvyo can mean all or everything and there’s a great difference between the weight of the two words. the idea that you can say tsvyo in russian and mean, grammatically, “is that all?” or “there is nothing more” reminds me also of the excess of grammatical particles which english uses and which makes it a very fast-sounding language, but one that also requires a lot of words which by themselves do not convey hardly any semantic content at all. as weights, eto and to, tyt and tam feel heavier to me than their english counterparts (not equivalents).

the help i am asking you for is not to translate! only for now, could you help me with the verbs in this poem? i only understand two or three. (i have marked in red the verbs i do not understand in the second copy of this poem in the attachment). most important, any thoughts that occur to you about expressions that are used with these simple words would be very helpful. for example, in english, “that’s that” means tsvyo, and i think somewhere there’s a line of my poetry, “and that that’s that” where the “that” is being used in three different grammatical functions. once i found a funny discussion of “that” in 18th century discussion of who, which and that (and do you remember you’re going to the dictionary when i explained that who and that are equal, equivalent?) kto could never be used for etot, yes? in one sense, such words are called demonstratives, and they remind us of the pointing nature of language (like trying to talk to someone in a kiosk in another language) and as we are told as children, it is impolite to point. Designation, in poetry, is a difficult problem. Something more, the ‘thing-in-itself’ (this comes from Kant, so Kharms is very self-consciously working with a philosophy theme, though the poem sounds more to me like Wittgenstein, and i say this not to sound “learned” but to emphasize how the poem is a very serious poem about the operations of meaning in language and that it does this by being playful.

i would recommend simply reading the russian and not thinking about it and asking yourself whether you enjoy the sound and the word play and does the poem heighten your awareness about simple words that are used every day and just how complex they are?

obviously, i will not be able to write such requests for your help every day once classes get started for both of us, but i am more certain now after listening to your paraphrase of some of the Zabolotsky that Z. is far too romantic for the needs of my own work, and i like the pull (magnetic attraction) that Kharms’ poetry has, as though it is pulling me into Russian.

So, eto-to, tyt-tam!

Once more (and i repeat myself because i am uncertain) the help i am asking you for is not for a single answer but more of the kind of beginning of a continuing “push” and “pull” between Russian and English, reading Daniel Kharms. This is what i would like to write to you about in the next five months (yes, it is too long of a time). Not every day, we will both be too busy, but if i can write to you questions and thoughts about a very clever Russian poet who was killed in 1942 (his wife, Esther, in 1943–and they were both in their early 30s!) over the next five months, we will be doing something together very much like walking for miles and miles in the snow (did you know, Jenya, that poetry is my “snow”?) Besides, how could we have known that we would find two volumes of writing by him in Palangas? A fortuitous accident, if I may sound like a professor for a moment, which i do not care to sound like.

(p.s. in polish to go shopping is zakupy i.e., za kupit – for buying – though “y” is always pronounced like Russian “i”.)

bye

07.02.04

generosity

dear zhen
once again i am awake at 9:30 and wishing you were here to have coffee with me. to feel this physically connected to the time-rhythm of palangas, and for once a time-rhythm not only my own, but ours, makes me feel something worse than before, and maybe that is the difficulty you alluded to yesterday. now every morning i wake up into the absence of the two weeks, and how am i made to feel this absence, by the persistence of the time-rhythm. also, there is no snow here, and this morning especially, strong wind and rain.

the toleration deadline is not until march, yes? there was another deadline, for a conference publication in the spring, did i miss that? in my mind (not a very clear one) both deadlines (dates) exist somewhere in the spring, so i still have february to think about them, except that now it is februrary, and hardly even early february! the first or second week of february, now i know where i am, in the first or second week of february, when is the deadline for larissa’s conference? after two months, i should even be able to speak a little russian at the conference, which, though you yourself would never say so, is very much appreciated.
do you know what i like to imagine? that my teaching in tomsk was successful, especially among the tomsk faculty (not only the classes you arranged but also the series of classes in glavne corpus) that i am even missed sometimes (please don’t laugh) and it would be very much appreciated if i could return to teach there. my classes were very good with the faculty, as i was able to encourage them to speak a lot and with confidence, though still using the needed materials, like fce. there is at least something very direct and objective and concrete about such teaching, and i am strangely dissatisfied with the prospect of teaching more culture and literature. yes, you see, i am never satisfied. never content about anything. there is a strange english word. with the accent on the first syllable, we are talking about what is in a book or a glass or any container (the table of contents makes the book sound like a box) and with the accent on the second syllable, we are talking about an emotional state, something like happiness. So, contentment can refer to how one feels, especially after a good meal, but you could never use contentment or contented when referring to the contents of a book. That content is always only content. Either singular or plural, content and contents, that is the only change the noun allows. Is the other content, the second-syllable-stress content, a noun or a verb. Sometimes i am very interested in the area between the noun and the verb in english. Are you content there, in your job? Is this question is asked, then content is being used as a verb, but if we read a title like the translated one by Freud, Civilization and its Discontents, then we are reading a noun. There are Discontents and Malcontents in english, but no Contents (at least as long as we are placing the stress on the second syllable).

for my toleration paper, i think i will write about Jenya’s toleration of my letters to her. We will make an experiment. How many do you print out to read later, how many do you immediately delete, and what is the motor-neural-threshold of intolerance when you read these sentences by this foreigner? about Kharms, if we could work with this poem or that once in a while, very slowly (it is so important to read slowly and think slowly when working with poetry, the effect is almost never total, never about the whole) it would help a great deal with my work in general with russian. even if we did not refer to Netepyer for a while, and you were to write me a little about etot and to, tyt and tam, that would be a beginning. for the russian verbs, even if you could give me their infinitive forms, makes it easier to refer to in the dictionary. the tenses all seem to me to be past tense, yes? and bog is god, of course. here of course the equal sign fails. there must be entire clusters of words and word-sounds around this word in russian, the only one i have is the folktale, tri bogatria. now there is sunlight in my window, so this afternoon maybe i will go to the food store, as i have only beets and carrots and three eggs left from shopping earlier in the week. i also need a haircut. the painters are gone. yesterday evening the doorbell rang and i did not answer it. in the afternoon to escape the sound of the painters i went walking and zakupy and found a large used polish dictionary for 18 zl. (about 5 dollars). most of the dictionaries were new and expensive, about 100 zl. and logically, english to polish rather than polish to english. i was content (stress on second syllable) to visit so many bookstores. i forgot to mention that the polish cd player i found was only 149 zl. (about 40 dollars) and the only other ones were all 299 zl. and higher. i mention this because though i do not pay much attention upon it, despite the visible high availability of consumer products, all the sony, jvc and panasonic (japanese and american products) the prices are quite high compared to at least the u.s., and especially in relation to average income. so the effect is that stores are built, filled with products, and no one can buy them. the system operates only on the logic that stores must be built and filled with products, but it cannot tolerate lack of sales or low sales. the large shopping center i went to was at the end of a busline only 15 mins. from here, in old industrial district, and almost empty, like what is called a ghost town in english. as if someone from the u.s. looked at a map of the city and designed a shopping center based on the u.s. culture of the suburb, when here everyone goes as if drawn by a magnet to the main street, or high street in british english, and those shops, though more expensive, are always crowded.

enough though about city spaces this morning. i hope you do not have to work very hard or very late today, i remember at least that it is a saturday, and it does not make me very content to think that you must work on saturdays.

bye

07.02.04

Tzvetayeva note

dear zhen
i know it is 19:32 in your city and you have left or should have left by 19:19 and no later! but in the middle of reading this afternoon i found a reference to a quotation by Tsvetayeva where she write, “all the poets are Jews” and why i mention this is that the quotation is from the book by Jacques Derrida that i found for you in russian at the bookstore in tomsk, in english, Writing and Difference. the page of the english citation is p. 132, though the essay that the quotation appears in is not given. maybe Tsvetayeva is in the index. i just thought you would be interested, and thinking, also, how strange Kharms must appear to you in relation to Tsvetayeva. it is a quiet day here, alternating rain and sun, suddenly shifting skies

i miss you

bye

08.02.04

Ostranenye

there is
there must there has to be
there has been there was
there shall be there is going to be
there will be there has been
there was there is there was and there
will be what there was
when what there is and has
that been what there was and what is it
that it is when there was what it is not

what there
there is
that there
was and there
was that what
that is the that was

there is that there is
there was that that was
there is that and this
is that what there was
what was that and what
is this that will be
what that was when it
was what is that was

dear zhen
i found this piece of writing i must have written a month or so ago
and it might suggest my interest in Netepyer’ though it is typical of
things that i write when just trying to get my fingers moving on the
keyboard and resort to the “rivets” (grammatical particles) and their
repetition just to try to hear the language, which is always a great
difficulty. i can’t make the kind of claim for such a piece of writing
as this as the quotation from the Kharms introduction does for
Netepyer’ and the danger of all commentary is that ideas are
substituted for the physicality of the poetry itself, and it is always
verbally physical and material or it is nothing at all. Kharms is
simply more readable for me at this my present elementary stage of
Russian. Please, I’m not asking you to like his poetry. Though I guess
I am asking you to write about the Russian language, even if only a
few verbs at a time, and really, I would be very happy to write only
about eto and to, tyt and tam. At least to and tam are the same in
Polish. But are they really, in conversation, the opposites claimed by
the introduction that you quoted? Or do they form opposites in the way
that they’re used in Netepyer’? In the book the reference to
Tsvetayeva that I sent to you earlier today: “-that _complementarity_
which comes out of the opposition, which _is_ opposition”. So this and
that, here and there are dependent on one another for their meaning
and their function in the language. I won’t go on for now any more
about this.
In the attached page is a translation i did tonight from a small book
in polish i found a few days ago, Spirala. it’s a translation by Ewa
Fiszer of a novel in French of about 100 pages by Anne Philipe. The
French novel was published in 1971, and the translation, 1973. This
indicates to me the closeness of Polish and French literary culture
before the current period of Americanization, and I am attracted to
the double location of the writing/translation by two women, as well
as to the form of the writing (the number 27 is the page number from
the book and this is what some of the pages look like, i.e., not a
traditional narrative kind of writing). I know you do not like
descriptions of nature, but as I was translating it and the September
reference began to emerge, I thought you might enjoy the thought of
September, so, well …

You wrote that you do not feel especially comfortable with the kind of
writing that apparently my letters are asking of you, so I would ask
that nothing that I write to you and especially about poetry appear as
a demand, either immediate or eventual. I never, never, never view
poetry as work, like a task or something I must do, as it is simply
something that I do to stay alive (your “I’m still alive”). If
anything that I write to you about in the form of a request makes you
feel uncomfortable, I would hope that you would simply not respond.
It’s very simple to refuse. To say no I don’t feel like doing this. If
you think that I would mind, then I worry that I haven’t communicated
with you very well about my attitude towards writing and language and
trying to be alive in it. My mind it is just something to do instead
of doing nothing. At least for me, I refuse for it to be work. You
know, don’t you, that I hate work? Always have, always will. As they
say.

But Esther is a Jewish name, yes? That was the name of Daniel Kharms’
wife (1909-1943). Unfortunately, “pervaya zhena Xapmca” means first
wife Kharms, doesn’t it? I wonder what she would have written, if the
thought of the possibility of writing ever occurred to her. Would she
have written like Ewa Fiszer translating Anne Philipe?
bye

08.02.04

buterfly wings

dear zhen
“one of the many foci imaginarii that like butterflies, do not survive the moment when a pin is pushed through their body to fix them in place”

one line from the book i have been reading, and does it remind you of anything? i think i am a clock, as i am once again awake (out of bed, as you know, it’s not the same thing, one wakes up and falls back to sleep, rolls over, lies awake, sentient, but not active, not thinking, then falls back to sleep, wakes up, etc) though i am not dreaming as intensely as in palangas, in your absence. it is likely that we were both sleeping more lightly there, aware of the presence of one another, aware, almost, of the difficulty of the vanishing presence (the element of the time-bound, the unit of time).

in the book i have been reading i have found some passages on toleration which i will not quote now (too long) but which indicate to me that the inspiration for the title of the Tomsk conference (in Western discourse anyway) has its origin in what is called “liberalism” (always said to be between extremes, though as you have said, it’s likely that extremes mean different things in West and in Russia). in a way, this guides me a little, as in the book i was reading yesterday, well, it says, “the mask of toleration (which often means: you are abominable, but I, being generous, shall let you live).”

so the concept of toleration should come under critique, at least according to this book. if i write about something literary, then i will be able to avoid the problem. the essence of course is to appear to say something when you are saying nothing, and not to give offense to anyone. that is how the butterfly survives. do you think they would have found a place in z’ “suffering of the animals”?

there is no rain today and no food in my flat except for one bowl of kasha so i must go out into the wide world and obtain something for my refrigerator. i will delay a haircut for one more week as i do not have to publicly appear anywhere, though i will begin going to the university tomorrow to order books from the library, and find out about my schedule, etc. perhaps then i will begin to feel a little as you do now, which i sense (in the sense of having an intuition) is difficult for you. is it possible to speak of estrangement from one’s surroundings?

Ostrananenie i know as the phonetic form a concept that comes to literature from Russian formalists who wrote about ‘making strange’ or ‘de-familiarization’ of the artwork. What interests me is that strana’ means country or nation or homeland in Russian, yes? and then foreigner means Иностранец and stranger means Чужеземец, yes? both words appear to be rooted in country/land where stranger and foreigner, even immigrant and migrant have no such traces in english. such meaning-traces always mean something and nothing, and i have never really done enough writing in this direction, which tends to be circular, one goes around and around among “definitions” which lead to other “definitions” and eventually the words dissolve as well as the desire to use them.

i am sending this letter a little after 10:00 my time in the hope that if you have already gone home (which i hope you have) these words may greet you at the beginning of your monday. did i tell you that every word you write to me is very dear, and i can read Russian if you wish, but only one or two words at a time, please.

i miss you. bye.

08.02.04

we were sung

Мы говорим бог дунул. ?
We say that god breathed ?

Мы смотрели но не видели. ?
We saw what could not be seen ?

dear zhen, maybe this is the last note from me today. that you are reading a book of the letters and diaries is strangely moving to me. why. why not. one word at a time. one line a day. the other which is always only the other language requires that we read very slowly, and sometimes simply stare. do you know this word “stare” is vexing to me now. the hooligans scrawls on the walls read: HOOLIGANS STARE LODZ. but i cannot find the word in the dictionary. there is hardly a building in the city without hooligan scrawls. yes, tv was interesting in palangas. especially the russian tv news coverage of the young russian fascist (you said he was saying anti-jewish slogans). when on the german tv channel i heard the english translation of the auschwitz film, the language about the “selections” was very important to me. you know this is a feature now of international travel, at least in u.s. you are randomly selected for baggage check. it is the experience of the ‘random selection’ which is terrifying, but only a little. very nice people in uniforms assure you that your name came up at random in the computer. now, you will laugh at me. i know you are laughing. what does an American know about Random Selection? do you know that i wound up obliquely defending the philosopher whose fingerprint article i read to you and which you found so amusing? yes, Westerners are spoiled. how can my ‘random selection’ (after all, it was only my baggage they checked) compare to your experience of the strip search by russian women border guards? we see words and we see world differently. my mind, this is very lovely. what is worse, extreme cruelty (neludy) or smothering affection. rather, smothering affliction, yes? affliction? what do i know of affliction? (suffering). today a line leaped out at me in french from the novel we found in vilnius bookshop:

Tuez-nous, tuez-nous donc! Nous voulons nos droits.

Kill us, kill us then! We demand our rights.

You see, the philosophy book i am reading (not the French novel) is writing about the emptying out of the Enlightenment (in french, the Light) as part of the postmodern axiom that the Enlightenment dream of the perfectability of society (the idea that it is possible to make anything in the world better than it is now, and i’m thinking about “eto ne to” here! – potato pancakes or Collectivized Agriculture, the kholkhoz, yes?) and all the words in this sentence are not as powerful as the french ones, the emptying out of the French Revolution which somewhere in my writings remembering a passage from a German philosopher translated into English, that it was like the Ninth Symphony, its Light fell everywhere – one wonders what sharpness of affliction (glint) of the sun on the guillotine – here, though, in the French, Kill us, kill us then! We demand our rights (the scene is the arrival of gendarmes and military to suppress a miner’s strike) and the verbal blow thrown by two old women, crones, babushkas, witches – if you will, i know you are fond of this word – but the French quotation sounds so Russian, don’t you think? Kill us! We demand to treated like human beings! Every hour i think now of your pausing on the suffering of the animals in z. and my watching footage of the destruction of chickens in Thailand and Vietnam. What is terrible, really terrible, is that i experience extreme pain when watching bags of chickens being thrown in a ditch. really i do, it hurts me a lot. it’s very hard to say why. your story about Sasha’s dog (you see i do not forget the name of the boy who looks at Jenya with such adoring eyes) reminds of the Bulgakov – yes, a good film, not the same kind of film as the German one, but the scene of the peasant folk song (the Russian chanson – it won’t go away) is one of those rare moments of looking and thinking and being glad to be alive with you.

bye

p.s. I will be very happy to help you with translating your father’s textbook this summer, if you need my help.

 09.02.04

snowfall

dear zhen
hardly surprising that there is still more snow that began last night and has left this morning trees coated, dusted, painted, almost, with snow, though this snow, like “eto ne to” is not the snow of Litva nor the quiet and calm of walking with you beside the sea.

today is my first day of work, so called, so i am awake earlier than usual, and there is a destination other than this exercise or that, whatever it is that the work of teaching is. there is still with me the impression of your voice when i heard you teaching once from the hallway of building 1.

at the moment, there doesn’t seem to me to be a sound equivalent for eto ne to, maybe that’s not it? or, what you are saying, that in the expression there is a content (a meaning) unequal to its parts. though it is very slow work, looking up each word in the dictionary, especially of such particles, always results in an attention to bits and pieces and not the expression that a group of words forms, and most of our use of language depends on just such groups of word forms.

my belief is that there is more attention to and feeling for poetry in writing about eto ne to than all the prefaces and introductions and academic articles in the world. their language always sends us to the abstraction, the idea, and the aspect of the poem, or any imaginative writing for that matter, which speaks to the senses, disappears.

how can i describe the snow this morning other than to write to you that there is snow, the first snow since my returning here, and i cannot see “this” snow for the memory and wishing for “that” snow which we experienced together? if i were writing this sentence in russian, would i use “etot” and “to” in the same way? how would i indicate the difference between the two snows?

if you read the thick book by Kharms then you are more applied than i am, since i do not (cannot) read in such a way. my notebook is always open and always i get lost in it. sometimes it seems i can never finish a book, or at least experience a book completely. the reading always goes somewhere else.

how can i write to you about how important the smallest passage from your reading is, and that one’s reading does not have to have anything to do with ideas? the sensuous impression, or the insight (which is so often the result of the glance) and the comment. now, reading, whatever the reading, there is no classroom, no authority, no question of correctness.
is it possible to be entirely free in reading? how i am curious how you experience the letters and diaries of Kharms, as it is an experience i am outside of. for that matter, i am even outside your experience of eto ne to. though i think that i understand it now, after our writing about it. see how slow and cautious and patient the work of writing is? there is no end to it (more infinite than the sky over the winter baltic sea) and nothing i can write to you about the expression, that is that, can unite our experiences of our two languages, their indivisibility? meaning, i think, that no language can be divided? that doesn’t sound right.

i am trying to write to you this morning that it is not the translation that i am looking for. rather the dialogue between us about the two languages. with the help of one poet or another. as i said, Kharms is more accessible to me now than the lyricism of z. or tsvetayeva or mandelstam, for that matter. as for life details, poets are no different than any other human being, and often even worse. though Esther is a beautiful name, don’t you think?

still, i doubt whether Kharms’ letters and diaries are the same experience of reading as Kafka’s. the philosophy book i have been quoting from (the butterflies passage) writes at length about Kafka, and i’ll try to summarize these pages sometime this week. can i remember a line from your writing? the many human beings that are like butterflies dried and collected and waiting to be blown away by the changing world, wind, in polish wind is wiatr, and i am – cannot help but see the word for wind as water – and this seeing double is also some of the work that poetry does with language.

i don’t believe i’ve answered your question yet about czy, since i can’t answer it, i don’t know. it is used to form a question. i should like to write a book of such simple questions. have you any questions to ask me today, zhen? Ne’tepyer? at least there is no effort to describe there, in the language of that poem. it does not pretend that language is natural, or is even capable of writing the word “snow” and saying what that is. though nouns are different sometimes. snow and shnyeg are among the oldest words, from sanskrit, so if we only used these two nouns, there is a closeness (not equal sign) that can never exist between eto ne to and that is that.

this letter is a bit longer than i wish to allow myself to write to you, and please let me know when my letters become to long or confusing to read. they may very well be confusing because my thoughts about language are not clear (if there is any truth, you write), so, how can one’s thoughts ever be clear if the truth is never existing? when i write to you i do not think that i am trying to be clear so much as to express – not always the same as communicate – to you how i feel about poetry.

bye

10.02.04

more and more snow

dear zhen
if look and see are not synonyms, what about watch and view? i learned смотреть from tv, and the sense seemed to be “watch on this channel for this program” etc. and can видеть be used for view? (polish widok for view). what is the difference for you between rude and crude? rude mostly refers to manners (social behavior) as in a shop or on the bus, etc. i can’t think of an example where it has been used for literature. crudeness, though, can come in many forms: lack of grammaticality or refusal of it, vocabulary (words that are used in the street rather than literary words), and forms of address (the more someone’s writing directly addresses the reader, the more likely an hostile relation is imagined). or, i wonder, for you is there a kind of meanness in kharms’ personal writings? asking these questions, it’s just out of curiosity, and i’m not asking you to like kharms for my sake, but any descriptive gestures are very helpful to me. could you give me an example of a “rude” passage (without translating it). the attention to the particles, very small units of language, suggests to me that one might expect an element of crudeness, or primitiveness, or brutality in his poetry. i am extremely interested in this.

the philosophical book that i’ve been quoting from recently is by Zygmunt Bauman, a polish philosopher who teaches in England. he is the epitome of civility and something of a conservative, but a better writer than many so-called radical theorists. here is one such quote:

“the spectacle of brutality that is the mark of the brutalized”

following this, understanding this, reading poets, i never ask of a poet that they be any less brutal in their language than the shape of the world they lived in. i rather detest politeness in poetry, and one attraction to me of mandelstam is that he is never polite. paradoxically, he is rarely ever brutal in his critical writings, and i feel that i can refer to them in a way that i can’t refer to the poetry, since the critical writings have been so well translated. i wonder if you share my intuition about his poetry. the intensely high lyrical level of the language there, of course, would remove the poetry from too close descriptive contact with people and the words they use in conversation and the daily brutality that is visited there.

my first day back at work went very well, i found a lot of books, spoke a little with a polish colleague (in english, of course), saw a student from one of my most difficult courses who smiled very warmly at me, and i worked for about 4-5 hours returning home around 17:00 in snowstorm so severe i didn’t think the bus would make it. strong blowing winds and snow, a lot of snow. tomorrow, perhaps, in the evening, i will work a little more with Ne’tepyer. you see how very slow i am. you are reading an entire book and i will read a single poem for a week. even if it is in english.

have you heard of a 19th century Russian philosopher, Lev Shestov? According to Bauman, he was a great inspiration to Sartre and Camus. lived in paris, wrote in russian. i haven’t had time to search yet on internet for information about Kharms in english, but my guess is that few readers on poetry in english know much about his work. so i am asking you in a way to share an interest with me, if and when you have the time. another quote from Bauman:

“to understand, as Wittgenstein suggested, is to know how to go on”

eto ne to

i now know exactly one expression in Russian. it’s quite fascinating to me that look and see in english are practically interchangeable. they just collocate with different groups of words, but as you say, to look is to see. they are one and the same action.

are there any similar expressions to eto ne to in Ne’tepyer using tyt or tam?

bye


10.02.04

lev shestov

“Hardly ever was a programme of such a retreat so blatantly spelled out as in the work of Russian-Jewish philosopher Lev Shestov, in his later life a professor at the Sorbonne and one of the pillars of religious existentialism. Branded with the stigma of a despised and resented minority, yet excelling in the very activity which the despising and resenting majority brandished as the sign of its superiority and excellence, having passed with flying colours all the entrance examinations and yet been refused entry to the academic world that defined itself as the guardian of the absolute, universal values and hence alien to all parochial difference, Shestov [Apofeosis bespochvennosti: Opyt adogmatischeskogo myshleniya (Apotheosis of Rootlessness: An Essay in non-Dogmatic Thought) (Paris, YMCA Press, 1971)] responded with a frontal assault against what was (as he set about to prove) an incurable parochiality of the very search for the absolute in general, and for the absolutely superior values in particular. The philosopher’s seach for the ultimate system, for complete order, for the extirpation of everything unknown and unruly – he declared – stems from the worship of firm soil and a secure home, and results in trimming down the infinite human potential. Such a search for the universal cannot but degenerate into a ruthless clamp-down on human possibilities. ‘The solid ground sooner or later escapes beneath man’s feet, yet man continues to live without ground or with but a shaky ground under his feet, and then he stops counting the axioms as truths and instead calls them lies.’ The bitter experience of a stranger chased away from the door at which he knocked comes out but thinly veiled from Shestov’s own philosophical programme:

“The settled man says: ‘How can one live without certainty about the day to come, how can one sleep without a roof over his head!’ But an accident threw him out of his home forever, and he spends his nights in the woods. He cannot sleep: he is afraid of wild animals, of his own brother the vagabond. In the end, however, he entrusts his life to contingency, starts living the vagabond’s life and even, perhaps, sleeps quietly at night.”

The task of philosophy, in sharp contrast to the entire philosophical tradition, is ‘to teach men to live in uncertainty’; ‘not to calm down, but to disturb’. ‘Everywhere and with every step, on each or without any occasion, with or without reason, it is necessary to ridicule the most firmly accepted judgements and to state paradoxes. And then – one will see what happens.’

[Doesn’t this sound like what Kharms is doing in his poems?]

Elsewhere in this book, a lengthy footnote:

“Born Lev Isaakovich Schwartzmann in 1866 in Kiev; died in 1938 in Paris. A brilliant student of law and mathematics in the universities of Kiev and Moscow, author of several widely read, discussed and acclaimed books in literary criticism and philosophy, he nevertheless, as a Jew, was barred access to Russian academic life and failed to secure a proper academic post. He left Russia in 1922 for France. There he acquired fame as one of the most original philosophers writing and publishing in the country and was offered a Sorbonne chair. Admired by many (notably Camus, D.H. Lawrence and W. Gombrowicz), highly esteemed even by those who found his acid, corrosive philosophy unpalatable (notably Edmund Husserl), he remained a solitary thinker, fitting none of the established philosophical schools (though sometimes, erroneously, identified with the existentialist movement, and claimed by the existentialists themselves, on the strength of his lifelong preoccupation with Kierkegaard). Nicolai Berdyavev noted the ‘astounding independence’ of Shestov’s thought ‘from surrounding currents of the time’ (Tipy religioznoj mysli v Rosii (The types of religious though in Russia) (Paris: YMCA Press, 1989). He had only one true friend and acknowledged follower – a Frenchman of Rumanian-Jewish extraction, Benjamin Fondane, who was murdered in a German concentration camp in 1944.

The settled, the secure, the sheltered, the native – Shestov insisted – can keep their brittle order only when power-assisted. Their order is a fortress, heavily armed: with the principle of contradiction, with laws of logic proclaimed universally binding, with inquisitors, gaolers and executioners (Shestov did not live long enough to add: with Auschwitzes, with Gulags). Truths which need such a protection cannot be worthy of protection (conversely, real truths may to without consent of men); like Nietzsche’s Apollonian harmony, they cannot be effectively protected either. The powers they must to protect themselves testify to both the illegitimacy and the futility of their pretentions. It is, on the contrary, the feeble, the weak, the devoid of protection who are bearers of the saving truth.

What the truths of the settled try in vain to hide is not, however, the pre-human perpetuity of the pagan forest, but the humanity of Jerusalem. Humanity means limitlessness of possibilities. It is the creative openness of human existence, its irrevocable non-finality, its capacity to break through any walls, however tough and heavily armed, with the coercive forces enlisted by Athens – the principle of contradiction in union with absolutist states and religions – aim to contain in practice and pre-empt in theory. When Spinoza seeks knowledge sub specie aeternitatis vel necessitatis, when his successors declare such knowledge the only one worth pursuing and possessing, when Leibniz declares that eternal truths entered the mind of God without asking His permission – the divine potency of man in mutilated and incarcerated. The forces of Athens are about harmony and clarity, but also about constraint and brutal force. They are set to extirpate everything they cannot absorb and hold in their power: the search for absolute knowledge means pursuit of absolute power.

*

The footnote actually continues for another two paragraphs. What attracts me is the writing from within the condition of powerlessness.

p.s. I hope this doesn’t bore you.

p.s. Thank you for the Kharms urls. I will look them up later tonight. And I will try to write you again before going to sleep.

bye

11.02.04

Verbs

dear zhen
have you thought yet that i write you in the morning because i wake up and miss you. that is what has happened since palangas. more snow last night. the painters are back sanding in the hallway outside my door and the sound is such that they might be sanding my forehead. and it is only 7:30 in the morning. my good luck is that today (this morning) i must go to the passport office to obtain my last item of legitimation here, a temporary residence card good until the end of September (a very legitimate looking plastic card with photograph and my address issued by Warsaw) so at least i have somewhere to go to escape the painters.

last night i downloaded several of the selections of translations and i haven’t had time to look at them yet though i could not help having this thought glancing at the poems in passing: that translation always reproduces how the translator knows poetry, and the general tendency is to make as simple an object as possible. the tendency is always to make as simple an object as possible. we don’t what poetry to disturb us too much (disturb is about the only word that had any life for me in the quotation i sent you about Lev Shestov, though i forget the sentence in which it occurred – only single words remain in my mind as residues of what i read – single words or groups of words – why i don’t what to forget “eto ne to” yet) and poetry, like homelessness, is disturbing.

i wanted to write (thought about writing) in response to your first note yesterday (in british call this a “quip”) that water is often said to be dirty, but no word in writing ever is. if the word is able to exist at all, and most words do not. most of what we mistake for literature is simply the substitution of words for what cannot be named – whatever it is that keeps us alive – sustains us – and i can read 90 pages of poems and find only 9 words that breathe with any kind of life. this sounds very severe and i think you will make fun of it.

i only know that i have never written poetry to make it do any work than be the words that i needed (or, without me, words which simply needed) to exist. once in my life i make a mistake about poetry, since i thought that the writing of poetry (poetry itself) (what Ne’tepyer means by CAMO?) had a belonging somewhere, that writing poetry was an activity that one did as part of the activity of belonging anywhere. i no longer believe this. what is disturbing about even remembering a religious philosopher like Shestov is that we do live our lives according to beliefs. often we would have a problem if we tried to say what those beliefs are. the action of “being alive” is not a meaningless action if we try to think as much as possible about those who were not given this choice.

dirty? once can use the word obscenity, or profanity, or more objectively, viscosity. the texture of oil is said to be “viscous” (always visually close to “viscious” in my mind, or eye, my mind’s eye), the profane almost but cannot help but to suggest its opposite, the sacred or holy, and obscene? does it have an opposite? it is a word that is often used in censorship. no one knows what it means. very often, though, it appears that the very clean and clear language is truly obscene for all that it refuses to allow into the language field – this is the disturbance of all public broadcasting language and the political language which exists only within this media sphere.

so, i am guess i am for messiness, disorder, everything and anything that doesn’t belong – one of the most harmful ideas about poetry is that every word had to belong to its proper place in the poem. who can read with such severity. poetry is against all such discipline. poetry is about trying to find just the right group of words which satisfy an impulse to use words at all. that might require ten words or one million or more words. the number of words depends on the impulse. this is where we are most human, in our need to use language – and to search (look for – add the preposition and something new happens to the verb) for … for … life? who would want to stop looking for their life? (looking for and looking at at completely two different verbs) so when i read other poets, i know i am not reading the life they passed across very briefly and with great difficulty when i read for the impression of the whole to answer the category: what is it? or, is it important, or good?

maybe i am a very poor reader. i only read for what remains with me as a residue in the day or cycle of days when i am alive enough to read poetry at all.

sending this letter after your call – again, i miss you

bye

12.02.04

sweet nothings

dear zhen
yesterday i saw something that might make you smile: two people were pulling a space heater on a sled on a sidewalk without any snow on it. there was snow all around, a lot of snow, only some of the sidewalks are without snow from the sand and salt, and the sight and the sound of the sled being pulled with the space heater roped to it on its way to the repair shop (how else do you take a space heater to the repair shop – are you supposed to carry it? take it on the bus with you? now that there are no horse-pulled carts) amused me (not amazed me) though you are perhaps amazed that i have been amused. it is not amusing that the painters are again at work so early though the philosophy of affliction should help me to welcome them, the noise (din, really, that is the better word) and the idea that perhaps they are not sanding to prepare the walls for painting but sanding so to get rid of the walls altogether. maybe they are not sanding the walls at all. maybe they are erasing the walls!

my first cup of coffee is finished and that is a great disappointment. yesterday i drank a cup of coffee (two, actually) at a cafe that reminded me of the coffee at the hotel in palangas, my mind that was very good coffee, not to mention the coffee at our cafe. my own coffee is adequate, and after two years of bitter instant coffee in chita and tomsk, i should not complain, but the coffee in palangas was really quite good. do you drink such coffee every morning? i think you must. you have settled one of the greatest problems in life. a good cup of coffee in the morning. are there any other problems? i am glad that you have your schedule now. i decided that i do not need to know my schedule until friday. yesterday they were not very nice to me at the passport office, though the officer who was rude to me is famous for her rudeness. it is the same rudeness (this word again) that you mentioned from the ones who work in the shops whose lives are so overwhelmingly impossible in russia that it is amazing (not amusing) that they respond at all to such a simple request as a loaf of bread or, even worse, the catastrophe of not giving someone exact change.

here, for any piece of paper money over 10 zl. the custom is to hold the piece of paper money up to the light for some time. it is a common custom, in all the shops. mass social superstition that a 50 zl or 100 zl (the cash machines all dispense 100 zl notes) simply cannot be real money. there is a thought here about the symbolic and the note of the currency, but i have forgotten what it is. the custom of “inspection” is curious to me, one, for the inefficiency (there are always long lines at the check out at every store) and two, such eyesight inspection could not detect counterfeit money anyway. so it is pure custom, superstition. it reminds me how traumatized the society has been in the past, though, as usual, i am probably overimagining. once again, from the book i’ve been reading (soon i will run out of quotations):
“‘Everyone knows that a native requires no special effort to conform to his country’s customs and habits of thought, whereas a foreigner gives himself away by his need to explain and understand not only complicated matters, but the simplest trifles, the thousand nothings that are said and done in every moment of daily life.’”

doesn’t this quotation give wonderful dignity to “eto ne to”? to read the poetry of another language for the simplest trifles, the thousand nothings in daily speech, which for the non-native, are as dense and mysterious as the greatest philosophical abstractions as life and death, and even, to make a writing from such trifles and such nothings, even, then, to make something out of all the nothings, that might be really something (as we say in english). really something means something extraordinary.

is the offer of larissa’s flat extraordinary? is the offer for the conference only? or for the summer? i remember that her flat was one of the options in september. would the rent be about 100 dollars a month? would you insist on leaving every evening at 9:00 or would the closeness to your flat mean that you could stay a little later. why do i ask these questions? because in september was the perfect place and time for writing, our visits and walks in the afternoon, dinner in the evening, and in the mornings, i would write, and the thought of two and half months makes me very hopeful. visits to your dacha on the weekend. walks and walks among gardens and flowers and forests, perhaps a visit to altai, though my mind you do not care to travel much.

and why “sir” so much or at all? you have found something new to irritate me with? it is one of the trifles in english which must sound hilarious to you, but to me it was a word force upon when i was very young, and i never said “sir” or “ma’am” to anyone without a world of hatred inside me (and you have to say “sir” and “ma’am” to everyone that your job forces you to wait on, like the people in the shops) so everytime you write “sir” i am reminded of the shops i escaped by reading and writing poetry. though one does not every escape the shops. now i am sorry that i am sounding like i am scolding you. for my mind you are having a lot of fun with this word, and i think you are also laughing at my letters, at the same time as you write that you enjoy them. if i am able to bring some enjoyment into your life by writing you this way, then it makes me feel quite good. and you?

bye

13.02.04

Crocodile

dear zhen,

from the ancient Popol Vuh no less:

…So these then are the deeds of Alligator in turn,
The first son of Parrot
“I am the maker of mountains,”
Said Alligator.
And so Alligator
Was bathing at the edge of the water
When there passed by
Four hundred sons,
Hauling a tree,
A post for their house.
Four hundred of them were walking along,
And they had cut
A great tree
For the cross-beam of their house.
And there came Alligator
And arrived where there were four hundred sons.
“What are you doing,
You boys?”
“It’s just a tree–
We can’t lift it.”
“Shoulder it.
I’ll carry it.
Where does it go?
What sort of use do you want from it?”
“It’s just the cross-beam
Of our house.”
“All right,”
He said then, etc.

so you see “croc-o-deal” has a long and respected history. nothing i do is ever not serious, i assure you. yesterday i re-read some of my letters to you after palangas and i think the fun you are having with “sir” has reason to it. but i don’t know how to write just a few words lightly, and so i try to write too much, and the writing begins to talk to itself, and i think this is what you are making fun of: the writing that is writing to itself.

Camo? yes?

yesterday was an eventful day. haircut and buying of a frying pan. now my hair is short enough that i will not need to have it cut for another two months and the irritation of dried-out hair and dried skin from the heat in the flat, winter heat, i’m sure you know the effect of this, one almost forgets what it’s like to have water in the air, humidity, the thickness of the air in summer which is so good for the human being, and as for frying pan, they are almost all like the one in your dacha that you would not let me cook with because of the scratch at the bottom, the problem of the thin teflon coating and how easy it is to scratch. i did find one that was not too expensive though i haven’t cooked with it yet. lately it has been too cold to cook in the kitchen (-12 c yesterday, so my sweater is getting good use) but when the weather nears zero i will treat myself to perogi po-russki, maybe even i will try potato pancakes. that is my great humorous memory of palangas, the night when we went to the pub and ate the large helpings of potato pancakes. i cannot remember but it does not seem that we spoke to one another while heating the large portions. i did notice that your wild mushroom sauce looked very “kuszna” but you did not offer me any. do you remember that evening as being especially funny? i mean our attention to our dishes, and the fact that they were so large we could not finish them.

i have two of my three syllabii written for my courses which begin next week. i’m putting my two seminars on a web space and put them there last night, then realized that i had designed the pages for my laptop screen and not for 800×600 resolution, so it will be another day or two until i can send you the web address. if you looked at them now they would be too large. also they are somewhat primitive. but i rather like the crude effect. i’m not sure that my students will. there has been such a pressure to make the web a seamless surface for advertising that the very simplicity of publishing word and image and the do-it-yourself aspect has been taken away. i have quite a good html editor which i found for free and it makes html code for both windows and unix-linux computers. i rather enjoy working with it, though i am very limited in what i can do.

so much for the latest news. i enjoy being away from the cnn variety, if you can believe it, even crocodile movies. today i go to the university for my schedule and to check out more books from the library with alligator poems in them.

bye

14.02.04

Re: sweet nothings

dear zhen

On Friday, February 13, 2004 9:06 AM you wrote:

> hi, how are you? i am sleepy, hungry and angry.

i am sleepy, half-hungry, and not angry.

the website for my two seminars is at:

http://www.geocities.com/lodzm6

what do you think?
tomorrow morning i am going to cracow to go to a bookstore. three hours by train there, 5-6 hours there, three hours return.

my classes are on tuesdays, thursdays and fridays.

work begins for me on tuesday, though monday i shall probably go to the university in case stray students from last semester for whom i still have not given them their signature are trying to find me.

it is after midnight, and really i am tired. can you tell?

will you be in the office Sunday. if yes, i will write you tomorrow evening when i return.

bye

16.02.04

surviving sites

dear zhen
after 11:00 now and i’ve finished reading for the day and re-working the first page of my website

https://hypobololemaioi.com

what do you think? it takes too much time to design these pages, and yet i’m never happy with the design of the page.

in the bookstore in cracow i found a book on hungarian, czech and polish modernist architecture which i bought for the photographs with the thought that i may begin to understand the buildings i see, not the recognizably antique ones, as in cracow (yes, it is beautiful – poland’s prague, which it is near) but the buildings that were built in the 20s and 30s and survived the war
another book i found was on the lodz ghetto, a chronicle from surviving journals, with many street names that still survive in lodz, so i can visit these streets in spring to see if any of the old buildings are still standing. lodz was apparently a warehouse for jews (german administrative zone) before sending them to the camps

one cannot help but wonder what the extent of the collaboration was among poles and germans, as in france

also, a recent and very competent looking colloquial polish grammar book with cassette

also, a book of correspondence between a poet and a typesetter

also, a theoretical book on architecture and a book of poems

when i look at pictures of buildings in architecture photos i think about web pages. there’s the possibility for an analogy here, or one that i’m just beginning to become conscious of.

i still don’t have one syllabus written, though i have a few more days to write it. tomorrow work begins (psychologically) as i will go to the university, though i have no classes until tuesday.

i did not write you today in the hope that you would stay home and you should on sundays. even if (especially if!) it is to lie in bed and read. such lack of activity is healthy.

thank you for not being upset at the absence of any letters on your sunday. as you may guess, i am sinking a bit into my reading-teaching frame of mind, which is not a cheerful one.

though i have almost one full shelf of books now, and that is a cheerful sight.

how are your friends with whom we dined once? how is irina n.?

bye

16.02.04

tolerating monday

dear zhen
the morning coffee always makes feel very positive about the future of the world

so i am writing you a few words that will arrive in the middle of your day if only to invite or provoke a smile that i was thoughtful enough for a moment to send to you such words as these

and what sort of words are these? well, they are words very happy that their author is having his morning coffee and happier still that there is someone to read them. someone? now i am someone? only someone? the reader of these words may ask, this “someone” being one of those public discursive devices which makes reading all public discourse, cultural critique and philosophy, somewhat despairing – despairful would be the better word – though it’s not only not proper, it sounds awful, and you can add “-ing” to just about anything

so, the personal you, dear zh., who write to me twice on a day when i did not write at all – should i assume that you are in your office every – every? – Sunday?

today as tomorrow – for the entire week – i shall be more purposeful than i have had to be for the past two weeks and not having anything else to worry about, i am now worried about the effect on me of so much purposefulness – purposity? – not much fun to be had with suffixes this morning –

every time i think about toleration i become very intolerant. now it occurs to me that it is impossible for the philosophy of affliction to think about tolerance, as it is the position of such philosophy to always be grateful that one is still alive

in the practical world of objects and events, however, yesterday i understood that my new cd player uses too much battery power, so i shall have to look for a dc adapter. there is this very strong need lately for listening to music, and every time i try to listen to the radio i find about 10 minutes of music (yesterday some very old recordings of piano music – and i found myself listening to the scratches as though they were evidence of the record playing – the scratches on the record representing for a moment at least another historical period

it is a somewhat baleful project, don’t you think? walking around the streets of lodz trying to figure out whether this street or that street was a street down which masses of people were prodded on their way to the train or confined – partitioned – identified and defined and marked

administrative instruments and the object of that – administered populations – where is subjectivity in such a place, or situation? the spectacle of an administered population – so to write about being able to tolerate one’s being alive as an administered contingency – accident – anything can happen – your life can be subtracted at any moment – would be to investigate passivity?

this toleration theme is troubling me, as you can see

bye

17.02.04

22:12

dear zhen
thank you for your letters. i had a very amusing day. i woke up early
and after writing you as i wrote you i got ready to leave for the
university and when i got to the door downstairs to go outside it was
snowing and i turned around and went back to my flat and spent the day
reading, washing clothes, vacuuming and mopping the floor, and i even
cooked rice in my frying pan (the teflon makes the rice not stick, an
important problem with thin metal pots). such was the day, quiet and
domestic, and cheerful. strange to pass across so many moods. as a
result though i feel much more rested and ready to teach my one class
in the morning. my nerves are such lately that more than two or three
days of responsibility of making sense would be more than i would be
capable of doing. definitely i am in a better mood in the morning over
coffee and that is the better time to write you, though i am writing
you now shortly before 22:00 while drinking herbal tea which does not
make me happy. your letters do though, especially the one about the
roofs. i would like to work more and more with web design, doing the
most simple designs possible, as i mention, with some connection to
architecture. i only know that visually i am very moved by buildings.
much more so than by people, with one important exception. i think
that you are very moved by dogs and by long walks. with, i hope, one
important exception. the news, your news, about the dress-maker,
doesn’t it seem like not enough information? why would the visa be
more difficult? it doesn’t make sense. it is important to learn of
more people’s experiences. besides, if it is true, doesn’t it seem
intolerant? the more i think about this word, the less i am sure what
it means.

tomorrow morning i will have to pretend that i know what many words
mean, and this is difficult without becoming (or at least appearing)
pretentious. but i am glad to have a roof over my head. what is nice
about your attention to the photograph of the roof is that, maybe you
don’t know this, but it is my photograph. i wish i had the technical
means to make more visual images.

i am growing tired and so i will end here before writing words
mechanically,

missing you,

bye

18.02.04

СЛОВНО СНОВА

dear zhen
classes have begun and i have taught one class. today i stay home. i have made a promise to myself only to go to the university on the days when i teach, tues-thurs-fri, and to do everything that i need to do for the classes, copying, looking up books, etc, on those days. for some time, a small time, one of those moments in a day, yesterday, i walked from room to room in my flat, simply appreciating it, the flat, and to myself thought i have not thought good enough about it, but it is a very good space to read and so i read a lot yesterday, as i must promise to myself to read for myself also and not only to read for my classes, though the temptation is always to read for one’s classes. did i tell you that i have found a book in russian, a geological book? there was a piece of amber on the cover. there are some color photographs inside, a book published in the early 80s in moscow. i like the photographs of the insides of rocks. as you know, there is great variety on the inside. i am wondering if it is your study of geology which leads you to this argument about the toleration of subjectivity, the inside-outside matter. it is a great problem for philosophers. the current doctrine is that there is no outside anywhere. so you are from your geology in agreement. it is popular to say that ‘history has no outside’ or ‘there is no outside’. as subjects, we are or we think we are (another problem) – we are only what we believe ourselves to be – or what systems construct us – constituted – or we are composed (i’d better change the subject or this letter will become intolerable) – and i was only thinking of the pictures of the insides of rocks. what is important is to take away all semblance of volition – the will to freedom – away from human beings. why am i thinking about human beings and rocks at the same time? rock is really not the right word in english. stone and rock mean the same and they have entirely different tonal values. both words must be very old in english. what else is under the earth? metals. minerals. sediment (layers of clay in the process of becomng rock – does rock form from clay?) water. petroleum from fossil deposits. this is about the extent of my knowledge of the substances beneath the surface of the earth. you will say that sometimes i appear to write about just anything, and it is true. i was thinking about that book. the one in russian i found. i will bring it with me to tomsk. you know that whether or not the conference in sept happens i am coming to tomsk, yes? and that i think your idea about staying with irina n. a very good one, as she is the one person i have met in two years in russia with whom i felt completely comfortable forming simple russian sentences. you, my dear, are too amused at my illiteracy. if there is ever any reminder that the human being, the mind, the subjectivity, is machine-like, it is the language-learning process. words must be repeated and repeated. motor skills. this idea of the mind as motor. as of course the body and the mind are one. so the person as motor then. learning a language reminds of this. your parents were very wise to make you bilingual. that wasn’t all, of course. they had to provide you with a teacher. those are very nice memories sometimes, aren’t they? one’s childhood reading (i am remembering your saying that your teacher would simply ask you to read this or that novel and then you would talk about it with her). this confirms one of my suspicions about language teaching. that it hardly happens in the classroom, that there is no alternative to the private lesson, and that one must attain first the reading level, and then words are learned by reading and talking about one’s reading. in this year and this summer if i can complete my now two very good beginning books in russian and polish i will be able to begin reading books in this language, and so a new phase of my reading life will have begun. it is not so much a question of being able to use the languages functionally – travel, restaurants, shopping, etc. – as to explore the literatures, and build a library. i realized going to the bookstore that i need a library. there is just something irreducibly meaningful about books. their being in the world, they have this meaning, this being, they exist. i think that i avoid publishing out of awareness of this being as a form of threat, that it is somewhat threatening – what is called closure – to the writing, and for as long as i do not publish, the writing (my writing) remains writing in the active sense. so i can read a manuscript i wrote ten years ago and it is still alive to me in a way that it would not be if the writing became a book. this is what i learned when i experimented with the event of publishing a book, and i didn’t like how it made me feel about the writing. i didn’t like the closure. so, rocks and stones, machines, foreign languages, and writing. this is something of a mix this morning. i can no longer remember how to mix cement. this material is made to appear like stone. the passage from wood to stone to cement, steel and cement, in the modern period of building. this lovely anomaly in russia. the 19th century wooden houses everywhere, at least in siberia. maybe they are more attractive to look at than to live in, though it is an architectural reminder of what is called the “vernacular” (buildings made from tradition and not from design) and a sign of the strength of duration of a folk culture. all the new buildings going up in tomsk – who designs them? where do they come from? i remember talking about this with you. it was a great concern of some of the faculty members i taught. they said they felt like they had no voice, no influence, in the use of the city space, and city space is a space which affects everyone. well, i am beginning to think about friday’s seminar. so i should stop writing here. do you know that i enjoy your translations about rocks and minerals, and that if you wish when you are working on one, send me a copy for reading. that is what writing does. writing reads everything, and makes use of everything.

thank you for writing that you like me.
this is not a demand that i would wish to make.
nor a question that i would care to ask.
do you know that it feels very good
when you write to me this?

so, i miss you, this, you know, yes?

bye

18.02.04

rocks and stones

[Aleksey Tolstoy]

Ol’ga Forsh went up to Aleksey Tolstoy and did something. Aleksey Tolstoy also did something.

At this point Konstantin Fedin and Valentin Stenich leapt outside and got down to looking for a suitable stone. They didn’t find a stone but they found a spade. Konstantin Fedin cracked Ol’ga Forsh one across the chops with this spade.

Then Aleksey Tolstoy stripped naked and, going out on to the Fontanka, began to neigh like a horse. Everyone said: — There goes a major contemporary writer, neighing. — And nobody touched Aleksey Tolstoy.
1934

The story was written on the occasion of the first Congress of the Union of Soviet Writers and perhaps symbolically depicts the events. The mentioned persons are all known Soviet literary figures of the 1930x.

*

p.s. i just now found this among some txts i downloaded from one of the urls you sent me re kharms and rather like it not only for the reference to my earlier divigation on rocks and stones (i think somewhere there’s a line in poetry that includes this pair and someone else commenting, what’s the difference? is it redundant? bad writing? also i’m remembering n. mandelstam’s story in hope against hope that osip slapped aleksey and this was one of the incidents that led to o.m.’s increasing isolation and eventual victimization. do you know this story? i was also interested to learn that a novel of aleksey’s had been made into a film-serial like fassbinder’s Berliner Alexanderplatz. i watched part of it in tomsk. do you know this movie? what is it’s name? does it have a story?

thinking of you in the middle of the day
and wondering if you’re still at the office …

b y e

19.02.04

Process

dear zhen
yesterday one of the directors of the students scheduling called me and asked me if i could teach a composition course instead of the conversation course i was scheduled to teach (and which is the class that i like least, because of its lack of structure) so since this is a last minute arrangement (there are eight teachers from the faculty on leave this semester) it turns out that i do not have class this morning, except for one class at 10:00. So i will leave for the university at 8:45 – 9:00 depending on my mood (it takes 35 mins. by bus to go to university, then 10 minute walk, and today i have the syllabus to copy, so an extra 15 mins. which means one hour before 10:00 i should leave – you see how disorganized my life is since palangas and since have to be without you, who are – you are – an excellent organizer). End of parentheses.

My life was so organized in September that i could write every morning. Organization: wake up, drink coffee, write. Go to bus stop. Get on bus. Give English lesson. After English lesson, visit Jenya. Jenya leaves work. Walk with Jenya. Walk and walk and walk with Jenya. Cook dinner with Jenya. Say goodbye to Jenya at bus stop. Read. Go to sleep. Wake up, drink coffee, write.

So, you see, i already dream about july and august. it is very difficult to write when one is alone and unhappy as here, despite the four rooms in the flat, though the kitchen is hardly a room, as it is still cold, very cold, in there. i don’t know where you get your weather news. yesterday it was -6 c here. the painters are finishing painting in the hallway outside my flat. the color? mustard yellow! the color is so sickening it is almost comic. this is the way with institutions, i think. at least it is not green.

yesterday i read 300 pages from a novel more than twice that long until i realized the novel was terrible but clever copying of various earlier novels from a decade before. that is the way with most literature. i am only surprised at my patience, that i read for 300 instead of 30 pages. reading stories, the promise of a story, at least, one wants to give in to the narrative, and to do this, character must be accepted, scenes applied – supplied – maybe it is like watching a movie, though it is much more difficult to read when one is bored. the aleksei tolstoy movie was not important. it was only interesting to me that such an establishment writer of the early soviet period had been given even longer life by the movie adaptation of the novel.

now it is difficult for me to find something to read. the search is for patterns, configurations, motifs. there will be a certain amount of reading that i will have to do with my classes, reading that i dislike particularly because i am reading to teach, which means looking for ideas and how to talk about these ideas. when one reads for one’s own writing the ideas have no place, the process is more plastic. not written in stone at all. i found in my computer photographs from a book on stone-writing in Greece, the concept of the tablet. should i send you a picture? for a geologist, though, doesn’t the rock become interesting only when it is opened? do you read rocks like trees? both of these words sound ridiculous in english because they are both so old and implicated in hundreds of sayings and phrases and figures of speech. they are reminders of how lifeless language usually is, and this lifeless language is the language of the novelists.

Spilled milk. Water under the bridge. Lie low, kill time. Talk is cheap. These are some examples. The sensation is like reading tablets on which there is only the most boring story projected, like a bad movie that one watches anyway. There is a polish adaptation of Kafka’s trial on stage here, and guess what it is called? Proces. The Process. As you said about the Russian translation. Between “trial” and “process” there is a world of difference, how can one ever account for this immense space of difference between languages?

Tomorrow morning i will not be able to write you as i have three classes, the first one beginning at 8:30. I will try to write you tonight, but my mood is different in the evenings. Maybe i am a morning person. At least i think i write better letters in the morning than in the evening. The evening is for reading. If only there were something i could read longer than a few minutes without feeling time slipping, evaporating, disappearing. So i am in a dark mood in the evenings. If i keep writing this letter this morning i will write myself into a dark mood, and i must be cheerful for class!

b y e

19.02.04

so much for thursday

dear zhen
my mind it is not yet quitting time in tomsk so i am writing you a short note after returning from my class at almost 13:25 here so though you may not read this until tomorrow you will know that i was thinking of you the day before

what did you think today
what did you eat today
how long did you sleep today
who did you talk to today

yesterday i bought two pair of new socks. that is about all that is new here. my 1st year students are very clever. my syllabus may be too easy for them. everyone must work! everyone must be busy! everyone must obey!

tonight i am going to read about Culture and Society. or maybe i will fall asleep reading. monday or tuesday, i already forget which, i fell asleep in the afternoon for several hours and when i woke up, i ate four tangerines.

tangerines have never tasted better. i think it was the afternoon nap.

the other item of earth-shaking news in addition to my new socks is that my filling in one of my teeth fell out and now there is a great crater in my tooth. this was the crown i asked you about (600 dollars in U.S. when i was there last summer). i was hoping the tooth would last until this summer in russia. i do not think crowns cost so much there. here, though, they probably will. it is not a good idea to go around with a big hole in one’s tooth, unless i want to lose it altogether. and it is one of the teeth near the front, which i should not lose yet, for appearances sake.

does my appearance concern you? i should hope it does …

bye

p.s. please don’t comment on the question about my appearance. i can already see the expression on your face preparing to have fun with that one. and at my expense (so we say). (why we say it is another question altogether).

20.02.04

Society&Culture

dear zhen
a cup of coffee, the morning, the light from the ceiling, bird cawing outside the window, in the snow, if there’s snow (there is snow) the busses are running, even the trains, if there was one to take, this morning, my classes (despite my classes) why shouldn’t one be happy to start the day? you are there for me to write to, and in your writing, you spare me a little (“at my expense”) and yes, i will look after my tooth. did you not have a crown done last summer? i seem to remember this conversation. last night i read about society and culture, and conclude: society means group of persons, culture means way of life. i think i will take this deep knowledge to university this morning. do not ask me what literature is. or, you may ask, though you may be surprised at my answer.

did you know that it is always the same lake, the one where the monster movies are made? even if it is not the same lake, it is photographed to appear to be the same lake. more terrifying than monster to monster movie goers is the idea that there is more than one lake in the world. that is a poor attempt at humor, please excuse. it is 6:30 in the morning.

i will write you saturday and sunday, unless you do not work this sunday, but if monday is a holiday, i am sure you will work on sunday. the idea of “men’s day” is too funny to comment on. special days, even holidays, are important, but it is too cruel to celebrate such a day. if i remember, isn’t it a disguised military day? if so, on “all men’s day” all men should be made to march until they drop. that will cure them of their military sentimentality.

which is worse, in your mind, military or sentiment? it is difficult for me not to think what is not, by now, sentiment. do you think me sentimental? sometimes i think i am becoming increasingly vain, or, at least, self-conscious. oh, well, off to teach (first i will have second cup of coffee).

i miss very much the snow in the pines in palangas.

bye

20.02.04

Friday’s done

dear zhen
done with or done for – it turns out i’ve been scheduled to teach 7
classes! am very tired but thought to write you a note before your
19:19 steam whistle blows at your factory.

i miss you

bye

21.02.04

All fool’s day

dear zhen
men can be fools more than sometimes, don’t you agree? i will give you an example. yesterday late in the afternoon i was in the katedra at the university downloading texts and books from several sites i had found and the head of the culture section of our faculty, whose house i visited at christmas, stopped by to write some emails. the night before he and two british colleagues and myself had several beers at a pub near the university, leaving around 2:00 a.m. driving home (he lives in a nearby town, or really, in the country – you may remember that i had to take a train there) and there was a police stop to check for drivers who had been drinking, so he spent the night in jail and only in the morning was he able to reach one of our polish colleagues who helped him with translation (he doesn’t speak polish, even after living here for five years). the result of drinking three pints of beer that evening will be about 2000 zl. fine (about 600 dollars, or a month’s salary) and loss of his driving license for one year. after speaking with him yesterday, i felt very glad for my life of simplicity which always requires that i walk everywhere and within distance of where i live, and the loss of only 100 zl. for walking across the street against the light. everyday i see at least one person do the same, and it still troubles me – that in a strange country one watches how other people behave and does the same, and it is only the coincidence that i was the only person crossing the street that resulted in my small fine. so, i thought, yesterday, in comparison, i really have very few troubles, and much to be thankful for. one should always remember this also: that when we tell someone else about our bad fortune, that no matter the sympathy expressed, the other person must always be grateful for the good fortune they enjoy for not being the one in the predicament.

maybe this has to do with toleration, or your joke about alcohol – in english, the word moderation would be used, though, strangely, toleration and moderation are rather close in my mind – even, perhaps, to the point where one might say that toleration is the practice of moderation, or vice versa. everything in moderation is a phrase i remember reading from an old introduction to the ancient philosophers, though i don’t know if this can be extended to everyone in toleration. many of the texts that i have been downloading are philosophically oriented, so i am looking for different points of view on this theme. the problem is that toleration as a word in and of itself is rather empty and meaningless, and it is difficult to construct a context for it. toleration is one of those words that leave one uninterested in any meaning it might have. now, on the other hand, trespass or excess (the opposites of toleration and moderation) these are very interesting words. but one could hardly write a paper for a conference in tomsk on the virtue of breaking laws and the celebration of all social forms of disobedience. yet this is where so much philosophy written since the 60s in the west leads us. the worst tendency, and one which i have been affected by, when i wrote my two conference addresses (have you read them before? i reread them again and was somewhat bothered by the generality of address [ https://hypobololemaioi.com/bio3.html ] and i am a little concerned about writing in such a mode. the effect is like appearing to be writing about something when you are really writing about nothing at all, a severe defect of bureaucratic discourse. instititutions cripple language, and the language of these essays, mine, is so public as to appear paralyzed. writing is much more urgent and concrete when it interprets and interpreting, writes to itself and to the process of interpretation (process means something different in english, a sort of vague equivalent to “ongoingness” or more simply, continuousness). so, when i write for the sake of the writing itself, there is this character or quality of the writing always investigating – exploring – the way in which it is struggling to signify, and when i write for a public event, like a conference, this writing becomes so public that it loses all frames of reference to just about anything that interests me as writing.

you see that i can write a lot about the problem of writing. this is where all writing properly begins. i am rather disturbed by any text which forgets the difficulty of its existence, and which pretends that the procedures by which the text is constituted as writing (the literary) are invisible, unacknowledged, even, unthought. maybe i should write today, since i have apparently begun the day by writing, though it is more pleasant to read, and reading and writing are always a poor substitute for the enjoyment of watching Crocodile!

bye

p.s. i will write you tomorrow morning as i am afraid that sunday is not a day of rest for you.

21.02.04

Shiftings. siftings

dear zhen
and now the ritual pleasure, the morning’s coffee. my alarm clock is set for 6:00 so turning it off and going back to sleep even if only for an hour or an hour and a half as this morning gives me the sensation of sleeping late, though it is early, i must start waking up early.

there is no question in my mind about the conference in september, though you words are rather remindful of the sensitivity of such participation, my participation, that, first, there is difficulty in getting foreigners to come to tomsk, the severity (for them) of traveling in russia, and second, the translation problem, and i mean more than linguistic. did you know that i participated, last spring, in several seminars given by a philologist who teaches at both TPU and TSPU, and we gave one seminar to an essay i had written in chita, translated into russian, and this essay was rather philosophical (i would call it discursive – or discourse, cultural-historical discourse, which i write from time to time, from the perspective of a poet – and as i’ve mentioned, mandelstam’s essays are very instructive in this regard) so, though i am not a trained philosopher, neither am i simply a sensationalist, which many poets are. so i think that i can actually contribute something to the conference. last spring at one of the two conferences in tomsk where i spoke a philosophy professor from novosibirsk (maybe, at least she was not from tomsk) adapted my remarks about grammar, i.e. What once were windows had been painted out, or What had once been windows were painted out?

“There is a linguistic question here about states and actions expressed by verbs in English, not to mention the shifting functions between verb and noun, which often leave the form of the word unchanged, so I posed the problem to myself this way: How can the windows be said to be anything except windows, since the action of painting them has not made them anything except windows which have been painted out? The action of painting them, in other words, has not changed the state of the windows. They are still windows, painted or unpainted.”

What I’m remembering is that one of the professors listening took note of this moment in my talk (there was nothing in writing to refer to, as i was reading from the text i had written) and spoke in russian in the language of epistemology (her talk was translated to me as she was talking) and to my mind, in an extremely sophisticated way she expanded on the element of the philosophy in my very practical (very english) paragraph, and i was reminded at that time of russian as a language for ideas, you’ve spoken about this before yourself, even in the context of the tendency of bureaucratic language to achieve a complete state of meaning indirection so that the reader has no idea what they are reading except for the fact that they are being directed.

english is far too personal-practical sometimes, though i think sometimes more than you say you enjoy the difference. i wonder also if there is a difference for you from the two weeks in palangas where you needed, for my sake, to use english every day, and now in tomsk, the contrast, if it is even a contrast, of having to deal with english only or almost only in my letters? what is the difference for you, if there is one, between speaking-listening and reading-writing? if i am sentimental, i worry that i am more sentimental in person, the personal presence, speaking and listening, and that in writing i have almost, sometimes, it seems, another person that i am or project. writing is always about projection of a state or mood, and the mood aspect of sentiment is one that i often forget. how much i depend on meaning in english as the accumulation of associated reference without focus of attention to a single word. there is no environment like the language one has been raised in and which surrounds.

once i wrote, and i forget where, maybe in a letter, that the greatest sentimentalists were nazis. now, the noun the ends the sentence troubles for its imprecision, since the phenomenon referred to by the designation, the term, is a collective identity. how could such a power manifest itself in mass form and produce so many (almost infinite) instances of cruelty human to human? this question is not abstract for me as only the day before i found what to my mind is a very interesting book unfortunately in french, so i have to translate it as i read, written about three lives – one youth who commits suicide in 1910, and two women both of whom are killed in auschwitz (where, by the way, is Gorizia? that is the place name that is given, where they are from) and the writing is very inspiring, as the author reconstructs by imagining a fiction for these lives buried in an archive. an idea i was working with last night was that it is the administrative sentence which, in language, creates the conditions, sanctifies, the elimination or liquidation of populations. part of such thinking for me is finding my way to a conception of poetry as meaning-work, that the meanings are not there, before the poem is written, but that the writer of the poem by writing the poem is writing about the problem of any and every word’s meaning.

this, to my mind, is not a sentimental art. though i have worked with the representation of emotions before, what the author i am reading, Patricia Farazzi, calls “generic emotions” (the ones that we are surrounded by and which we inherit, unconsciously, and which are readily available, without much thought, and the problem is that these “generic emotions” are what the greater part of humanity depends on, especially if they are more worried about what to eat and how much money it will cost, so that one is left with the problem that the experience of emotions which are not generic depends on the development of one’s culture. in a sense, that is what Farazzi is writing about, the fragility of molecular cultures (jewish microcosms) such as Carlo Michelstaedter, Emma Luzzatto-Michelstaedter and Argia Cassini belonged to.

Farazzi quotes Kafka: Faire le negatif puisque le positif est la tout fait. (Make the negative since the positive is there already made). If i were to translate that into how it might sound in the environment of english, it would sound something like: Apply the negative as the positive is always aready there. even in such an apparently simple sentence, nothing is simple, unlike zola’s kill us, kill us then, we demand our rights! to make or to do the negative? what is it? a loaf of bread? one makes bread. you cannot make an idea in english. so, something like apply needs to be used, or construct, or assert. something more abstract. there is such great difference in english between concrete and abstract. the positive is there, and remembering kharms, we know that here and there is a big problem in all languages and their grammars, la and ici, there and here, tyt and tam. there, where existence is, what exists, and everytime we answer the question, where? by saying, there, it is there, we are speaking as philosophy (ideas are molecular, particles, magnetized towards the abstract) and the positive? the cup of coffee is a cup of coffee, or that bowl of kasha is a bowl of kasha.

poetry (and kafka is a writer of the poetic) is not satisfied with these certainties. why, if the cup of coffee is only a cup of coffee and the bowl of kasha only a bowl of kasha, and you may notice that the distinction in english from the concrete and particular to the abstract depends on the shifting article, which russian does not have, so does that mean that everything in russian reverberates simultaneously in the thingness and the idea? but we have to be demonstrative. we have to distinguish. we have to point things out (remembering Ne’tepyer again). or, when we make the negative, this cup of coffee this morning includes within it the accumulation of actions called coffee, and there is nothing simple about it, nothing obvious, and at this point you are saying no, reality is basic when it is reduced, diminished, when one has coffee and their coffee includes the awareness that has not in the past nor may in future exist.

there is this threshold of instability of perception in kafka. everything may just as soon disappear as they are experienced as existing. this is the fragility of the microcosm. and suddenly i am remembering a sentence about butterflies.

you can see that i am working towards writing about something, whatever that something may be. now i must make a second cup of coffee. will i sound sentimental if i continue to write this morning? is it sentimental to write you every morning?

rather, rhythms of structured activity, focus, direct address, tangibility of the other, you, who are there, at least sometimes, i hope, amused. tomorrow you will not have to work on All Fools Day, yes?

bye

24.02.04

your corrections

dear zhen
this is written early monday evening and i am in different mode and mood.

though i wanted to send you this paragraph from a novel i was reading sundays as i was reminded of you:

“A lonely daughter of culture, with a strong mind and a dense will, she had browsed all her life on the hard stones and remains, and at the same time she had retained a strong sense of humanity, and a slightly fantastic humorous vision of her fellow men. She was an odd number; and all alone, she could give the even numbers a bad time.”

You may not think that it sounds “near” you, but i thought of you while reading it. The even numbers had their day off today, yes? And you, were you able to rest? Read?

If you visit my website for my classes you will see some small changes, but that’s what i have been working on today in addition to reading:

http://www.geocities.com/lodzm6

I am interested whether the pages appear in your browser as readable.

As far as getting home after 2:00 a.m., I never go anywhere in lodz farther than walking distance. You needn’t worry, if that’s why you asked.

I have eaten well the past several days, cooking cabbage, carrots and potatoes first with chicken and then with ox-tail. The latter you would probably not care for. Strange, but I haven’t cooked with potatoes hardly at all, so now even boiled potatoes are a real treat.

The temperature is hovering around 0 and the sky doesn’t know whether or not it wishes to snow or to allow the snow to melt. Saturday we had one full day of brilliant sunlight. That morning I wrote you such a long letter. The weather really does affect my moods.

The conference paper corrections should be in red ink. You know that I am always more than happy to help you in any way that I can.

If you can call this week, Wednesday morning would be a good time.
bye

24.02.04

dark blue and black

dear zhen
first few minutes at school this morning. yes, the colors of the city
imaginary are dark, somber perhaps, not gloomy?

this evening i am going to visit a private language school near where i
live where i may teach for two or three evenings during the week until
the end of june.

i will write you more when i find out more.

hope your day is bearable, today.

bye

25.02.04

new news

dear zhen
life is becoming more complicated or as tends to be said, interesting. at least i am writing you in the morning with my first cup of coffee, which always makes me happy, and tomorrow and friday i won’t be able to do this, so already i am unhappy about the thought of tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps at its petty pace etc. today i have four hour training session at the language school after observing classes for three hours last night – my evening was consumed by this new distraction. instruction. 40 zl. an hour, about 10-12 hours per week, about 100 extra dollars per week, according to my calculations. this would not be a bad idea for the next four months in addition to the necessity of recognizing and admitting that, after palangas, i am somewhat depressed, and time weighs heavily. more work, less time, no thoughts. this is a useful formula. also, the problem of the tooth reminds me that it is not a good idea to have no resources, and needing resources, yes, i will say yes, to private language teaching job. the great advantage is that the school is only 15 minutes away walk, so no extra time is spent going to a new place. the method is entirely pavlov, productive, everyone repeats, small groups, everyone must speak, simply pointing at them will do, all the questions and their answers are in the book. this is the idea i fell asleep with last night: 99% of all we say both to ourselves and others exists as a script that can be written down and drilled into others learning the language. this means, none of our thoughts, not even our most intimate thoughts, are original. everything has already been thought and felt and said, and most of it is boring! we are not left with very much choice. that is the genius of the language method. originality? maybe it exists in humor, turns of speech and figure in a language, but the thought that everything we say is what is called a “stock response” is quite a disturbing thought, don’t you think? the method i observed is the method of the stock response. all of this time i have wasted waiting for original, thoughtful, sensitive responses from my students when i should just tell them what to think and not think about it!

the illusion is that there are ever original, thoughtful, sensitive responses anywhere. how much simpler life is and how much more basic reality is when we defer to the stock response. do you have this expression in russian? it is very useful. now, for more exciting news. yesterday one of the americans who live in the building called me to tell me that her flat had been broken into and money and laptop stolen. typical (middle class) american, her laptop was insured, so i was glad that she was only calling me to warn me and to seek sympathy. my first thought of course was about my own laptop, which is not insured. the good news is that my door has two locks, one that can be stripped by a crowbar (which is how her flat was broken into) and second is a deadbolt, much more difficult to break into. but the burglary happened in the daytime, and that is always a disturbing thought. as burglary itself is a disturbing crime. when someone robs you on the street, there is a reality dimension to it, but when someone has been in your flat, your living space, and taken what is yours, without your being able to see the theft happening, suddenly the living space is changed. my neighbor spoke about how much she hates lodz now, and can’t wait to leave after living here for two years. so, the private language school has another dimension: should i become disillusioned with teaching here, which is likely, not only will i have the experience of the university, but also private language school. more references, more letters of recommendation. it seems i will never be able to ask you for a letter of recommendation! ma’am.

after my training session today, i must write a syllabus for my composition class, read and prepare two short texts, and read a longer text for another class. i will work from 4:00 p.m. to midnight. what happens when one has too much time is that one begins to float in time, and i very much like to float and read and wander carelessly and write vagrant words into my notebook and pay attention upon my moods, and basically be bored and not-bored, aware of time passing, sounds developing, writing happening, and sometimes it is even poetry. do you know something jenya, the world despises this method. it is not productive. so, in the interest of being productive, and above all in the interest of additional income, i shall refuse to float until the summer. the summer, for the summer to be for me a threshold of time and a destination, evn the thought of the train and the fields rolling by (someone has a theory that the views from the train in the 19th century inspired the invention of cinema – and the early panoramas) and walks with you among flowers and meadows, may i float in and out of words there and then?

b y e

26.02.04

Coloquial interlude

hey girl it’s me here,

do you really want me to sound this way? why then, why then, yes, yes, very good very good.

tis the end of a long night, and i am as prepared for tomorrow as it is possible to be. the private language school promises to be a source of a lot of humor, so watch out.

by the way (by way of freud) take a look at the chekov quote you sent me. don’t you, um, think, maybe, it’s a little too suggestive? or perhaps “redolent” is a better word.

my first thought was that you were throwing back at me the “lonely daughter of culture” quote i sent you. you probably were, even if you weren’t intending to. after all, with due apology, i am one of the even numbers.

nighttime is not my time for writing very good letters. so you will not have one until saturday morning. my last (sigh) saturday morning before teaching at the repetition tank.

really, i have a lot of humor about this, perhaps too much. my zaplata will be “under the table” and i am sure you know what that means.

oh, my lonely daughter of culture, what rock will you throw through my screen tomorrow?

bye!?

p.s. thanks for calling. your voice sounds very “hale” and full of humor. the note of gloomy in your email i did not quite understand, unless you were unhappy with the end of the conversation. i think the last word was “idea.” yours or mine, i forget which, but March 2 it appears is a tuesday, so i should be able to call you in the afternoon, about 5:00 p.m. my time, 10:00 p.m. yours, okay?

you amuse me
you amaze me
but you dont faze me …

p.s.s. and i have a deadbolt on my door, so they will have to drive a truck through here to get my laptop. i don’t keep any cash here, except my last two 50 dollar bills. they’re souvenirs, anyway (most importantly, my russian visa money – it is getting to be about that time for the invitation process, yes?)

the language school method should be introduced in russia (apparently it’s very popular here in poland), everyone sounds like parrots, which is what english sounds like most of the time anyway, don’t you agree? i rather like this idea of teaching parrot-english. (the horror of the thought is that we are all fundamentally parrots)

26.02.04

whilst&whereabouts

dear zhen

as soon as i learn how to say whilst instead of while and whereabouts instead of where, i will you show you how and when to use these very useful expressions.

i have been very efficient this morning and have a few minutes before leaving for the university. in six hours i will have the rest of the day to myself (reading for tomorrow – i must present text about woman captured by indians in 1675) and, in general, performing and entertaining.

when did teaching become a method of trying to make learning attractive? always i am returned to the problem, why is this or that text important. what can i say about it that will make it sound important. and i often lose faith at this moment, since it is difficult to say why this or that text is important.

so, i must instead sound like a parrot.

about march, i know you do not like to visit the bureaucracies, i know you do not like to visit the bureaucracies.

i know
you do
not like
to visit
the bu-
reau-cra-
cies.

bye

(bureaucracy has never before appeared to me as such a phonetic mishmash, how could anyone figure out how to say it from the way that it’s spelled?)

“bu” rhymes with “dew”
“reau” rhymes with “row”
one hard c and one soft c
with no indication of the difference
etc. one knows, always, that english is a very strange language,
though it helps to be reminded once in a whilst.

26.02.04

13:29

dear zhen
according to my calculations you are still unless today is your lucky day at work at the office at your classes in the pursuit of your profession and the instruction of bright and eager minds and i am home, home, home at 13:30 in the afternoon, the temperature hovering above freezing, the snow and ice softening, a few smiles on the faces of passersby, painters still here and noisy and paint smell everywhere (it would give you a headache).

this afternoon if there is not too much noise i will read for a while and wait for that most welcome luxury in the day: a nap. have you had a nap lately? i highly recommend it. in fact, this seems to be a practice of yours that has influenced me. are you able at all to go home in the middle of the day to sleep for an hour or two? i always feel much more rested from two hours sleep in the afternoon than a nighttime of forced sleep when i would rather read but have to go to sleep because of morning classes.

there’s nothing much to report here on teaching, except that i like one of my first-year groups quite a lot, and can see the advantage of teaching for a number of years at the same place, working with the same students across the duration of their studies. doesn’t this happen in your case? do you still work with students from first to fifth year? do you think that it makes a difference, for you?

i can’t think of a single thing to say about english apart from the obvious observation that this is the language i am writing you in. when it starts to sound not-english, you will of course let me know. i am going to have lunch now: pierogi russki.

bye

27.02.04

TGIF

dear zhen
so great is my pleasure to write you in the morning over coffee (pause) drink of coffee, thought, what thought did i have, oh, yes, please send me anything you wish for help with anytime. the text that you mentioned, if you send it today, i can finish it tonight and send it to you tomorrow. my new teaching does not start for a week. because it is a method, they give several training sessions. one must learn to make others repeat (not to mention repeating oneself) and one must learn to prompt and correct (which i have never cared for while language teaching). at university, i have one class of students in the last semester of the fifth year, over 25 students, and this class was given to me at the last moment, and it is irritating, aggravating, to say the least. what is the motivation. it is simply a conversation skills class. but it is a good reminder of the old system, which includes very many superfluous features, and needs badly to be redesigned. even in the fourth and fifth years students do not choose their own classes. i wonder if at all they are encouraged to choose their own books to read. we spoke about this before, i believe, how under the “old” system there was a kind of infantilism built in to the system, treating students as children until they begin to act like children. this is what can happen when there is no possiblity of making choices.

enough lecturing for this morning. this tendency of mine must aggravate you sometimes. otherwise, i am reading for my classes, eating the food in my kitchen, tomorrow i will do some laundry and vacuum. just in case you imagine sometimes that my life here is eventful. your walks to and from TPU are more eventful than my busrides to the university. is it an event when one reads? there is an old translation into english of a book by chekhov to a prison colony in eastern siberia. i started to read it once, but the translation was not very good. one of those books published in 50s-60s when all of russia was (presented to be) a prison. there was probably also always a prejudice from the ‘westerners’ in moscow and st. petersburg towards siberian towns. recently i saw an online article about media art in novosibirsk. (i am remembering your assertion that tomsk-novosibirsk had an urban culture comparable to the western cities). maybe this summer we may try to visit a media lab or some events there? even to go to novosibirsk once in which to “sight-see” – would you care to?

now, please excuse me for ending this letter. i am thinking about second cup of coffee.

bye

28.02.04

evangelist

dear zhen
i thought that i had allowed myself the luxury of sleeping late on the last saturday morning before parroting and it’s something of a disappointment to discover that it is only a quarter past eight in the morning and not noon (i wanted it to be noon). even coffee does not taste very good this morning. i haven’t yet had time to discover what my mood is. i was very happy last night to receive your emails and glad to hear that you were able to leave early and that at least one directive dissolved by attrition. my reading this weekend will be, once again, for my classes, and a pattern has already emerged: as i mentioned, i like very much my four classes with first, second, and third-year students, and dislike extremely my three classes with fourth and fifth-year students. something here happens to students after the third year exam. they are the first to admit that they are very lazy, and tend not to do the reading. without even this minimal interest, it is difficult for me to do more than talk, which is what they prefer. i don’t know whether this passivity is due to the cross-cultural factor, since my polish colleagues talk about the same problem. there is a larger disaffection with the entire university process which one usually encounters at the first and second year level in universities at the u.s., but by the last year students should have identified their interest and so at least be interested in what they are studying. instead, lack of interest and engagement and activity, and dullness all around, and the appearance at least that i am speaking to dolts. in my one fifth year seminar no one was familiar with the concepts of modernism and postmodernism. everyone seems to have a basic introductory-level acquaintance with the materials at about the level of a high-school senior in the u.s. so, you see, i am somewhat unhappy with teaching here, though several classes as i mentioned are extremely good. the fault is mine, perhaps. i cannot just go through the motions. i need to be stimulated by my environment. and that’s not happening here.

so, this morning, i sound like an evangelist. what will i sound like tomorrow morning after a day of reading? will you be in the office tomorrow? remember that tuesday i am going to call. there’s a faculty meeting at 2:00 p.m. so i should get home between 4:00 and 5:00 p.m.

it is snowing today, the sky is white and the roads are quiet, the sounds of the passing cars muted by the snowfall. according to another resident of the building with whom i spoke yesterday, four apts in this building have been broken into recently. it is strange to feel that i might be perceived as someone who might have something somebody else might want. did i use enough modals in that sentence?

if you could read for a day for your own pleasure and distraction, what would you read? not a book by chekhov, i imagine. probably you do not care for dosteovsky. who are the interesting modernists besides bulgakov? would you read bulgakov if you had a day free for your own wanderings. there are books by him in russian in the bookshops here.

i hope this letter does not sound entirely like chattering of a parrot. i am preparing myself for my new job in thinking of myself as a parrot. the parrot-evangelist. i must change the world into parrots. another parrot-like bird is a macaw, though i’m not sure whether they repeat words or not.

tuesday is too far away.

bye

29.02.04

Yesterday’s reading

dear zhen
i thought that i had allowed myself the luxury of sleeping late on the last saturday morning before parroting and it’s something of a disappointment to discover that it is only a quarter past eight in the morning and not noon (i wanted it to be noon). even coffee does not taste very good this morning. i haven’t yet had time to discover what my mood is. i was very happy last night to receive your emails and glad to hear that you were able to leave early and that at least one directive dissolved by attrition. my reading this weekend will be, once again, for my classes, and a pattern has already emerged: as i mentioned, i like very much my four classes with first, second, and third-year students, and dislike extremely my three classes with fourth and fifth-year students. something here happens to students after the third year exam. they are the first to admit that they are very lazy, and tend not to do the reading. without even this minimal interest, it is difficult for me to do more than talk, which is what they prefer. i don’t know whether this passivity is due to the cross-cultural factor, since my polish colleagues talk about the same problem. there is a larger disaffection with the entire university process which one usually encounters at the first and second year level in universities at the u.s., but by the last year students should have identified their interest and so at least be interested in what they are studying. instead, lack of interest and engagement and activity, and dullness all around, and the appearance at least that i am speaking to dolts. in my one fifth year seminar no one was familiar with the concepts of modernism and postmodernism. everyone seems to have a basic introductory-level acquaintance with the materials at about the level of a high-school senior in the u.s. so, you see, i am somewhat unhappy with teaching here, though several classes as i mentioned are extremely good. the fault is mine, perhaps. i cannot just go through the motions. i need to be stimulated by my environment. and that’s not happening here.

so, this morning, i sound like an evangelist. what will i sound like tomorrow morning after a day of reading? will you be in the office tomorrow? remember that tuesday i am going to call. there’s a faculty meeting at 2:00 p.m. so i should get home between 4:00 and 5:00 p.m.

it is snowing today, the sky is white and the roads are quiet, the sounds of the passing cars muted by the snowfall. according to another resident of the building with whom i spoke yesterday, four apts in this building have been broken into recently. it is strange to feel that i might be perceived as someone who might have something somebody else might want. did i use enough modals in that sentence?

if you could read for a day for your own pleasure and distraction, what would you read? not a book by chekhov, i imagine. probably you do not care for dosteovsky. who are the interesting modernists besides bulgakov? would you read bulgakov if you had a day free for your own wanderings. there are books by him in russian in the bookshops here.

i hope this letter does not sound entirely like chattering of a parrot. i am preparing myself for my new job in thinking of myself as a parrot. the parrot-evangelist. i must change the world into parrots. another parrot-like bird is a macaw, though i’m not sure whether they repeat words or not.

tuesday is too far away.

bye

Тема: odds & ends

Дата: 1 марта 2004 г. 4:30

dear zhen

i thought i would write you a few lines as it is getting late, almost midnight, and i need to go to the university early in the morning and then later to the parrot school and i don’t expect to return until past 14:00 or later, past your bedtime. I didn’t quite understand your sentence about empire. to lose one’s face and to lose one’s head have slightly different meanings in english. i’m at this scattered moment when, even though i don’t have any classes tomorrow, i’m constantly feeling that i’m forgetting something or that i will forget something. the result of being responsible for too many details. for one class i need to give something of a summary of 20s-30s modernism in new york, the 1912 or 1913 armory show (i can’t even remember what date), strangely enough, in the text i’m teaching, visits to New York in 1906 by gorky, 1922 by esenin in the company of isadora duncan, and 1925, mayakovsky. what else happened. i forget. i wasn’t born yet. that’s the problem with having to teach cultural periods. there’s such a thing called the crisis of representation, and it’s quite funny actually, in the text i’m teaching this crisis of representation is associated with postwar postmodernism the floating signifier, etc., and yet all or so many of the early modern works are not exactly neoclassical monuments. whatever the referent is, it was already being shattered before world war 1. so i will have to sound contradictory. even a few searches and one quickly realizes that there’s a great deal of digitalized reproductions of art on the internet. it’s very interesting. i found the reproduction of a painting of a dog by a pretty good modernist painter, joseph stella. it’s the best picture of a dog i’ve seen since this detail from a painting by goya. would you like for me to send you it? the size of the file is fairly large, and i don’t know whether you are very fond of digital non-objects. but the painting is actually quite good. obviously this animal did not represent a crisis to represent. one can make too much of representation. but then what would there be to talk about? i find visual images to be a great help in trying to address subjects for which there is little reference here. not the modernism of the arts, especially the visual arts, but the strange place that NYC represented at the turn of the last century. in 50 years from 1 million to 7.5 million. i shouldn’t bore you with details from information that i have to talk about, but it is interesting (at least for me) to approach any kind of sense of history through artworks. i don’t really think it’s there. on the other side, narrative histories leave one with even less to talk about. so, nothing else happened today, a day that pass very quietly and evidently quite cold though i didn’t venture outside. i can tell by how cold my kitchen is. last week you had a holiday on monday, i hope that does not mean that you must work twice as long tomorrow. remember that i will call you tuesday afternoon. by quiet i mean that i didn’t talk to anyone at all, nor did i even listen to music. i had one phone call, from the parrot school. i did not vacuum, i only swept. and that not very much. i don’t remember that you yourself pay very much attention upon such activities. as they are not worth paying attention to. i hope i am asleep within the hour. and you, lucky you, have been asleep for five or six hours now as i send this.

bye

Тема: ends over ends

Дата: 1 марта 2004 г. 12:20

dear zhen

it is interesting that i cannot think right away of many expressions in english about avoiding work. the first ones that come to mind are proverbs from the bible about one must work. work is life. even reviewing some materials for thursdays classes there were comments about so-called puritan influence on the society and the language into the present, especially in contemporary political rhetoric which conceives of the “empire” as a chosen people which the rest of the world must imitate. none of this feels quite accurate to me, and does not take into account that most people are simply mute so we don’t know what they they think, though we may assume that they would rather do something than work. myself for example, this morning i woke up and my first thought was that i would probably have time for a nap this afternoon to compensate for lost of hours of sleep this morning because i have decided (puritanically) that it is a more efficient use of time to run my errand to the university before going to the parrot school than afterwards. i do not want to come home very late in the afternoon today because today is not a work day. so you see work is a very appropriate theme to write to you about. also as even among a language for which there are so many clever expressions about work, you, dear, are always working! have you noticed, by the way, that i, in comparison, am almost never working? what conclusions can we draw from this contrast? my experience is this: the more i work, the less able i am to perceive time. if i want to feel time passing, then i must not work. then, there is the possibility that this word, work, is empty anyway. what does it mean? very basically, work means going somewhere and doing something that you would rather not do, if you had a choice. since we live in a world without choices, does this mean that we have no choice except to work? in russian i know you have “trud” and “rabotat” – what is the difference. is it like labor and work in english?

bye

Тема: Telerabat

Дата: 1 марта 2004 г. 15:03

dear zhen

on my way back from the univ. i bought a phone card at the poczta and they didn’t have the one i’ve been using and this one says the best rates are after 18:00 though i can’t even tell whether it will work for russia or not (not included on the list which i couldn’t see without opening the card package. shall i try to call you tonight after 18:00 and if the card doesn’t work, i’ll use it for calling my folks in the u.s.? and tomorrow try to find the card i’ve been using at another poczta.

the sun is shining and the snow is melting and i must go to the parrot school.

if you can, let me know if i should try calling you this evening (rather late for you).

i miss your voice.

bye

Тема: exigencies

Дата: 2 марта 2004 г. 12:20

dear zhen

i wrote you this three letters ago:

there’s such a thing called the crisis of representation, and it’s quite funny actually, in the text i’m teaching this crisis of representation is associated with postwar postmodernism the floating signifier, etc., and yet all or so many of the early modern works are not exactly neoclassical monuments. whatever the referent is, it was already being shattered before world war 1

and yesterday i found this:

“Various commentators have pointed out that descriptions of postmodernism almost invariably thrive on a kind of blindness to the presence within modernism of the very features that are supposed to make postmodernism what it is.”

the first quote is from my private letter to you, the second from a prestigious journal published in london though the text is from a conference paper given at univ. of california at los angeles.

so, just in case you wondering about the quality of my letters to you. often, and it is part of the writing process, i have severe doubts about any writing that i make. it helps to be reminded once in a while that whatever the difficulty, i have not entirely stopped thinking and perceiving while reading.

it was something of a torment to hear your voice for very briefly and yet the circumstance reminds me of how practical you are and how helpful you are. at the poczta i went to you yesterday they had one remaining card for half the time from the card i have used to call you before, so even if they do not have any more of these cards at the poczta at the university, i will be able to call you for at least 30-40 minutes, though late i am afraid.

the parrot school has added another time-complexity to my daily life, so now there is a place i must go to some evenings, and it will take me a while to adjust. as to your questions about going to the dentist, i will be quite honest with you: i am simply waiting to have a little more money in case the repair costs two-three hundred dollars, i do not want to have all my money gone at once. that is why i am going to the parrot school.

you are very practical about these matters too, though i am always somewhat anxious to mention such details. i rely not only on your great practical sense, but also your knowledge of the lives of the russian poets. “exigencies” is a very good word in english to apply to decisions that are determined not by one’s own choice in the matter, but by other factors that are best left unsaid.

as far as i mention them to you, it is from some sense of trust, as you have told me before about the days of the rationings, not to mention the sudden emptying (disappearance) of people’s savings. this is a very postmodern experience! russia is in advance of the west! the floating signifier! now you have it, now you don’t. yesterday you had enough money to eat, today you have nothing!

do i remember your story correctly? that during the worst crisis people actually stopped going to work for a week? surely it was not an entire week? hard to believe. russian people stopping from going to work. what does it mean to work since that is what one does with others and what one has been doing and what is there to be done if people stopped going to work?

guess what. i have to go to work. tonight i will speak with you, though i am afraid my phone call will wake you up.

bye

Тема: More snow

Дата: 3 марта 2004 г. 12:01

dear zhen

coffee now after pulling myself up from the depths of sleep on a dark grey day of blowing snow

in two hours i must walk through the snow to the parrot school, though last night observing there was an elderly man and i thought this was a good method for older learners of english

repetition, prompt, repetition, prompt – how to place the sounds that are made in the brain

how often i have relied on subjective questions whch require the student to form a thought

no one forms thoughts, mind-body is motor, and all speech is a form of repeated drill, like military drill, our conversations with others, the material-mechanical-human

still, this dire view aside, this view from the parrot school, my first thought upon waking (if you will allow me to say that i have thoughts) was that you are tired

it is an important thing to say. sometimes i think i am more tired that i can permit myself to say now.

you will say that i sound like a foreigner, but one becomes tired in this way from the repetition, the same work day after day, the same responses, the same demands – it is the tiredness of absence of newness, surprises, even the ability to sense the simple enjoyments

since i forgot to make copies of some texts i am teaching on thurs morning yesterday when i was at the university, last night i tried to find them on the internet. only two or three poems, and not the poems i needed, were available on line, and this poet died 300 years ago!

since in the u.s. a university owns his papers, his estate, no free poems! they must be copyrighted for sake of the profit of the press that puts the poems in anthologies students buy

meanwhile, you can find pushkin everywhere in every way shape of form – what of the point of this comparison?

i went to sleep more angry than i expected at that property system – that other world. more and more that world is becoming only a language to me

yes, you are right, i rather like this sensation, though the separate and distinct days are sometimes difficult. today, for example, may be one such difficult day

so, on this difficult day, i wish you a pleasant one. and i hope that my call is not responsible for depriving you of sleep and rest

bye

Тема: Fatefulness

Дата: 4 марта 2004 г. 11:38

dear zhen

thank you for very lovely words yesterday. it is snowing again early this morning and i am awake and up and around (awake and writing) a little earlier than usual, three classes facing me this morning and my first class at the parrot school this evening. it is the nature of things that this new job has assumed such importance in our letters, thankfully replacing dentist concerns. the prices, by the way, in russia sound quite reasonable. because of the language problem, what i am afraid of happening here is being talked into more expensive choices given the pressure of communication, so that is why if i can wait until russia it really seems a better choice. i went to a dentist once in chita and he was very good and the visit only cost 200 rubles. here, according to my students, medical care in general is very confusing. by tradition, it is available to everyone, and there is some form of general healthcare, but for attention, you must pay a bribe (i remember you said it is the same in russia). as you know, i do not know how to pay extra, how much or how little, so there is a greater possibility of being taken advantage of since i am in a strange place. in the u.s., the private insurance system inflates the cost of all dental and medical care far beyond the actual cost, so you are actually punished if you try to pay from your own money. there is also discrimination. on the form you must fill out in the office when you first go, if you write: no insurance, they look at you as someone who will not pay them, and the dentists can actually be insulting. when i was a student, one year at a university, by accident (because it was a private university) i found myself among medical students. i don’t remember then anyone expressing an interest in people generally. it was just a profession, and a very high paying profession. in the past, this was a little different in russia. i visited one clinic in chita, and i was amazed (not amused) by the atmosphere (the chief of the clinic visited with me to answer some questions) and through the translation she was extremely critical of western surgical procedures and the treatment of the body like a dead object (matter) from which invading organisms can be extracted (like mining). she kept talking about medicine in china, and in ways that sound a little mystical. what does this have to do with teaching at the parrot school. second-language learning is traumatic, so the best method for mass-teaching of a language is to actively traumatize the learner. there is nothing more error-prone than someone who is learning a language who pauses to try to think of an answer. there is also the performative role of the instructor. if the student cannot learn by repetition, the functioning example of the parrot-instructor inculcates imitation. the lesson is that we do not live in a free world. all our actions and behaviors, even our most intimate thoughts, have been put there by forces beyond our control. how to cope with this condition? well, for right now, extra “zaplata” will be enough.

don’t be surprised if in the coming weeks i write rather darkly. i do not think that i am as cynical as you, but something happens to me inside when i observe the internalization of strict discipline authority from the fear of survival. it reminds me of an earlier time in my life, though only about several years ago. the threat of real and authentic helplessness and poverty. it feels good to have overcome that, not to let that happen to oneself (it is a fate as you know that has happened to many poets), and i imagine at least sometimes that i am facing the possibility of an opposite future, where at least life will not be so extreme and threatening. that is how i interpret my own action, taking this second job. you also work more than one job so i hope you do not criticize me (having fun at my expense is something else).

you say you are simple, but it is not in my mind simple to appear as you do as someone who is remote and ironic, and you are not this way at all in private. if you asked me about any image i have of palangas, it would not be snow, but the clinging together of two wet autumn leaves. you are actually a very affectionate person, and i don’t think you care for me to know about this too much. yes?

it’s strange but lately i haven’t watched any of the images from then, there. what i meant to say that the worst month was over (you said it was the shortest month) is that i felt the first month would be perceived as the longest, that is why i did not let myself call for one month. the 18th is a thursday, so i should be able to call you late in your evening then. my saturday afternoons are probably the best time for you to call me. i’m not quite sure what my new schedule will be like, but apparently i made a very good impression at my training sessions, so i am going to be given a lot of classes. please don’t worry.

every job-performance demand (and what is teaching if not performing for others) is external and an imposition and a helpful reminder that we live in a world without choices. everywhere we are surrounded by blank and faceless powers beyond our control. sometimes i feel that i am only beginning to really understand this. how to respond? not to be in a position where one’s life can be taken away. i don’t mean the actual physical life (though i remember very well the death of your friend last year) but in my case, as in yours, the means of life.

i am sorry that i sound so serious this morning. do you know, the evening of your friend’s death, when you told me of your friend’s death, you were not ironic at all? in such moments we expose ourselves to another, and through grief create the condition where another may victimize us (every expression of emotion creates the possibility of persecution by those who are more powerful) and i can only hope that in the course of the passing of time, whether we call it last year or not, you have not by me been made to feel weaker from the momentary expressions of such feeling. these sentences make it difficult for me not to remember last march, and wishing that i were walking in the snow in the early evening towards building 1.

bye

Тема: quite=very or very much

Дата: 5 марта 2004 г. 11:46

dear zhen

my trial class for one hour last night was successful. the students liked me, and even though their level of language was much more basic than at the university, i was able to communicate and even make them laugh. people enter the school with little or even no english, and the two-year program is designed for them to take the english compentency test, whether FCE or an European Union equivalent that is beginning to be used. So there is some relation to the problem at TPU: how to bring faculty members to the test standard in a short time. Maybe i am learning a method that will be valuable at TPU, though i do not think you wish to involve yourself or myself to be involved in the englishification program beyond the need of responding to directives. i doubt whether people are able to pass the FCE after this two-year program anyway. your filter analogy was (and is) quite apt. a british moment: really rather quite, wouldn’t you say? hip hip hurray! whilst i shall return in a tryst, do take a peek at your lesson books my jolly good fellows.

at least i have learned that high street means main street. one of the british teachers i have met here is a fan of 50 and 60 U.S. black soul music and all he want to do is visit the U.S. to go through old record shops and basement sales looking for “vinyl” (apparently it is now a collectors item). contradictions, we live in a world of contradictions. as i’ve mentioned, the big news, the really big news, is that in a month or two after EU status, any English-speaking person here can work in England without any special documentation like my temporary residence card. This is an huge historical change. (I actually had to teach that vocabulary word last night: huge). big, large, huge. why cannot we say bigger and larger, but not huger? huge has something of the superlative about it. and let’s not forget about vast and enormous and incomprehensible! cheer up mates! right, yes, are there any more questions, what?

I came to Poland to turn into British. Actually, seriously, and are you not glad that i am not so serious as yesterday, it is cause for a pause in thought to consider that here i can earn 10 dollars an hour without taxes whilst in the U.S. last summer i earned 8 dollars an hour with taxes. And there is no comparison in the cost of living, as, at least for me, i pay the same rent as in Tomsk. At the very least if the parrot school goes well I will, at the end of June, if the visa invitation goes well, be able to simply take a bus to Warsaw airport, and fly to Moscow and from Moscow, to Tomsk. The convenience is worth the extra cost, to my mind, more than anything as a reward for these hours at the parrot school. Just as important for my peace of mind are the “savings for a rainy day” which I had for both my two years in russia and the lack of which here causes me a great deal of anxiety sometimes. So, despite all my complaints to the contrary, the parrot school is a happy accident, or coincidence. Saturday, for example, I will earn back the 100 zl. fine I rec’d for crossing the road on a red light. Monday I will earn back the 55 dollars I spent on a money order to Belarussian visa which I couldn’t redeem when anywhere except in the grocery store where I bought it (U.S. is full of such paper money scams). I do not even want to think about the money I spend here in order to be able to teach anything at all: computer printer, paper, ink (each cartridge costs 25 dollars and I have already used two). Sometimes, as in Russia, one wonders whether they should not pay for the privilege of being allowed to teach here. But that is on days when I am critical. Most of the time, I accept the inconvenience as part of the reality, the strange reality, that for very complex historical reasons, some countries have more resources than other countries. Last year, in Tomsk, I had to pay 1 rouble for every xerox copy. And you know that I only charged 1 rouble a minute for private lessons. I like this idea of the One Rouble. Last night, there was a program on TV: Putinomania. In the land of the One Rouble, the Man of Many More Roubles.

Contradictions abound.

At the very least, I hope that it is always good news to you that whatever I do that things go well and that my contribution is valued. I think this is one of the meanings of successful, and I would like to have this confidence about myself. You are, however, dear, quite correct about my terror of everything out there in the world which disturbs my day-dreaming. Unfortunately, no one has ever been successful by being alone with their thoughts. So, I must adjust.

Cheers!

(this can mean bye in British)

b y e

Тема: This afternoon?

Дата: 6 марта 2004 г. 12:17

dear zhen

my nerves are a bit bothered by the new stimulus of the parrot school and i did not sleep very much or very well last night. my first lesson is in an hour. i should be home by noon today if you wish and if you try to call. the internet question: a good theme for toleration? it is difficult to imagine how you must feel about the loss or disappearance or the going away of your friend, Tanya. chances are, though, that she will return eventually, probably sooner than later. assimilation there is extremely difficult without command of english (does she speak english very much?) although, if i remember, she has career in law enforcement, and that is one of the most popular jobs in the U.S. today, so with or without english she can probably find a job in any city.

i am hoping that i may speak with you this afternoon.

bye

Тема: Trout

Дата: 7 марта 2004 г. 15:15

dear zhen

i have slept two hours later than is my custom and i hope you have not yet finished your day.

my trout was quite successful, and i will try to duplicate this success for you the next time we dine together and there is a whole trout in the neighborhood. i fried it in my new fry pan with shallow olive oil, nothing else, after cleaning though without filet into two pieces as is the custom in restaurants, so the fish when it was cooked lifted out of the skin in which it had been fried quite nicely. i never thought frying a fish could sound so violent as it does right now. anyway, if you were here, there would probably have been enough, though it would not be a bad idea to get a bigger fish. i remember that you are fond of salmon, and to my mind the fish at “our cafe” in palangas was among the best dinners there. it was important to me yesterday, as the only other time i have tried to fry fish here (actually broil it in the oven) i had bought salmon and the fish had been frozen before and as a result there was a terrible smell in my flat for several days. and this of course depressed me, as it is rather nice to have variety in one’s diet.

yesterday i started reading also from a book that i bought in Cracow, what is called The Chronicle of the Lodz Ghetto. in English, it is one volume of about 900 pages, but there are actually several volumes in the complete German edition. The Chronicle is written in German and Polish by Jewish administrative department created at the time of the German occupation of this city and the partitioning of part of the city into a ghetto. My flat is in the middle of where this ghetto was, and the street, Marysinska, is the same. In fact, the train station for the departures first to the ovens in Chelmno and later to Auschwitz-Birkeneau left from a station in Lodz called Marysin. This station no longer exists, and as far as i can determine, neither does the rail line. But the thought that the name of the street that i live on and many of the surrounding streets have the same names as those spoken by the ghetto residents is somewhat disturbing, to say the least. The Lodz ghetto was a departure point for many Western European Jews (especially from Germany): they were shipped here, lived here for a time, and then were sent to the camps. So one cannot think about the labor-death camps without thinking about the organization of the ghetto. What is most surprising is that the Jewish administration with the help of religious leaders organized themselves the work in the ghetto (uniforms for the german army, i.e. wartime production) and organized their own police force, and there are (positive!) references in the chronicle to open collaboration between the local German law enforcement officials and the Jewish Officers of Order. They meet together, they agree on how to keep order in the ghetto, and they are even photographed together. The rationale the book gives is that, as elsewhere, in other such ghettos in Poland, the German social police exploited divisions within the Jewish community itself, and some of the worst actions, like choosing people for deportation, was actually done by the Jewish ghetto administration. It was a world in which potato skins were the greatest luxury. The Lodz ghetto existed from 1940 to 1944, and was liquidated when the Russian army was only 120 km from the city. Out of an original 250,000 Jewish citizens of Lodz (about 25-35 percent of the population before the war) only about 700 survived by hiding at the end of the war. The lesson: a large and highly skilled minority population in a major industrial city was able to be organized and eventually liquidated by their own city leaders in collaboration with (as well as in fear of the terror of) an overwhelmingly powerful military force occupying their city. The introduction to the book does not draw these conclusions, and makes an effort to be kind to the Jewish civic leadership (they were trying to save as many lives as possible). But one sees at a glance the rottenness of the patriarchal (hierarchical) religious leadership, and their acceptance of the concept of “expendables.”

Somehow, this material relates to work that I’m beginning to do with the concept of the experience of city space, and one wants to be able to include the event of military occupation and the concept of a target population that must be organized for cheap labor. It is the nightmare rationality of the problem of labor organization and production quotas when there is war.

You see, working with such thoughts, even as they are in a very much beginning stage, it is not always possible to view life and society and history in a very positive light, so you may believe that on a day when you call me and i hear in your voice that you are feeling very good and have as always your strong sense of humor and infinite practical good sense (it is good sense, that is a better word than the hyperbolic wisdom) then my day is very much improved.

Tomorrow presents the problem of a day marked as a holiday which should have some meaning, and probably doesn’t, for you. But i hope that you enjoy the day away from the office, and one more thing: I wanted to add two words of advice for your childhood friend, Tanya. First, and I’ve noticed this difference in both Russia and Poland, the public buses and subways in the U.S. are very loud (I mean the people on them are very loud) and it can be very frightening at first. Second, especially in the city areas, there is a great increase in what is called telemarketing mail, and i noticed this in Florida as well as the summer in New York: it is impossible to live without an answering machine. Sometimes the telephone will ring 15-20 times a day with pre-recorded advertisements. This is organized by computer, and it is rather expensive to have an unlisted number, so the possibility of answering the phone all the time for a commercial (advertisement) is very great. These are two problems in living in a city area in the U.S. that a foreigner might not think of beforehand, and i only think of it now, since i noticed the contrast the last two times i visited the U.S. There are other contrasts, but they are more subjective. In Florida, for example, where I was living, as in many wealthy regions, or neighborhoods, there are very large and beautiful parks with landscaping and ponds and flowers and palm trees, but people only drive by them. Never do you see lovers in the parks, and the police would probably arrest them if they began kissing in a “horizontal” position since “horizontal” looks like making love, and it is absolutely illegal for couple to make love in public in the daytime or in the nighttime anywhere in the U.S. Can you imagine trying to clean up the parks of lovers in any city in Russia? There would have to be a major “sweep” (this word is actually used for crowd control in police language in English) of all the city squares as well as all the parks besides the rivers. This was one of my first impressions of arriving in Russia, in late summer in Irkutsk: everywhere there were lovers, the sun was setting on the river, and earlier in the afternoon someone had a small radio and 30-40 people were dancing in the rain in a small park, including very elderly women. This is a kind of spirit the police cannot touch, even if they speak English.

From the parrot conductor, (me?)

b y e      

ема: Back to work

Дата: 9 марта 2004 г. 11:51

dear zhen

how was your holiday, dear? did you rest? were you able to rest? did you notice how much more quickly time passes when one is trying to rest? most recently, the longest periods of time are the two-three hours before lessons at the parrot school, only because i do not yet know what to expect, except terrible boredom. the boredom is relieved only by the time passing, and the hour of freedom before needing to go to bed, and the tyranny of having to wake up to an alarm clock. all of this i’ve mentioned before, so i apologize for sending you old news.

the good news is that one of my friday classes is going to move to tuesday morning, so my friday afternoons will be a little longer (and i don’t have to teach on friday night). maybe i shall be able to write you interesting “non-obligatory” letters for your saturdays. my letters to you, to my mind, are never obligatory, though i am sure that their writing sometimes suffers from the mechanical motions i seem to be going through increasingly now.

thank you for your words of caution about visa process. here, the unknown is having to go to russian embassy in warsaw, though i know the general area where it is located, and it should not be difficult to find. even if the worst happens, a 30-day visa in late august will still be possible, though i shudder to think of this possibility. do i need to mention that i am quite lonely here? it is easier to sound positive to you when speaking, but in writing it is more difficult. the weather does not help. warm “melting” days combined with more snowfalls produces greyness everywhere and slush and mud. march is one of the ugliest months, almost as depressing as november. i am tired generally, and especially tired of winter.

please excuse my writing this way, it actually helps to write this way though (a little).

i miss you

bye

Тема: Vitamins

Дата: 10 марта 2004 г. 10:21

dear zhen

i think i am going to need some vitamins soon. yesterday between classes at the university someone came to my office and asked me to teach three conversation classes at another college within walking distance of the university, so now mondays and thursday afternoons i will teach there, for an additional 50 dollars a week. it appears that until the end of june i will be earning about 1200 dollars a month.

at the moment, i don’t know whether this is good news or bad news. after my parrot class last night, i came home and watched a soccer game, then fell asleep with my clothes on. now i am awake without alarm at 5:00 in the morning. i have three classes to prepare for tomorrow at the university, and two classes today at the parrot school: one at 10:00 a.m. and one at 19:00 p.m. have you ever noticed that when you are agreeable to people, they take advantage of you?

about aggressiveness, or confidence, perhaps it is a national trait, though these generalizations are troubling (hardly scientific). i have noticed, though, while travelling, that if you hear someone with a loud voice, that person will have an ‘american’ english accent. we have a saying: they act like they own the place. when i was first in russia i noticed a tendency of people to seem to withdraw from you when you speak to them, and perhaps i have learned to imitate this. i also like very much formal politeness, and i was even told that i have a soft voice by the teacher who showed me the parrot method (it was topic for concern as parrot method prefers demonstrative enununciation).

today, this morning, i have aches and pains in my arms and neck. march, april, may and june will go by in a blur. they say that it is good to be busy, occupied. if this is not true, then i am in trouble. you know that i always exaggerate. do you know also that i am not a creationist? you remember, don’t you? nothing must come of nothing. language teaching is entirely substanceless, and yet something happens during the lesson, i am not sure what. the character and nature of the language at the basic level is amusing to me. how do you find yourself explaining concepts like too much? more than enough? i try to put tolka and menoga together, but it doesn’t work. did you know that also always goes between the subject and the verb, the too and as well go at the end of the sentence? english will probably survive whether or not you know this, though my own survival is in doubt, at least without vitamins.

i miss you

bye

Тема: sleep

Дата: 11 марта 2004 г. 11:21

dear zhenya

do i understand from your letter yesterday, the last of four which i was very happy to read, that you wish to study english with me? the path is long and hard, with many sharp turns, as did you know that there are not really corners of the earth, even though in english, there is the expression, i would go to the corners of the earth for you? oy oy oy

she says

did you know that often people refer to siberia as one of the corners of the earth? perhaps it is because there are such clever and young inhabitants residing, or should i say presiding? there?

this is about as much humor as i can muster this morning, though i did enjoy your last letter.

i have no lesson plan for my new class at the teacher’s college, this afternoon, perhaps some speaking activities will fall out of the sky on my way there, walking there. the colleague who asked me to teach there drew a map for me, and that is all the directions that i have to go on, in addition to the information that i must find my way to a room 300.

i like your image of my wandering here and there around lodz, teaching english at every school. this is unlikely, as there are too many schools here. the reason is very simple: in may poland joins the european union, and everyone who can speak english plans on moving to britain to work in the restaurants. pound sterling, pound sterling.

my hours at the parrot school are not too bad next week, and i even have monday evening off, which is helpful, as i have two classes at the teacher’s college on monday. by then perhaps i shall have a lesson plan. i have done this so often by now, walking into a strange room and creating conversation, that perhaps i am a “creationist” if that means creating something out of nothing.

ex nihilo

i should like to become a nihilist. there were many of these in russia in the last century, yes? the book about the lodz ghetto is heavy reading, in all sense of the word, and i think i should begin to read from it like an almanac. what happened here on this day on this date in that year. chances are, somebody jumped out of a window, somebody else was shot, there was a riot for firewood, the Chairman (the eldest of the jews) released a new bulletin co-signed by the police that the new food ration will be reduced to half a potato skin per resident (with the exception of course of the ghetto administrators).

yes, it is heavy reading. one learns contempt for human nature, even when one thought that their contempt was enough. whatever it is that is good in a human being, it has to be the result of an accident of circumstances.

i am in a good mood to go teach this morning, don’t you think? yesterday evening i spilled coffee on the chair and rug. that was the big event. i woke up this morning again before the alarm. this disturbs me slightly. sunday i think i am going to sleep until noon. when you wrote me that you slept monday until 13:00 and then went back to sleep until 16:00 i could almost feel myself becoming drowsy, the sensation was very thick, like a cloud. as for tiredness of life, yes, i understand what it means to be tired of life, though by all accounts the alternative is even worse. this thought should be cheerful: you have no choice, especially when you are most tired. as always, the best alternative in such situations is sleep, sleep, sleep.

bye

p.s. thank you for telling me from time to time that you like me. this word as you use it has a certain solid meaning, which is not shared by very many words, for me, in my language.

Тема: A not so very small request

Дата: 12 марта 2004 г. 4:42

dear zhen

this letter is written about 5:00 a.m. your time and it will sound like all business as it is late and i am tired and i need to ask you for a small but very important favor.

can you look among my papers/books for a copy of my Masters Diploma from the University of Iowa? I’m certain (almost) that a copy of this document was sent when we sent the fax from your office to Lodz early last summer. it may be among my papers or it may be in your computer. almost certainly there is a digital image in my laptop, but it would be very difficult for you to find without connecting the monitor to it.

the reason i ask is that i need a copy of my diploma for my new job, which is actually not a teachers college but a small philological faculty where several other colleagues from my department at the university teach. my first class was very nice, and reminded me almost entirely of the students i taught at the pedagogical institute in tomsk.

if this request for your help causes you any inconvenience, i regret this, especially since you do not seem to approve of my teaching in every college in the town.

i’ll try to write a more lighthearted note in the morning when you will have already been at work for too long. i’m also almost certain that the original document is at my parents in florida, and it will be very hard for them if not impossible to email to me a copy of the document.

we’ll save contacting the intl. dept. as a last resort (i know they have a copy there).

bye

Тема: Early morning aesthetics

Дата: 12 марта 2004 г. 12:04

dear zhen

my first thought this morning was the unbearable amount of time it takes to get from the first moment of waking (the alarm) and the shower. after the shower, normal perception of reality returns. between the moment of waking and the shower however, panic (alarm!) despair and exhaustion, which means general and thorough tiredness, with which you are rather well acquainted. if i continue this thought, i will fail to keep my promise to write you a cheerful letter this morning.

one of my senior polish colleagues here asked me to read a short paper he is giving in slovakia next week: traditional reading of traditional novel in realist tradition, but from anti-militarism point of view, drawing a connection between the novel about war in u.s. literature and increasing criticism, by writers and intellectuals, of the militarization of the u.s. society. the paper reviews the history of the war against spain for cuba and phillipines, and ends with reference to war in iraq. my students yesterday also at the little school asked me about my feelings about the war. it is a popular topic here, since there are polish troops in iraq, and the polish government does not appear to be popular (students and colleagues alike are always making fun of it, even at the parrot school).

i work now at the university, the little school and the parrot school. today i have two classes 8:30-11:30 then one half-hour meeting with a student, another half-hour for copying and collating materials for next week’s classes, and then my afternoon and evening are free. i think i shall rest, reading and sleeping, until 9:00 am tomorrow.

if this doesn’t sound cheerful, then i should add that on my way home i am going to stop by the british council to return some books and look for conversation-class materials.

recently (last week) to amuse myself, i read a novel which everyone on my faculty refers to and to which there is a reference in one of the cultural essays i’m teaching for my city spaces seminar: the novel was written in 1989 or 1990 or thereabouts, called “American Psycho.” It is an early example of what has come to be known as avant-pop novel: the novel as throw-away, consumer (cheap consumer) item. (turgenev would roll over in his proverbial grave). A&P is about serial killer who mutilates the bodies of his victims, though i prefer the interpretation that all the gore is imagined and in fact the narrator is a harmless fool who writes about expensive restaurants, and expensive clothes, and the emptiness of the 20-30 year-old generation in New York. Scenes of graphic pornography and murder appear side by side paragraphs that might be found in a restaurant and nightclub review.

my favorite detail: conversation at dinner about whether to use bottled water for ice cubes.

so, no matter how bad the novel, there is always at least one funny thing there. i am rather interested in the sensation of consuming as reading, the need for a transparent surface (legibility, so that we always know what it is) and this recognition of the consumption, the seized object, engenders a type of representational violence.

literature (at least literature in english) is at an impasse where there is nothing that cannot be represented, and this is a result not of creative freedom but of exhaustion with the representation. this is what happens when all words are empty, emptied. they can be made to represent any brutality, any form of violence, any atrocity, and it is all just good fun in the avant-pop. (why do i keep hearing avant-prop? as in agit-prop?). do you know the trick of blowing air into a plastic bag and then exploding it? it makes a sharp noise, like “pop” (gunfire in the distance is actually said to make a popping sound).

you may conclude that i am expanding on your memory of reading turgenev by thinking about recent examples in english of nihilism (still very much alive as an aesthetic force). to conceive as representational writing as a rush of air which explodes in a sound that everyone knows is fake, that is what is avant-pop agit-prop.

the chronicle of the lodz ghetto is more complex narratively, since the writers (the scribes) half-believe and half-disbelieve what they are writing, more than forced positiveness under the awareness of surveillance and censorship, the character of the recording of facts overtakes the determination to put a good face on an overwhelming collective experience.

finally, i think there is a lot for you to feel warmly and strongly about in russian history, and this history is in the mouths of the people of russia, in the language, and not in any single interpretation of the last 100 years, nor perhaps even in the literature. it has been my belief for many years that russian literature is a very young (though appears to be very old) literature, where american literature, though it appears to be a very young literature, is actually at death’s door, as the expression goes.

pop!

b

y

e

Тема: Before Saturday classes

Дата: 13 марта 2004 г. 12:30

dear zhen

i’ve a few minutes before going to teach a three-hour class, and the contrast between the waking state now (ive been up for an hour preparing, which i shouldnt have to do for too many more classes) and how i know i’ll feel when it’s over, at noon, tired, needing an hour or two to change mood, etc., well, the contrast is sharp.

for two years i kept that diploma with me in russia, and when i returned to the u.s. last summer i left it with my few books, trying to travel light. did you know the 20 kilogram luggage limit for travel in russia is the same as for the jews on trains being deported out of lodz? that is at least the figure that was recorded in statistics (and the military occupation kept minute statistics).

anyway, if there’s a copy of it among my papers, it will be easier for you to send, (?) though if looking for whether i left a copy takes up too much time, please accept my apologies. i was surprised to find that i didn’t have a copy here, either. the trouble is, when one is tired, such small details appear almost too much, and are given too much significance. right now, i’m willing to accept the interpretation that i really am getting tired of teaching, and just when the teaching itself (at least my classes at the university) are becoming very successful. so, i don’t quite know what to do.

not knowing what to do, i write you and ask you for your help, sometimes. i think what is the matter is the tiredness of living in different places all the time, and this is just about all the time for most of my adult life. many years. sometimes, perhaps, i am sure you appreciate the solidity and continuity of your life. there is something indelible and fundamentally substantial about living (being) in one place.

i hope you do not have to work too hard today.

bye

Тема: My address

Дата: 14 марта 2004 г. 15:58

dear zhen

half an hour after hearing your voice. here is my address,

Kevin Magee

ul. Marysińska 70/74 m. 6

90-850 Łódź  Poland

or Polska, if the Polish name of Poland is required. i can imagine the following exchange:

Officer of the Office of Immigration Control: “This is the address, yes?”

Zhenya: “Yes.”

Officer of the Bureau of Foreigner Management: “Is English the Official Language of Poland?”

Zhenya:  “No.”

Officer of the Bureau of Management of the Office of Immigration Control: “Then you must write the name of the country in the language of the country.”

Likewise, the accents are important: in case my email does not transmit the accents accurately, i am including msword doc with same address. there should be an accent such as in french language over the e as in the french word for summer which sounds very close to russian eta only it is ete with accent marks over both e’s, the accent grave i think it is called, though the a in grave should have an accent mark going in the other direction, what is called the aigu, i think, though that may only be for e’s (accent marks go in two directions over french vowels). there is likewise an accent grave over the o in lodz and over the z in lodz. the first letter, the letter L, is called a barred L, with a mark drawn through it or across it, and this represents the sound “w” (not “v” which the letter “w” itself represents. all of or most of the sh and sshh and ssshhh sounds in russian are in polish, and the accent marks help to distinguish the difference. for example, a single dot over the z means the sound similar to the sound of your name, the first letter, much softer zsh sound than is in english. as you know, it is really impossible to represent this sound in english, we have only sh, which is only for the slavic sound system, the beginning of what can be done with zh and sh and ts and shsh and zhzh, etc. as we have also no accent marks at all in english. even the word resume no longer appears with the french accent mark over the e, the same one as in ete (with accent marks). without accent marks, as i have written it, there is only the latin echo, et tu? you could probably still say this today in french or italian, and be understood, and you?

you, dear zhenya, allude to worsening situation in r. and i hear about worsening situation in p. and read about worsening situation in u.s.a. by (we admit) very spoiled writers, but what plans does one make? how does one imagine the future? you will remind me that the future is not something that can be planned for (no bargains or contracts to be made, no deals, no assurances – what in legal language of contracts is call “warranty”) but one can be smart or one can be stupid. it is very smart to refuse to budge (to refuse to move, to wait until the very worst happens so we can be fully satisfied in the confirmation of impending social chaos, or, one can try to exert an influence over the course of events of one’s life. where do you stand on this issue, zhenya? what are your thoughts? you are far from helpless. you are (and i am lecturing and you are right to laugh at me) very talented, and you have a deep knowledge of your native russian. i believe sometimes, when you do not have to work every day, that you even love the russian language. (you can say this in english, that one “loves” a language, though how to do this, since the love is never returned, i don’t know. it is an expression in english.

why am i writing like this. i have a very good ear for silences, perhaps because of many hours given to the labor of writing poetry. i am not writing poetry now, or very little, maybe i have written three or four poems since october, less than even in two weeks in september. so i am writing you after speaking with you and writing towards (in the direction of and not about) (not directly addressing) one very significant silence, yours, and to me you are very sensitive and thoughtful, though you would disagree if we were speaking. when i am writing you, as now, how convenient that you cannot disagree, until the writing in return, complicated by the distance between the two languages, and i only wonder what you hear in my voice sometimes, across the distance between these two languages.

last night, there was a notice for a translation conference/workshop in u.s. the deadlines for which have already passed (there were other creative writing programs with current deadlines). here is the text of the part of the notice:

Banff International Literary Translation Centre

Linda Gaboriau, director

2004 Residency Program

June 14 to July 3, 2004

Application deadline: Completed

2005 Residency Program

June 13 to July 2, 2005

Application deadline: December 15, 2004

The Banff International Literary Translation Centre (BILTC) is the only one of its kind in North America. It offers literary translators an opportunity for a three-week residency where they can focus on their manuscript, spend time with the writer whose work they are translating, or consult with their colleagues and two experienced translators-in-residence. It is open to literary translators from Canada, Mexico, and the United States translating from any language, and to international translators working on literature from the Americas.

For more information: Visit   www.banffcentre.ca

i send this as an example (not limited to canada) of opportunites for literary translators, and to suggest to you that this is one way to imagine the future. charles reznikoff needs to be translated into russian. his novel, about 200 pages, By the Waters of Manhattan, would be very important to Russian-Jewish culture. you will say that you are not a specialist (everyone in russian is a specialist, even the specialists in public toilets who collect one ruble for right to “use the facilities”) and you know how much i disagree with the notion of specialist and literature. all good and important and necessary literature remains free only to the extent that it is free of specialists. that is actually the joke about my diploma. the way that i grew up and in the economics and the psychology, one had a great faith in specialists and in the university. then i went to one of the very best-known places for writing poetry (even here, in lodz, when i mentioned to a colleague from the u.s. that my diploma was from this place, he was very impressed) and when i was there, the disappointment was so great, this is still part of the joke of the diploma. we experience multiple disillusions in the short time of anyone’s life, but this was certainly one of the most severe. i was not rejected there. my student poetry was well respected there. but the perception (mine) of how empty and shallow the system was (there is a wish at a certain time in someone’s life, maybe it is called “youth”) when you wish for the structure, and belonging, and to give something to the structure (whether or not it is called culture, i do not know, as you may say, there is no Jewish-Russian culture in Russia, no readers for Reznikoff in Russian). insitutions do not change themselves. they must be changed by events in history. i am reading from time to time the chronicle of the ghetto of lodz and seeing on the news the spain bombings and one is as if filled with foreboding (a slight sensation of disbelief in the possiblity of culture at all, literature, and i have lived my life more or less for literature, though to my own mind i am never quite living enough for it, at least not as much as is possible.

but whether canada or u.s. we should try to accomplish this summer some sense of what and where it is possible to seek that mysterious event, “entry” into another country, even as visitor. perhaps it is part of the changing (harsher) climate in russia you mentioned, but it is safe to assume that legal documents in russian only have any value in russia. this is probably a trend everywhere. which legal system is best to try to live in? it is an increasingly similar (totalitarian) legal system with national accents everywhere. i have mentioned before, in poland at least for the time being (meaning this year and next year, as in russia, the rules change every year) anything written in english is very popular. if you have a document in english with the most minimal notarized stamp, it is legal tender (as they say, a currency). i told you about the joke of the documents from the american embassy, the famous five-minute affadavit. but i rather like this about poland, No Fingerprints. there is, in fact, quite a lot that i like about poland. i have not even begun to write to you about all that i like about poland. my students most of all, at least when i am not exhausted, and as you can tell from this letter, it is sunday morning and i am writing such a long letter that it will probably arrive to you after you have left.

am i suggesting to you a plan? or am i quite (oppressively) suggesting to you to think about how you might live your life differently? no one can suggest such a thing. that is why i say over and over that i am succeeding here, even when i am tired here, that i am creating respect and trust among the polish colleagues i work with (this is why the diploma was so important, the new college asked for these documents on monday, because of an audit, and as well i learned that the chair of my faculty teaches there, another senior colleague on my faculty who just this week asked me to read an essay of his that i mentioned, and another senior colleague from the practical english faculty. the fact is, as i was told, that i was recommended for this new job, and i am replacing a teacher from Scotland very well liked by faculty and students (he had to leave suddenly from emergency). these are very positive signs, as are the students who stay after class, even first year students with almost perfect english. do i dream sometimes of working here for a while, even having an influence on some of those among whom i work? every writer wishes for this, perhaps. i dont wish to sound like idle dreaming (as i know you hate this). but the sense of possibility in a worsening world, that is important to me.

so, no conclusions, except that you may expect my call this thursday, about 22:00.

bye

Тема: Mon morn rush

Дата: 15 марта 2004 г. 12:54

dear zhen

i have only time for a short letter this morning as i must go to the university for a few moments before going to the new school for conversation classes. still, as you might imagine, i am drinking coffee (my second cup). last night i went to sleep very early, before 8:00 p.m., then kept waking up and going back to sleep through the early morning. when i got up at 6:00 a.m. it felt late (already daylight) and i felt rested. maybe this will become new habit: going to bed very early on sunday evenings. as you recall, i was just waking up when you called, about 9:00 a.m., so i was not awake and conscious for more than 12 hours on sunday. sometimes it is very good to sleep. today i feel very rested and energetic and happy, all my many bananas and oranges and tangerines are gone, and yesterday afternoon for supper i made for the first time in a very long time (i think since tomsk in sept) simple cucumber and tomato salad with olive oil and wine vinegar to go with roasted chicken and potatoes. over the chicken i emptied the contents of one lemon, and the effect was excellent. i cannot cook every night like this, but the warmer weather, and the increase in light is improving my habits. the doors to the three rooms with doors are open now, which lets in more light. for warmth, i kept my flat rather dark in the winter, and i am thinking now that this influenced my moods. it also feels very good to have vacuumed thoroughly (behind sofas and tables and on windowsills) eliminating cobwebs and the layers of sand from the renovations in the hall. maybe i eliminated some cobwebs from my own head as well. still, i have not waxed the floors. i will probably do that the first truly warm day of spring. by the way, when does the time change?

your childhood friend Tanya is soon to be in boston and your warm and friendly colleague Olga is soon to be in Toronto or Montreal. thinking about this, though i did not mention it, is one of the influences for my writing at such length yesterday about the uncertain future. there is always the risk of crossing boundaries, and if and when i insult you, please remind me. believe me that i do not ever intend to insult you or even make you feel self-conscious, about anything. but, i repeat, the one thing i know anything about, literature, does not require specialists. all that is needed in a curious way, is “disinterest.” what do i mean? it is the disinterested writer who often makes the greatest contribution. the writer who is disinterested in using the literature he or she makes, whether their own or in translation, for any purpose other than the life of the literature itself. i sent the notice since there are contexts, in institutions, which halfway support such extended disinterest. maybe it is a paradox: i wish to say to you that everything is not as difficult as it appears, and yet i learn from you when listening to you about the absolute thresholds of difficulty, which listening, i tend also to believe in. that is why i am trying to be so cautious here, by building something of my very own, an accomplishment. enough thoughts about this, or i will write you a novel. i hope you have time to write me even a hibye today.

bye

Тема: More info

Дата: 16 марта 2004 г. 11:44

dear zhen

the address of the university which employs me is

Universytet Łódźki

ul. Narutowicza 65

90-131 Łódź  Polska

My officical job title is

Senior Lecturer, English

Department of American Literature and Culture

 or

Zakładzie Literatury i Kultury Amerykańskiej

na Wydziale Filolgicznym

Just yesterday I obtained from the Rektorat my current contract which shows the date of my employment with the university until September 30, 2004. If the specialist recommends, I can fax you a copy of this transcript, though as you know, any documents used in Russia will need to be translated into Russian, and my contract is in Polish. The contract shows my salary, which may be helpful. But most likely it is best not to volunteer more information than is asked for. Another way of looking at this problem, a more positive way, is to believe that any difficulty you experience will mean less difficulty here for me, and I am less skilled to deal with difficulties with the Russian consulate. Probably what is most important is proof of employment and the length of the contract, to show that I have a job and a residence to which I am returning after the end of the visa.

Two new classes yesterday, both rather disappointing. As always, the presonalities of groups of students differ, and one group in the afternoon was even rather rude, which tends not to happen here. I wanted to laugh at them and say that I have taught in the ghetto of Cleveland, so their attempts at rudeness were ineffectual, and trite. But it is also helpful reminder that not everyone views foreigners positively. The university is a rather elite place, very difficult entrance exams, even though the tuition is free. The students are at least somewhat motivated, and even if they are not, they politely pretend interest. When this pretending is taken away, one is more realistically in colonial type situation, as in fact one is in a colonist type situation in the u.s. ghetto. but i cannot write about serious themes this morning, very tired.

for three hours this morning i will talk about big ideas. sometimes the big ideas seem rather dull to me. the weather here is changing dramatically, i don’t even think i shall wear a sweater today. tonight, one two-hour class at the parrot school, and then tomorrow off except for one more two-hour lesson at same parrot place. so life is not wretched, just dull. i need more oranges and bananas (potassium, don’t bananas have potassium?)

bye

Тема: Re: Dates

Дата: 16 марта 2004 г. 11:56

dear zhen, forgive the short reply

dates:

I would recommend for the 90-day period

June 23 to September 20

You may want to count these days yourself to make sure.

I need to return to Poland before my contract expires, so I would probably fly back on that Sunday, Sept. 19, directly after Larissa’s conference. I won’t be able to be with you on your birthday, though. In a perfect world, you would be returning with me. What do you think the chances are for this? Would you want to if you could, legally? Also, you may also need copy of my temporary residence card, Rzeczpospolita Polska?

bye

Тема: Times

Дата: 17 марта 2004 г. 12:00

dear zhen

when you write

“among the varieties of values in my particular present existence one of

the most important is not the place of living or surrounding, the most

important are our relations and ability to co-exist”

i am reminded about conversation with you, and the musical quality of your speech.

That, and my continual embarassing practical questions, such as the time: my computer this morning says 7:44 and my watch and alarm clock say 6:44. Did the time change? When does the time change? Doesn’t it usually change on a Sunday? Every year this is a great concern for me. I don’t even know in which direction the time changes in spring.

I am without ink for my printer, and tomorrow I need to distribute some hand-out assignments for my classes, so yesterday I went to the store where I bought my printer, where they still have many many boxes of the same model, though in the replacement ink section they had just as many replacement cartridges for both the model immediately before and after mine (combinations of numbers and letters). The outcome of the story is that I inspected the size and the shape of the cartridge with precious ink in it, concluded that it was the same shape and size, and purchased it for 85 pln (about 25 dollars) and of course when I arrived home the printer refused to assimilate the model number. There was a flash of anger from me, such as I rarely have, about the infinite stupidities of fabricating equally infinite numbers of models for so simple a task as printing (not to mention the fact that anything for teaching I must produce myself, everything operates accidentally and inefficiently here) and then after search for correct model number last night after parrot classes I learned that they sell here kits for refilling the ink before the cartridge is empty. This must sound strange, but there is a logic to it. The technology companies build into their products needless variations (models) and then to cope with the high cost other companies build tools (what are called “work-arounds”) to make the products less expensive. It is a reminder of the commodity system, a minute (with accent on the first syllable) reminder.

Last night at the parrot school I found myself teaching the difference between “quite” and “quite” as unbeknownst (remember this verb?) to me, there are two meanings: completely and nearly completely, depending on the accent, the stress. I must confess I did not know this. Neither did I know that it was an important feature of the English language. I imagined people running around High Street saying to each other, Lovely weather today, what? Quite! (This is what the book that I teach instructs the parrot-learners to sound like). It is rather comic.

As comic as the fact that this morning I must make separate trip to another store to try to find an ink cartridge which the machine called my printer will accept, and today is a day such as yours without an hour to spare: four classes to prepare for tomorrow. Composition (I have to read and comment on several student writings), Gang culture in L.A. for American Culture, the Semiotics of Advertising for 5th Year class, then Conversation at the New School. At least Thursday’s group is polite.

Today is grey and rainy, and I do not know what time it is.

bye

Тема: Caliente

Дата: 18 марта 2004 г. 11:28

dear zhen

i hope you did not forget to mention to Natasha that there is someone (myself) who enjoys her CD a great deal (as i remember, you said you did not care for your friend’s voice?) though lately i am listening to piano music more and more. still, hardly a week goes by that i do not listen to her CD. What did you listen to at the cafe kukushka? the last performance we attended with Sveta from Novosibirsk was hilarious, didn’t you think? You were both very kind that night, or perhaps typically Russian, refusing to criticize too harshly poor musicians. There is a difference between poor and bad, in English, though they are closely associated.

My adventure with the ink cartridge ended positively. Here is my logic: had I not made a mistake and bought the wrong cartridge (the wall was full of the wrong cartridges, and the shelf was full of my model printer) I would have continued to buy this brand of cartridge for 25 dollars. Obliged to wander to other stores in search of the correct cartridge, I discovered an entire economy of clone cartridges for less than half the price. In Poland they make “caliente” (Spanish for warm) cartridges for all the major printers, and they cost about 8 dollars. Also, they make refill kits with small vials to extract and inject ink from cartridges, so with this kit I shall be able to transfer the ink from the wrong cartridge to the right cartridge. As I write this, I am thinking cartridge? Or partridge in a pear tree? The moral of the story? What originally began as fear of wasted money (one of my great anxieties, as you know, and one which is only suspended in the paradise of the restaurant, any restaurant) ended in a discovery of the resourcefulness of economies dependent on advanced countries’ technology, but unable to afford their products. Or, more simply, I found a cheaper cartridge, as well as a way to make use of the wrong one that I am unable to return, as, unlike you, I am not in my native country, and reluctant to make too many demands.

For some reason or another, I am very well prepared for all four classes today, and even rested (I went to sleep at 22:00 last night, waking at 6:00). Perhaps it is the influence of the change of season. It is warm here, spring here, birds singing, etc. Most of all, it is the increase of light that makes me feel good.

I shall call you this evening, about 22:00 your time. Bye.

Тема: laptops

Дата: 19 марта 2004 г. 11:56

dear zhen

about laptops i have not special technical advice to give, except, as you’ve mentioned before, you need a russian-language keyboard. microsoft software makes it fairly easy to move between keyboards, though the placement of the russian characters on an english keyboard is almost crazy, so your sense of needing the russian keyboard then to switch to english through software is very sound. there is the problem for the english keyboard of the 7 more letters of the russian alphabet, and also capitalization functions differently, i believe? on the keyboard, the keyboard.

other than that, what a laptop allows you is a less strict relationship to the screen and to online connectivity, if that is important to you (i don’t know if you would be able, for example, to connect to the internet through the same phone number as you do at TPU, although it’s likely, since your flat is so close to the university–if the TPU line is a private line, which i seem to remember your mentioning, then you should be able to dial in the same number, and the connection speed is not bad, about 38,000 bps, more than i have here.

probably most laptops today come with 10-20 gigabyte storage space, and it it is a question of cost, it really isn’t worth several hundred extra dollars for 10 extra gigabytes. even 6 gigabytes, such as i have on my 1999 ibm, the one i obtained last summer in florida, has more than enough storage space, unless i was going to store audio and video files.

finally, you simply find yourself reading from the computer more, since, the lighter the laptop, the easier it is to operate as an electronic notebook. given your fondness for your cellphone, you might ask about palmpilots. i don’t know anything about them, though in western europe and u.s. they are apparently quite popular among the professional classes. email and internet connectivity, in an apparatus the same size as a cellphone, though i think these are often used as accessories to more powerful communications tools, like a laptop or home pc.

interestingly, the motors are different on laptops, just as in a car, and it is important to listen to the machine and how it sounds when you are typing on it and reading from it. the motor in my macintosh runs much more quietly than the ibm, and even when i change the settings for the hard drive to spin down after 10 minutes or so, when the machine comes back on, it sounds like it is using a lot of energy and that it is hard on the machine, so i don’t expect the motor on the laptop to last longer than several years, though i’m not using my laptop as much as i might if i had regular internet access (i haven’t subscribed to an internet service provider in view of my probable trip to russia this summer).

ideally, you will find (and with the help of your friends) a model that may last you 5-7 years, and more than the pc at the office, the laptop will interest you in its technology, and you will find yourself learning about various software applications, such as powerpoint.

as a writer, i deeply believe that cultural production is migrating to the electronic sphere, and that one risks a certain degree of illiteracy and even, dysfunction, without command of the basic technology. in poland, internet access and basic knowledge of the communication tools is divided along economic lines. my students at the university are rather sophisticated in its use, and my students at the “college for people who did not do well on their exams and have to pay for their education” almost no one has internet access.

the current commercialization, like the earlier period of what is sometimes called the ‘dark net’ (early 1990s) is a sign of the hyperventilating times, and will in its own time give way to increasingly sophisticated cross-language and cross-cultural platforms for communication, extremely urgent communication, among artists and intellectuals. i also believe that we will see a form of nationalization of the internet, where servers in other countries become more difficult to access.

why do i believe this? now around lodz one sees posters with fat ugly men at the screen in a chat room trying to seduce little girls and boys, with warning words in polish which i have not translated, but which one can assume reads something like, Don’t message with anyone you don’t know. The real fear is the obliteration of borders between countries and cultures, what has been happening here for the last ten years in the commodity distribution, but which is intolerable in the sphere of communication among peoples of different countries (such as, for example, our correspondence). if they are not doing business, and if they are not romancing each other, then they must be doing something else, like communicating.

so, i think your thoughts about, as you might say, investigating the properties of the laptop apparatus in view of your eventual manipulation of one, are – are – why should or how could i say what they are? i can only write to you about what i know and think, and how important a tool my laptop is for me in my daily intellectual life. that’s all.

i miss you.

bye

Тема: Art in Novosibirsk

Дата: 20 марта 2004 г. 11:02

dear zhen

Does this article interest you? (I have to prepare new material for my parrot lesson at 9:00, so i will write you a longer letter tomorrow … bye

Attention! Siberia! Dispatch from Novosibirsk

Ludmila Ivashina (Novosibirsk)

Artists in Novosibirsk, as those throughout the world, are separated into various groups and factions. Even during the period of Soviet totalitarianism, when the ideals of equality were strictly enforced, artists were separated into two groups: members of the Union of Artists of the USSR (now the Russian Federation) and non-members, more commonly referred to as “amateur artists.”

In today’s society, artists of Novosibirsk are more frequently separated into groups through individual characteristics such as talent, productive nature, style, and business principles.

Most artists of Novosibirsk work within traditional fields of art that are relevant to Russian culture, such as painting, sculpture, graphic arts, cartoon, architecture, and the applied arts. Within the last few decades there has been an influx of artists specializing in advertising, television, photography, filmmaking, and design.

However, these artists were rarely allowed membership into the Union of Artists and, therefore, founded their own union, the Union of Designers. Artists specializing in design resemble the faction of contemporary artists in that they are not united by any specific organizational structure or institution.

Within the city of Novosibirsk, which has a population of approximately two million, there are few individuals who would claim to have been influenced by the ideals and expressions of contemporary art.

Artists of design occasionally participate in contemporary, international art exhibitions that take place in Moscow or St. Petersburg. But, more frequently these artists take part in various festivals and events sponsored by foreign charitable organizations such as the Soros Foundation, Ford Foundation, British Council, Goethe Institute, etc.

Contemporary artists do not consider the members of the Union of Artists to be of equal artistic status, but rather dull craftsmen conforming to the rigid, traditional views of Russian art. Conversely, members of the Union regard contemporary artists as reckless, unstructured individuals who disgrace the “high-status” and “cultural mission” of Russian art.

During the Soviet period in Russia the ruling communist party carried out an “ideological struggle” against the westernization of art. Because of the Soviet administration, some artists took a conformist approach to communist ideology through the expression of their work, creating a sense of aggression towards those artists with Western, experimentalist views.

This situation did create some conflict but none that was taken seriously or proved to be extremely detrimental to the art community. In spite of the repressive acts of society, young artists still became stimulated and inspired by Western artistic views.

In the period of perestroika the conflict between official and informal, traditional and innovative views of art were spontaneously neutralized by the introduction of a diverse, comprehensive art market.

This ideology, which has continued through to the present, substituted the old “ideological struggle” of Russian art culture and has since conformed to its new political structure of a multi-party system.

Westernization is a common influence in much of art culture, but due to the fact that Russia is a non-western culture, there is a sense of controversy in how much Westernized styles should influence Russian art. There is particular criticism placed on contemporary Russian-especially regional-artists due to the Western association of their artistic style.

The material livelihood of artists is usually dependent on commercial success or failure. Some aspects that contribute to financial well being within the artistic market are productivity and the ability to work within market trends.

It is now possible to sell any form of art anywhere and within any price range. Generally speaking, prices are seldom high and most often accommodate middle to low figures.

Overall, the art market in Novosibirsk is rather consistent. The demand for art usually focuses on a traditional style including the fine and decorative arts.

In general, the most popular forms of painting are stylistically representative of the Western European masters of the 17th-19th centuries, or modern art. The strongest individual stylistic influences include Bosch, Canaletto, Klimt, Dahli and Brunovski.

Within in the past few years there has been an emphasis on abstract painting by the group the “New Russians.” There are approximately five internationally renowned abstract painters in Novosibirsk.

Contemporary artists on the other hand do not find much of an open market for their technologically based work. Photo, video, Internet projects, objects, “ready-mades,” performances, and installations do not sell very well, and even then they are sold primarily to foreign consumers.

Due to the increase in private contracts within the artistic market, active architects, designers, and artists have opportunities to design interiors for cafes, offices, and private apartments. The Novosibirsk State Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture, which opened in the 1930’s offers a background in architectural education, mostly concerning interior design. In fact, most contemporary artists in Novosibirsk have studied at the institution’s department of architecture.

The prices of artistic pieces vary according to one’s artistic status within the artistic community. Street craftsmen sell their paintings in parks and metro stations for $10 to $100.

Union of Artists members sell at $100 to $800, rarely reaching $1000. There is one known case of a painting being sold for $2000, but this is regarded more as rumor due to the lack of documentation as to the identity of the piece or painter.

Some artists are involved in architectural planning, designing their own projects, and collaborating with others. Other artists teach at art schools such as the Academy of Arts and Architecture, Department of Fine Arts and Graphics of Pedagogical University, and School of Arts, earning a monthly income of approximately $50 to $200.

Few artists manage to sustain a stable income strictly from selling their work. Nonetheless, the talent of these artists is emphasized by the constant market demand for their work.

These artists are concerned with developing their own personal sense of style, recognizing the importance of expressing an individual, unique vision. Their work concentrates primarily on the role of form and color, less often on that of narrative. In general, not many artists discuss the social and political responsibilities of artists or contemporary art.

There are those artists who produce contemporary, socially reflective works of art. In Novosibirsk there are approximately 20-25 artists who are distinguished through small, often disintegrating groups that discuss such issues.

Among such groups are the “Blue Noses,” which includes artists such as Dmitry Bulnygin, Viacheslav Mizin, Konstatnin Skotnikov, and Maxim Zonov, who recently died in a car accident. The group’s philosophy revolves around social and personal critique, expressed through black humor, “artistic idiocy,” silly heroics, irony and self-mockery, parody, and the grotesque.

This is an art that expresses a sense of context: addressing the “here and now” in relation to westernized, skeptical, contemporary audiences. The Blue Noses present photography, video, and performance for both their domestic and international art scenes.

Their social attitude is reminiscent of medieval Russian yurodivys (God’s fools): traveling buffoon artists or European court jesters. The artistic style of the Blue Noses appeals to more Westernized sentiments and is often more appreciated in larger, more culturally diverse cities such as Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Yekaterinburg.

Despite this fact, the Blue Noses do find a local following within Novosibirsk. The artists act as their own curators and art managers, consciously developing their own sense of appeal and audiences. To quote Baudrillard, the Blue Noses “manufacture demand” for their work and do it quite effectively.

The 1990s saw the development of clubs and galleries in the promotion of art culture. Such established art clubs and galleries include “888,” presently closed for repairs, and the gallery club “Black Widow.”

Functioning among these clubs and galleries are the so-called alternative cultural venues such as the Kondratiuk Foundation at Municipal Museum of Space Exploration, and Open Bunker, a former bomb shelter.

These are the venues used by contemporary artists for exhibitions, video screenings, and related parties. Such exhibitions rarely occur within the other few galleries and never take place within the venues controlled by the Union of Artists.

The history of contemporary art in Novosibirsk is briefly outlined in a catalog “Kunst aus Nowosibirsk,” published by ifa-Berlin (1998.)

The contemporary art scene in Novosibirsk is covered by the following web sites:

http://www.inart.nsk.ru/ – Novosibirsk group Blue Noses

http://www.esf.nsk.ru/- Novosibirsk Extra Short Film Festival

http://www.guelman.ru/nsk – Novosibirsk artists on the website of the Moscow “Guelman Gallery”

http://www.blackwidow.nsk.ru/ – Club gallery Black Widow (Novosibirsk)

http://www.dvp.ru/b-lab/888/photo/archive.html – Club “888” (Novosibirsk)

http://www.gallery.nsc.ru/ – Novosibirsk galleries and artists

http://www.nsc.ru/ru/ris/gallery – Novosibirsk galleries and artists

http://www.novosibirsk.ru/ – General information about Novosibirsk

Тема: First cup of coffee

Дата: 21 марта 2004 г. 13:32

dear zhen

on a day such as this i lie in bed for an hour trying to listen to my life, or even signs of life, and all i am able to think about are tasks that i must do, what to prepare for class tomorrow, which will be a hectic day, two classes at the college for those who must pay for their education, and one evening class at the parrot school. fortunately, i have no classes on wednesday, so i will actually have one free day during the middle of the week. something is not entirely as it should be, though, as one should wake up on a sunday morning free of thoughts of what needs to be done, free of thoughts generally. it has been quite stormy throughout the night and early hours of the morning, and now the wind has calmed down somewhat. the word in polish for quiet or calm is spokojny.

for the first time this morning i succeeded in opening my freeze-dried sealed coffee package without tearing the foil, so it is easier to fill the coffee pot, though my apparatus is malfunctioning just a little, and a final jet of hot water sprays coffee grounds around the interior of the cannister. more than likely it needs to be cleaned. do you use vinegar to cleanse your coffee maker? if so, how much vinegar do you use?

the article about art in novosibirsk is of interest to me as i can imagine the possibility of visiting artists there with you, and interviewing them about their work, and eventually writing an article. but the project would have to interest you as well, as a translator-collaborator, and i am afraid, genuinely afraid, that you will reply that you are not a specialist. there is actually some distinction made in the art world between institutionally trained curators and historians, largely because the financial rewards are so considerable for artists whose work is recognized and defined as important, as there are collectors, and even many western galleries and university-related museums have significant resources at their disposal for exhibitions, conferences, etc. literauture in the u.s. is a bit like this, as there is very real contention for publication, high-profile jobs which are almost like political appointments, and the visibility and name recognition that derives from public appearances such as readings and conferences. still, there is less the sense of the dreaded concept, specialist.

what rarely happens in art or literature, is simply conversation about making art, the social conditions and challenges, interests and information, etc. this is what i would be interested in writing about. for you to be convinced that you do not need to be a specialist in order to activate an interest, perhaps i will need to write to you more about what i understand to be art. a theme for another letter. but it begins by listening to someone talk about what they are doing, or what they were thinking when they made something.

i need also to ask you for a favor: once again i must ask for the submission deadlines for the spring conference publication for which i have a paper to submit (i remember the deadline as either march or april) as well as the deadline for the abstract for larissa’s conference in september. the latter conference is somewhat troubling, since i realize that i wrote an essay on this topic of tolerance as part of the background for my notes to a lecture about walter benjamin, though it is about mandelstam as well, and reading it, i realize that i cannot submit this essay to the conference, as the makes statements that would not be tolerated (specifically about Trotsky). this reminds me of the game played by academics, and it is troubling to participate in this game. how to write about something entirely innocuous that will trouble no one, and fulfill the symbolic function of a foreigner’s participation. for a writer, when they begin to participate in such games, and write words in which they have no belief, an incurable rot starts to take over, and one’s writing is threatened. i am more than a little worried about this, as certain events that occurred the year before i left the u.s. made me very intimidated by the same online publishing that i wrote about as so important in my previous letter.

certainly i am more cautious now, because i work on a year-to-year basis, contract, and have no protection. being able to support myself is my first concern, and my greatest concern. i wrote, before leaving the u.s. the first year, very strongly and powerfully in a public forum, and even contributed to an online discussion list that year and through the next summer when i was in new york. my last public statement in an online forum other than the discussion list for poetics at a u.s. university was last year in tomsk, at the end of march, about a year ago, and even then i suffered from significant anxiety afterwards. one might say that more and more i am silencing myself. no one is silencing me. i am silencing myself. disturbing to admit this. perhaps this is why one thinks about classroom tasks on a morning when one should be writing, reading, active, exploring thought and language. that is what is writing. above all, this development towards silence is based on insecurity, and fears based on past events. you may recognize some of this from problems of russian writers in the earlier period, 60s and 70s. without a secure university position, or independent means of support, one cannot really write what they like in the public online space. i am even suspicious enough to believe that on the one online discussion list that i participate in, mostly poems and fragments of writing, some statements, but critically directed when they are not aesthetic, that there are attempts to provoke me to make more extreme political statements, such as are supported in the imaginary sphere of my poetry. if i let this happen, to be provoked, and on one level it is simply a writer’s wish to participate in public discussion of the events of the day, what is sometimes called a climate, the cultural climate, to be involved in debates, and contribute to a discursive space sharpened by critique, but i stand to lose everything, and in the cultural sphere of the u.s. literary culture there are very powerful people capable of destroying my means of support, even as i live abroad. the extreme position is suspicion of one’s enemies, and writers do become enemies based on their suspicion and antipathy towards one anothers’ work (you may associate this with the conflict between officially recognized writers and samizdat in 60s and 70s) and there is always open argument about the place of their work in the future. the future my poetry has been written towards is not an apocolyptic future, but certainly one where all the foundations of the society are shaken if not destroyed. if, instead, there is developed a more totalitarian future, then there will be even less and less space in that culture for my writing. these are some of my reasons and motivations about being what might be called circumspect about publishing in book form, yet. and this is why i express an interest in working with you this summer by trying to establish some contacts with artists in novosibirsk, visiting them and interviewing them.

i understand that you are always cautious, and i can promise you that the field of my interest is only aesthetic, though there is an implicit politics about someone from western europe or u.s. visiting and writing about artists who survive on 50 to 200 dollars a month. how to artists organize themselves in such conditions, how do they share resources? these are important questions, not in the journalistic sense of exposure of harsh living conditions, but as a reflective-like lesson for artists in western europe and u.s. who contend for resources and rewards.

so, that is why i wrote to you yesterday about your interest in the article that i found in a rather informative publication, http://www.artmargins.com

there is other information there about art and architecture in russia, and some of it is very good reading. not everything is written by specialists.

and about the question of specialism in language and literature, it is my opinion if that someone reads caringly the literature of their language, then an interior voice and ear develop. sometimes this sensitivity to sound is activated in writing, and sometimes it is made present in speech, in conversation. i hear this sensitivity, this sensibility, in your conversation, and i have heard it since our first meetings. you are free to not believe me, of course. but if i write to you as someone who cares about their language, about reading, about the life of the imagination, this is in response to your voice, and your person, your presence. i do not wish for you to think that i write to you in the form of a demand. we are both of us surrounded by more than enough demands.

bye for now. i hope that you have time to write to me today. but i hope even more that you have some time for yourself. and that it is not too cold. there is a terrible echo in the hibye, called drivebys in english, someone in a car shoots someone on the street, sometimes they know them, and sometimes it is random murder. even in cleveland there were such incidents. i am sorry to end on such a sombre note. something is rotten in the state, etc.

bye

Тема: A few small edits

Дата: 22 марта 2004 г. 0:48

dear zhen

nothing stands out as incomprehensible except “discrepant” and perhaps, “vacancies.” I’m not sure what is meant by vacancies, an erasure or absence? some kind of negative reaction? of course, the language (the science) is way beyond me, but the basic core of the translation is quite readable. You are rather talented, but I suppose you know this.

Which conference is the March 15 deadline? I can’t possibly write anything for Larissa’s conference until Easter break. After I wrote my sorrowful letter this morning, I was going through some articles for a class this week and found the roundtable discussion of The Russian Ark (Sokurov). I will simply summarize the discussion, by both Russian and West European film critics, including one Central European writer from Univ. of California Irvine. The reactions are quite distinct and contrastive, both for and against. How to work this into tolerance, I don’t know, but part of the controversy of the film is 1) the way that history is inflected (Russia’s classicism circa 1913) and 2) the technique of a single-shot film (no montage, fades, splices, etc). I’ve done some writing recently about cinema, so I have a basic working vocabulary. I should be able to write 10 pages over the Easter weekend, about two weeks away. Will that be time enough?

The other essay is already written, and yes, if you would care to format it, that would perhaps take less time than trying to explain the formatting conventions. Can I send it to you Wednesday?

Today was a quiet day, reading the autobiography of a Sioux holy man, or shaman. The language (translated) is very beautiful sometimes, and the setting (near Pine Ridge reservation in western South Dakota, I have actually visited, so I know the landscape. It actually makes me a little homesick, at least for the landscape). Vast skies, as in Siberia.

bye

Тема: Lithuanian Light

Дата: 23 марта 2004 г. 11:22

59th Light Poem: for La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela – 6 November 1982

Late light allows us to begin,

Altair’s light on an altar guides us onward.

Many lights are seen where mountains cluster.

Orange lights are spangled over hillsides.

Neutral light glows above their ridges.

Tiny lights of many kinds begin to be discernible.

Evanescent lights arise and die.

Yellow light momently overspreads.

Ochre light succeeds it.

Umber light in a while is all that is left.

Nearly nonexistent light increases rapidly.

Green light envelops everything.

Magenta light glows over the farther peaks.

Alabaster lights suddenly shoot upward.

Red lights cross the sky diagonally.

Incandescent-lamp light glows in the foreground.

Acetylene-lamp light splits the ambience.

No light at all supervenes.

Zodiacal light replaces light’s absence.

Algae-green light maculates the glow.

Zinc light flares amid the highest oaks.

Escaping light illumes Lithuanian paths.

Earthlight grows near the Baltic.

Lithuanian light lessens environing earthlight.

All the light there can be won’t be enough.

Jackson MacLow

p.s. Do you like this? zhen?

Thank you for your efforts on my behalf with the Offices of Border Crossing. Yesterday was a hard day teaching, and I am tired, though fortunately I have only to show two videos to classes this morning, meet with another student about Ruskin’s King of the Golden River (Pushkin-like fairy tale written in 1851), then no parrot classes, no classes at all tomorrow, and in-class writing and video for my two culture classes, so the only class I must prepare for is Amer. Lit (Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle and Legend of Sleepy Hollow, texts I would never teach in U.S. but here by tradition they are quite popular, as in Russia, as I am sure that you have heard of these two stories before. So I think I shall make it to the end of the week in not quite complete state of fatigue.

I am missing the light in Lithuania, and remembering you. Do you mind?

b y e

Тема: Camus’ notes

Дата: 24 марта 2004 г. 2:47

dear zhen

After having read for several unanxious hours this afternoon, I should

write towards Larissa’s conference, that essay, which, as I mentioned,

I will try to write no more than a summary of Sokurov’s Russian Ark as

it appeared, by way of critique, in a roundtable of reviews in the

publication the url for which I sent you in a previous email. But

tonight as I was reading I found myself thinking more and more about

the idea of the Ark itself, and thought that I might try your patience

by writing tonight to you about it, not seeking a response from you

so much as merely asking you to be there and listen to me or, as the

case may be, read me. If and as you wish.

Camus? I wonder what and who Camus is in Russian. One would

have to take into account factors I cannot even begin to take into

account, and that is part of my thoughts about writing about the

Russian Ark, and from my writing position, writing as a poet towards

“the narration of historical structures” which is culture, according

to Mandelstam.

Ark would suggest there is a flood coming, apocalyptic? That is, if in

responding only to the title, one were to go no farther than a

positive reading of the title, and how could it not be ironized? I am

glad that I do not have any Walter Benjamin with me. The books would

intimidate me and keep me from writing. Because I would go to his

books if they were here and look for support for the idea of the

spectrality of history, and the Hermitage/Winter Palace/St. Petersburg

nexus of the Russian Ark would perhaps open to a Benjaminian reading.

I don’t know if that’s what I have to give.

One deep emotional concern for me (and I am really only capable of

becoming emotional over my own writing) is the ending of the essay I

wrote last year in Tomsk (my last essay on poetics). “Her

revolutionary classicism” the essay ends on this phrase, on an

inflection of whatever it is that Russia is, and how it is being

imagined and has been imagined in my writing. What troubled me is that

the phrase, here, to me, sounded absurd, and it is disturbing when

something I’ve written returns to me and I can’t feel any belief in

it. What has changed from when I ended that essay is where I am, which

I think is haunted by a lot of Jewish ghetto ghosts, though the

language is unfortunate (there is a presence here of that past, but

it’s buried in the architecture).

“Many of the names in that period were buried” is the very beautiful

line you spoke one morning over breakfast and which I found this

afternoon in my notebook, though the writing does not record

three-syllable rhyme of buried with period. Would you mind if this

became the title of the essay I am writing? The essay that I am

beginning to wish to write?

Because the Russian Ark manifests the Names, the rollcall of bones,

the museum of ghosts, and how one reads this museum of ghosts–how

does one read this museum of ghosts?

History, especially cultural history, only knows itself by the names,

the signatures, that survive, and few people write or make art without

some degree of acute awareness of their posthumous existence, the

dream of the life of their work beyond the painful existence of the

life that gives birth to the work.

To try to show the other history–that of the nameless suffering

multitude, that way leads into expropriation of the anonymity of their

suffering, and even to commit the (aesthetic) crime of socialist

realism, that uncritical acceptance of the feasibility of the

representation, that’s not an option for Sokurov.

The film camera is turning its eye to the active dreaming of the past

in the present, the very figure of Russia’s classical culture and the

concept of the museum. But why? And why, Ark? Zabolotsky’s “Suffering of the Animals.” That is the great news that the peasantry had to bring to poetry and through poetry, to culture and history. You

remember the child’s bible story, two by two, into the boat, forty

days and forty nights. This element of fable inflected in the title.

And what is it possible to imagine as the experience of the viewer,

shown this parade, like rows of pictures on a wall, of the memory of a

great culture? The date, 1913, situates this Proustian world on the

threshold of its disappearance, and presents us with the temptation of

nostalgia? If only history had not happened! If only Kerensky’s

provisional government could have survived!

The flood that is coming in The Russian Ark is 1917, to try to keep

that in mind and not succumb to the temptation to posit the coming

catastrophe, which exists in my own writings as the Mass Grave.

Did I tell you without some return in some form of 1917, that my

writings are worthless, meaningless, and my life (my writing life) has

been lived for nothing, and I have made such a mess of that other life

which I have never for once believed as anything but a motion towards

the writing. Writing?

There are moments of perception my two years in Russia that I cannot

even begin to approach in language, this dogs’ language I speak and

write in.

So, yes, the very title resonates for me, the Russian Ark. Recognizing

fully well the dream and the nostalgia in the invitation even to imagine the viewing and participation in the cinematic thought of the Ark.

Or, the film does surrender to the blindest nostalgia, and refuses

scientific history, and even the recognition of the advance–for the

world’s multitude–that 1917 represented, however briefly.

Nostalgia would be to imagine the 19th century, to imagine it at all.

Isn’t that what the 19th century did so well? Imagination as the

Representation. The literature, at least, in every language, gave us

whole worlds.

Isn’t it interesting that art became painfully self-conscious of

itself at about the same time as 1917?

I am glad that I write poetry sometimes, as for whatever other faults

I commit, the opiate of the narrative is not one of them. You cannot

help but be aware that you are reading poetry when you read poetry.

But the `narration of historical structures’–that was the great dream

of the museum and the university alike, and the concept of culture in

general, and I am not trying to assert some postmodernity in

opposition to this, but to accept the infinite molecularity of

existence and of social life in particular, and its unavailability for

the representation, and to supplant narrativity with multiple

approaches towards auto-cognition of the artwork, how to be always

aware of one’s procedures, so that you do not fall into the abyss of

the illusion–that is what artists in Europe and America were learning

in the 20th century, and it is not self-referentiality. So, now, though it will appear as a contradiction, I’m going to end this letter by quoting one of the most beautiful poems I know of, called “A poem for the storyteller”:

July 23

There are many here where I am

                                   right now, the ranks of

                                            fabled dead shadows

fall across this paper. Names. Cleopatra

                    lists her beloveds gone underground:

                                                          Anthony, who is to me

                                                               or I to him

                    that I should name him courtier to that heavenly

                                                                  crown.

                                                                            Oh lush

                              life

coming out of your graves,

       it is the day

     the dead shall rise and populate

                                                     the skies.

                                                              They are tears

                                                                 in my eyes,

Mists that lie along the land

                      to the west, gray blue spectres

                         that have no names,

                            but play

an enchanted game with our minds. Childhood stories,

                         we never heard

                              till now.

John Wieners (1958-9)

p.s. In a sense, you could say that for Larissa’s conference I am

going to translate John Wieners’ poem using Sokurov’s The Russian Ark.

What do you think? You who say to me at breakfast, “many of the names

in that period were bur-y-ed.”

Тема: First paragraph for Toleration conf and Essay for philology conf

Дата: 25 марта 2004 г. 4:33

dear zhen

I shall try your patience. Here is the first paragraph, written or in the process of being written when you called. No response is request, though your reaction, as a Russian reader, to any “hot” spots would be greatly appreciated. Basically, I’m trying to elaborate a Mandelstam-type insistence on what is not there, in the Sokurov film or in the discussion about it. But it’s too early to tell, though I was sensing O.M.s presence this afternoon, and the sensation was quite nice. As for the attached essay, all it needs is formatting, maybe by this Saturday or Sunday?

I miss you. Bye. Oh, and as regards the “feather” of a poem I sent you yesterday, here are a few more words for it, by another poet:

“from where I carry you a feather

as though, sharp, I picked up,

in the afternoon delivered you

a jewel,

            it flashing more than a wing,

than any old romantic thing,

than memory, than place,

than anything other than that which you carry

that that which is,

call it a nest, around the head of, call it

the next second”

My subject for this paper raises several problems probably none of

which can be resolved here: the relationship of poetry to the cinema

across which exists the problem of the relationship between word and

image; the problem of the definition of culture in the actual space of

translation across languages and cultures; the problem in the history

of cinema of the major production as opposed to what is sometimes

called experimental film; and the problem of the interpretation of

history by the work of art, and whether that work of art is visual,

audio-visual, or lingual is a question which directly influences the

ability of critical discourse to account for the impact of a work of

art such as Sokurov’s _The Russian Ark_, and the debate about this

film in the pages of the online journal, Art Margins. Just as this

paper begins with a quotation from a poem by John Wieners, as a

further comment on the difficulty of the subject proposed here is Osip

Mandelstam’s remark that poetry exists outside the narration of

historical structures commonly known as culture. Such an extreme

proposition asks that one accept the poetic word as the supreme

antagonist of critical discourse and its objects, just as one might be

expected to believe that history only exists, or survives, in language

and at the level of the poetic word. In the poem I began by quoting

there is a dialogue between the date of composition, 1958-59, and for

lack of a specific marker, 1616, the date of the printing of

Shakespeare’s folio of plays. The shadow of the Elizabethans falls

across this page written almost 50 years ago, and a liminal acoustic

space is created in the equivalent duration of a sonnet which may

cathect in the reader the uncanny recognition of the coincidence of

historical times in the sensitive phrasal timing reproducing the sound

of the past in the present. The visual experience the poem offers is

the departure of the lines from the stanza into the floating space of

arrangement by ear, or improvisation, further and further removed from

stanzaic patterning and repetition. But there is no image as such, no

visualization, and it is the domination of the audio-visual image and

the appropriation of narrativity by the cinema so that a cultural

object may be produced which functions as the address for critical

discourse, and whether that discourse identifies itself as art history

or the philosophy of history is less important to me than asserting

the opposition to such discursive practices by the poetics in which

every poem participates. Why not look to the margins of a culture and

its language for evidence of the thresholds of tolerance and

intolerance as to the question of representation and what can and

cannot be signed? The pressure on the cultural sign called _The

Russian Ark_ and the debate about it in Art Margins that can be

exerted by the poetics, and tactics, of permanent exile from all

conceptions of national, cultural or ethnic identity, the foundations

for which are established in the nineteenth century’s narrations of

historical structures, might proceed to its own breaking point, the

threshold of intolerance for an unacceptable statement. To state, for

example, that the space of paradox represented by the absent referent

in Sokurov’s film and the Art Margins debate, the terrible knowledge

brought to the world by the Russian peasantry in the twentieth century

and epitomized by Nikolai Zabolotsky’s “Suffering of the Animals,” is

the actual locus for the concept of classicism in _The Russian Ark_.

The illegibility resulting from this space of paradox and its

disavowal is manifested in the tension between what can and cannot be

visualized: the procession displaces the demonstration; the staircase

displaces the ladder; baroque displaces vernacular architecture; the

museum itself displaces the untilled field. The displaced referent,

what might be called _The Triumph of Agriculture_, one sign for the

historical reality the film cannot allow to exist without calling into

question the grounds for its own existence, cannot be expected to

appear in the form the image and its narration. History can neither be

seen nor told, though whether or not vast layers of time can be heard

moving through language at the level of the poetic word depends on the

space occupied by poetics in the collective and intellectual life of a

society.

Тема: Cold again

Дата: 26 марта 2004 г. 11:55

dear zhen

the cold rain tried to snow last night, and there are patches of ice and snow on cars, though the ground is too warm to allow one of these last reminders of winter. there is a mist in the air that might be rain. very cold rain, as yesterday. last night, it was cold enough in my bedroom to force me to sleep in the beige room, where my computer is. often i sleep in here anyway, falling to sleep while reading, i especially like to fall asleep while reading with the light on and fully clothed, waking up in the middle of the night, not knowing for a moment where or who i am (if the book was really good).

only 3 of 12 students came to my conversation class at the college where students must pay, and when i asked them if my lessons were too difficult, they politely responded that the change in weather had made everyone depressed, so they stayed home. doesn’t that sound like russia? you don’t stay away from school on a sunny day, but you stay home on a cold and dark day, too sad to leave home. whether or not it was true, i enjoyed the explanation. one of the students had an “advanced gold” FCE book, and when i asked her about it, she said that this was the book they were using for her “listening” class.

the condition of organized disorder created by lack of educational materials is almost comic sometimes, though it represents sometimes almost half the time required for teaching. your preparation efforts for english-language lessons are heroic, at least it seems to me. you should make them give you a book first. even on syllabi of universities in western europe i see posted on the website the books students are expected to buy, though the textbook market may not be as highly developed in the u.s. how can university education proceed without books? this is a problem which intrigues me, as the university education does proceed, though to be honest i am probably teaching in English at about an eleventh or twelth-grade high school level. with few exceptions, this was generally true of students in the u.s. also. even in my most ignorant moments, my first two years of college (at a very cheap and non-academic community college) I wrote ten-page term papers with research for literature, political science, philosophy, etc. maybe it was all empty forms, and i am the first to admit that my education is not very good, but there seems to be a kind of institutional blindness here (or, bureaucratic opacity). one of my colleague was making a test for his students, and asked me the following question: what was the name of the woman Daisy kills in the car accident in the Great Gatsby? If I asked such questions of my students, I would feel like I was torturing them, and yet that seems to be how the system is structured here: benign torture as a form of internalizing the very real economic torture.

I try to ask of my students at the university only those questions that are discursive, open to interpretation, and which may admit into the answering in writing whatever it is that they know. The writing will be good or not-so-good depending on the degree of their interest. I elaborate on this since I gave a very successful mid-term exam yesterday for my first-year group. Full attendance, and the students wrote until the end of the period. No one wanted to stop writing. This made me feel good, simply as a writer who teaches literature and culture, as I feel that I am making some progress with communicating basic ideas in a second-language without being authoritarian about it (and so many seem to suffer from this authoritarianism which is like the air, the climate, the cultural memory). Does learning have to be about rules and obedience and humiliation? Can’t there be an element of permisiveness which communicates generosity, that kind of generosity of sensibility we always find in the very greatest writers?

From your email yesterday I sense that you approve of my working, and this would be a very good influence on me, as you know I tend towards long periods of idleness. The two states aren’t necessarily opposed to one another, all intensity of activity needs its abeyance, but I know equally well that I suffer from a sort of long-term melancholia, sense of loss in the past impossible to recognize and name and overcome, a loss that is always around me, and which keeps me still, strangely still, quiet, passive, unmoving and unmoved. Most of my creative energy is dissipated in conversations in the classroom, and I often feel completely exhausted after teaching. About a week ago a spoke for more than an hour on cubism and the perspectival analysis of the referent, the assertion of multiple planes, geometrical perception, literally physically pasting the world on to the canvas, and the discovery of the canvas as the space of vision, and not the illusion of the depth perspective, and I eventually realized that no one had ever heard of this before (the heritage of social realism) though Polish art is quite advanced, all that art and thinking about art takes place outside the academy. I was remined of just how intellectually conservative an environment I was in, such as I felt in Tomsk (not the sciences, but the exposure, the degree of exposure, to modernism in the West). I’m not complaining, it’s helpful and insightful to be reminded of this.

This morning I have time for a second cup of coffee, so, if you don’t mind …

And do you know that I miss you ? …

b

y

 e

Тема: Your trans

Дата: 27 марта 2004 г. 1:02

dear zh, here’s my few corrections, you remember our conversation in tomsk about the compromised western science, too few controls, too many results manufactured for funding (corporate/govt) producing quick results science, there is a real poetics of science in russia, and you should be aware of your own skill at translating, precious skills. please, don’t make light of all the work you do. it is important work.

no class tonight, they made a mistake on my schedule. now, if only the other six days of the week could also be mistakes, i might get some writing done. thank you reminder about the bottle of vine. after talking with you tomorrow, i will go to the store and get a good bottle to drink with non-existent meal, maybe i will buy something, i don’t know, some music. do you think that scientists are like poets? they work better when they don’t have any rewards. or status. or govt. contracts. still remembering your “science cannot develop in isolation” remark, my dear cassandra.

bye

dear zhen

The time did change here after all, so in addition to losing one more year from my life, I have also lost an hour. Now, is the hour returned the next season, time change? I have never been able to understand this. Or it has mattered less and less before. After your call yesterday I went out and returned home with a not-so-bad bottle of vine and beethoven quartets (not all of them) and listening yesterday to one of them, I was reminded of Shostakovitch and Bartok quartets, which I have listened to a lot in previous what more and more appear to be lifetimes. So, I am listening to music this afternoon, both actual music and remembered music. I hope you did not mind my mentioning the book of letters I am reading as somewhat ridiculous, or hear this comment as a comment itself on this writing or any other writing to you. It is the form of the letter itself in the book that is suspect. Our world is the demand for proof of acquaintance by the border guards.

The philosophy of the everyday is a very solid and certain one. The closer one gives attention to the hours in a day, and the content of those hours, the less capable are extravagant claims of being made. What are extravagant claims? Wouldn’t just about anything anyone had to say beyond, Does it taste good? or More? would be such an example. I liked your remark about the restaurant, meaning, I think, why go to a restaurant with anyone, they will only interrupt your meal. There is a parable about writing in such a remark. Too much concentration on the question of style becomes monologic (one voice only speaking to itself) but the dialogic does not have to be dialogue, as the equal terms on which a conversation depends almost never exist. There is always the play of power between two or more voices speaking. There are times when I cannot almost bear language teaching. We should instead learn and teach how to be silent.

Listening to music reminds one of silence. Never the being able to say why this passage or that pleases, just that it does (and this cannot be what is taught about literature, there has to be some form of making it speak, when too often what is made to speak are standard and general articulations that have nothing to do with the mystery of writing, its music. For me the great difficulty is always how the writing can be unconscious of itself, not aware of itself as writing as such, and there is one line in the book of correspondence that I felt very deeply out of recognition, the person who cannot write says to the one that is writing, “It is something I wrote for myself and then forgot.” The best poetry is written to itself, for itself. The poetry that one writes cannot be forgotten when it exists in the public sphere. One becomes too aware of it, and too aware every time one writes. But this requires a tremendous amount of concentration, to write for the writing only, and sometimes it seems to me that this is what I am trying to recover, regain, this position and attitude towards writing, building slowly and gradually to a quiet power over a period of years.

Do you need a visa to go to Israel? I remember your saying you’ve been there before. The reason I ask is that I was talking to one of my colleagues here several days ago, from Canada, though he’s Jewish, and when I told him about the difficulty of the border guards, whether U.S. or Russia, he asked if we had thought about going to Israel for the legal forms, documents, etc. I had this strange sensation when I was reading the information from the U.S. State Department site that gradually I am no longer qualifying as a citizen of my own country. No job there, no income, no property. This thought does not disturb me, as you know I sometimes appeal to the memory of Russian poets for perspective on my own homelessness, as many poets in most languages do not accrue more extensions in their daily life than a few books, something to write in and with, and perhaps some music to listen to. If I write more about this, I will begin to trouble you. And I don’t feel darkly or moody about this. Not yet (I’ve been awake for less than an hour). In five more minutes it will be one hour that I’ve been awake.

You are very good and kind to call me and to speak for as long as we did yesterday. Did you know that I like you especially for this, your ability to call me, your willingness to speak this way, very practically and positively? One becomes (I become) very moody otherwise. Now I will struggle with the afternoon and whether or not I should prepare for classes, or just read and listen to Beethoven (the symphonies would be unbearable to listen to, and the music for single instruments, like the piano sonatas, is too romantic, but the quartets exist both in the past as a form and reverberate with what future musicians made of them, from them.

So, for now, though perhaps I will write you a little later if this day turns out to be a thoughtful one.

bye

(and thank you once more for your birthday present, your voice)

Тема: Re: for two without property

Дата: 29 марта 2004 г. 0:09

my dear zhenya

there is always russia. bless v. lenin. i dont mean to irritate you. but “russia” is something special. is there any truth to the say, russians say at the birthday, “more life! more life!” this from the letters I have been reading. please do not be sad. or sadly. work is very good here. patience! I am not a fool. And: I am not a U.S.A. citizen, merely a passport holder. China is a very good dream, for about some years from now. I do not know how many. We are both very young. There is no reason for sadness. But, intense awareness of the Border Guards, yes!

yours with kisses and missing you,

bye

Тема: Poets and fashion

Дата: 29 марта 2004 г. 10:58

dear zhen

you are very witty. of course the program would recite mayakovsky, and the two big mouths who were very popular in translation during cold war, but they would not, on their program, include the legend of the mandelstam bright yellow coat in the vladivostok prison, reciting his poetry to convicts for tinned cans of food. i am criticizing how society remembers poetry in general (by making it appear harmless, when in fact poetry is quite dangerous). for example, i wrote yesterday afternoon, and by evening my nerves were shot. i stayed up until midnight, and then could only sleep for a few hours, agitated, which is what writing does. today I have classes, for which i have not prepared, though I have some time to prepare this morning, but little energy. writing requires a lot of energy, and when i write, i am reminded of just how much energy i give to teaching, which for me is simply trying to stay alive. yes, yellow leather coat with purple polka dots. whatever is needed to mark someone, designate someone, make them identifiable. usually, it is their nerves which makes poets identifiable (to be avoided).

as for this summer, if the very worst happens, there is always the one-month tourist visa which i can get for 30 days. you could perhaps try to come here for 30 days earlier, though same old problem of fear of not making it past the border, though I have my temporary residence permit now, which i did not have before. we should not worry before we have to?

thank you for your misses and kisses. I began the first day of my private new year with writing, and that is always a good sign, no matter that it interferes with teaching.

bye

Тема: Agreement

Дата: 30 марта 2004 г. 0:06

dear zhenya

have you any idea how pleasant it is to come home and receive four emails from you? today has been a long day, 10:00 a.m. to 19:00 (coming home at 19:30) and I have one seminar to prepare for tomorrow, another seminar students are giving reports so I only have to listen, then two classes in the evening (four hours) at the parrot school. All day Wednesday I will be grading papers. I don’t know what I will feel like by Friday. Wednesday is the 30th of March, and that is when I was going to send the paper. I haven’t edited it down to eight pages yet. Maybe I will tonight. I will look at the Cypress urls, though Malta sounds more poetic. You will laugh at this. What is important, I think, is that the documents be in English, for ease of translation, and subjectivity factor, if, as we have talked about, it is travelling that is most important, and your feeling secure outside Russian borders from harassment. Your remark about the irony of taking much care about it is important. What is it possible to do that makes life easier? Travelling easier? Life outside Russia easier? There are many deeper issues to be concerned about, of course, all of which I am sure have influenced your life to this point. I can’t begin to try to imagine all of them, whether they are reasons or suspicions. I should like to add that you probably should be more suspicious of me than you are, though I don’t feel like making myself appear in such a way. Most of the time I am simply troubled and confused by my life, not knowing what to do with it. You know that I am always unhappy unless I am writing, and yet you are kind enough not to dwell on this. You are also very understanding (most of the time!) about my monolingualism. There are many things to take care about, though I hope that I never appear to you to need taking care of. Such weakness would repulse you. Writing is not a friend to weakness, of any kind, but the everyday details of life tend to escape my comprehension, and this problem, my problem, is worth taking care about. Please understand also that it has been a long day and I am tired and tomorrow is an equally long day. I am not very good at working this way, and tend to lose patience with myself. Well,  I will only ask for a little of your understanding right now, and kindness, and patience. Though you have also before insisted that you are none of these. I wish we were eating potatoe pancakes together tonight.

bye

Тема: One question

Дата: 30 марта 2004 г. 18:28

dear zhen

I was just getting ready to send my paper (the one about teaching literature) which you formatted, and noticed there were no page numbers. Are page numbers required (they usually are) and, if so, where should they appear? Should the first page be numbered? If you can answer this question, I’ll send the paper tomorrow, by March 31. Thanks.

bye

Тема: Midday

Дата: 31 марта 2004 г. 17:07

dear zhen

I have just finished with a morning lesson (two hours) at the parrot school and I have the rest of the day for grading papers which I should have done on Sunday but wrote instead and not I must pay for it. At least the day itself is beautiful, sunny, bright, warm, springtime. It is here. How are you? You were very kind to answer my short and terse note yesterday about the page numbers, it is just how I felt and feel when having to deal with my own writing, in just about any form. Thank you for formatting it. I sent it to the conference publication email address that you sent me, last night. This afternoon after lunch (do you know that I have not eaten any potato pancakes since Palangas, I wonder whether they would taste as good without sharing the supper with you, I do remember that once you gave me some of your dinner, the Lithuanian national dish, though now I forget what it was called. Strange, to remember how relaxed and rested I felt then, compared to now. Tired, tired, tired, as I imagine you are too. We are being worn down by our work. So, for now, I will dream about potato pancakes. At least, I think, your mother makes them for you once in a while. I have no such consolation here, only the memory. Now, if you will excuse me, I will try to convince myself into the authoritative marking mood for appropriate comments and marks on my students papers. The horror! (And it is, truly). Everyone and anyone who is not too tired to breathe should get a high mark, don’t you think? Wouldn’t that simplify our lives. Still, I think your students are lucky to have you as their teacher. I came across an essay on recent Russian film in a Slavic Studies academic journal, one of which I am going to try to use for my Sokurov article. Have you seen The Siberian Barber and Burnt by the Sun? What did you think of them? Aren’t they rather like Hollywood films? Certainly, The Russian Ark would compare favorable to these. Mikhailov is a well-known nationalist-resortationist, isn’t he? I mean this nostalgia for the 19th century. Well, that’s as much thinking as I’m capable of today. And please, don’t suspect me too much. Of what, I don’t know. Of everything, anything, at all. Suspect me of eating all your potato pancakes. That’s a good place to start. Though I think you already suspect me about that. Suspect me for liking bad pretentious ambitious Russian movies. Suspect me of not reading as much as I should. Suspect me of not know what I should be doing with my life. The list goes on and on. Suspect me of being about to eat pierogi russki for lunch with olive oil and paprika. Suspect me of missing you.

bye

Тема: Light of the End

Дата: 1 апреля 2004 г. 10:49

dear zhen

I have a cup of strong coffee, and 45 mins before I absolutely have to take the bus, though I should leave 15 mins earlier, since as always, always, always, I must copy some materials before going to three classes in a row, 8:30-13:00 then one hour break, than 14:15-15:45 at the College Where Students Must Pay Because They Are Stupid. Student marking of papers tonight will require about two hours, and then the end is in sight (we say, There is a light at the end of the tunnel). Only two classes tomorrow morning, one of them a period-long exam, so I don’t need to prepare for it, then only two hours in the evening at the Parrot School, then three hours the next morning at the Parrot School, and then, by noon, on Saturday, I am free. For one-and-a-half days, about 36 hours. What do you recommend me to do? Shall I call you on Saturday? I would prefer to call you late, about 23:00 your time, to see if the call is cheaper after 18:00 here, so that I may get more time during the call. The last call to you was only 50 mins. Was that usual? Or have we spoken longer on this card? Why is it so cheap to call the U.S. and so expensive to call Russia? Is there an answer to these great questions of life? You have good taste in cinema, I can see. I hated Siberian Barber when I saw it. Yesterday I read an academic article about Russian “blockbuster” films (films made to be like Hollywood in circulation, expensive, very expensive films–millions and millions of dollars) by U.S. historian, about Russian nationalist anxiety, and since the writer was feminist, she tried to associate nationalist anxiety with father-son cultural anxiety, seeming to suggest that Russian cultural situation for the masses where all films are import films is actually good for mass society, since Russian mass society is patriarchal and authoritarian. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but I thought you might like to know that somewhere there is someone named Susan Larson writing that the national-patriarchal anxieties is good for the Russian mass society. A helpful word in English is “specious.” And universities tend to produce such profound insights. I shudder at the substancelessness (yes, this is a word) of the essay I sent to the TPU conference publication, I shudder even at the thought that I was capable of writing it. Why? I don’t believe in a single word in it. Not a single word is true. (Expressively true, as the course was actually taught as I described). There is a lesson about writing. You can write as closely to an experience as possible (teaching an anthology of literature, for example) and yet the substance of the experience is so false that the experience will not permit the writing to exist. Writing is very stubborn this way. It only happens (if writing can be said to simply happen to its writer, and I believe this) on its own, by its own needs. I think this is why I like writing so much more than other forms of art, which seem to require greater manipulation, so that by the time one is considering filmmaking, anything except the individual camera seems like an unacceptable hyperbole, and pure and unconscionable manufacturing of representation for consumption. So that is my editorial for the morning. I think I am trying to prove to you that, in your famous words, “I’m still alive.” And you?

bye

Тема: Reprieve!

Дата: 1 апреля 2004 г. 19:08

dear zhen

when i got to the college where students who are stupid must pay the stupid students had taken the day off because of the sunlight and warm, warm weather (this they told me in the secretariat where after true old-russian fashion the keys to the classrooms are distributed) “the students have run away it is such a beautiful day” i was told in lovely broken english, spoken english. so i am home for the afternoon and writing to tell you i miss you and i think i shall read a novel until dark. i hope that you rec’ this message tomorrow and not this evening as it is already after 20:00 in Tomsk. how was your day, dear?

bye

Тема: Just before parroting

Дата: 3 апреля 2004 г. 12:32

dear zhen

isn’t it nice of me? isn’t it good of me? to write you when I have only 10 minutes before going to the Parrot School? 38 hours there last month. Comedy. The book that they use makes me hate the English language. Maybe that is good for learning another language. Do you have a suggestion? Can you tell me if it is Russian kindness for you to call yesterday, or Jenya kindness? You are a very thoughtful person. Even only a few minutes is (as the Parrot school textbook would say) cheering. Seriously, hearing your voice makes me less depressed, and more than anything, I am struggling with the kind of depression which expresses itself in irritation, anger. It becomes more difficult to concentrate on my classes, fortunately there is a break next week. The difficulty is the gap between what I know and what I think and what I am capable of talking about, and the level of perception, language perception, which is quite natural, and which most of the time I adapt to, but which, when I become tired, gets on my nerves (as they say). I seem to remember that you have very fine, sharp nerves, so I think you know what I am talking about. Yesterday I did not write because if I had, I would have only complained, and I don’t think that is very complimentary to my better side (if there is one) or to your patience, though, as you know, you are very kind. On the bright side: the more tired I become now, the more I will enjoy relaxing this summer. Right now, for this afternoon, and tomorrow, I wish I had a long Russian novel to read (do you know that I have never read Anna Karenina?) I have only, from the library, a copy of the first Canadian novel, like Fenimore Cooper (who I’m sure you studied in school, pity). But the arched, 18th century English sounds good to my ears. Still, I would prefer a translation. Neither have I ever read Bulgakov. In such times (tiredness, depression) it is good to pass the hours with reading prose. Even Kafka’s diaries are calling, though I would prefer not to read from the computer. One finds oneself sitting up too much. I am going to lie down for the most part of today and tomorrow. I will try to call you this afternoon, your early evening (I am finished with teaching at noon, though I have to go to the postoffice to get a phone card, and the local one last time didn’t have one, as you remember I tried to call on another card and it did not work) so I may have to go downtown. So, perhaps between 14:00-15:00 here (19:00-20:00 your time). I’m only wondering how late you will be working today. I will check my email before calling you if you do not expect to be home until later. You said yesterday that you expected to be very busy today. I miss you.

bye

Тема: Agreement

Дата: 5 апреля 2004 г. 11:45

dear zhen

i am in agreement regarding all your advice. last week i was leaving at the same time as another teacher at the College for Dunces who also, it turned out, teaches at the university, and she advised that for foreigners, native English speaking, they are often put in situation of having to learn how to say no. There are too many requests for teaching assistance, and native speakers often find themselves overworked. Meanwhile, she said, Polish faculty (especially the senior ones) are always trying to find a way to avoid their commitments. Even visiting faculty like myself have the right to cancel classes whenever we want, though I never do, from Yankee habit of industriousness. Soon I will have a long weekend, if I survive the next three days.

About the contract: Is the Foreign Language Institute called a Correspondence School or is what is meant, corresponding (parallel) which seems to be the meaning intended. In this case, the translation appears to be confusing the “ence” noun ending with the “ing” gerund (which is also, as you may recall, a noun, and many translations do not appear to make full use of the gerund, which sounds much more natural in English). Also, I started to change “test” to “examination” then saw at the end of the document a reference to final examinations in the field of study, so I though a distinction was intended between the Russian language test and the final examination, for clarity, so that is why you see some of the references to “test” crossed out. You should also check spelling of syllabi, syllabii? I am 95% sure there is only one “i” at the end (one of the few words in English that still retain Latin plural). Just as hardly anyone uses “datum” for the singular of data. This is the simplifying drive of English, for better or worse.

After your call yesterday, I actually did feel worse and worse, chills and fever which broke late, after midnight last night, or I should say, this morning. I slept for less than five hours. I went to the market earlier in the day, and became quite worried that I was becoming seriously ill (flu), from aching muscles, tiredness, chills that turned into fever, but this morning I feel rather good. I don’t wish to worry you. I lay on the couch all day and tried to read but my eyes hurt too much and headache, so I watch mindless TV most of the day after cleaning and doing laundry (it was a beautiful day and all my clothes now have fresh air smell) and finally, around midnight, a Polish film called “Historia Kina” made in 1998 here, in Lodz, came on, and in quality reminded me of the film about the Gypsies in Polish that we saw in Palangas. Very Tarkovsky-like intersections of 19th century past with mid-20th century present, juxtapositions done by images, without transition, beautiful landscapes, with sentimental story, though there is a child trying to remember the invention of the movie projector by his ancestor, against the wishes of the father. It is the kind of film maybe you are used to in Russia, but in the U.S. I did not see such cinematography until attending the university. They are almost forbidden in the mass commercial culture. So, I went to bed tired, and woke up tired, but my eyes were caressed for two very nice hours. Despite sentimentalizing idealisms of the portraiture, in the film. I hope that I have enough energy to work on Sokurov essay this weekend.

Do you know that I think you are an extremely meticulous companion? Meticulous, thorough. You do not miss many details. And you are very kind to call me when I am experiencing “rough” moments. This is very generous of you. Thank you for thinking of me. I am rather stubborn when it comes to my health, as I am almost always refusing to recognize anything is wrong. Yesterday was a troublesome day though, and I was quite worried that I was becoming ill. The kind of flu that makes one sick for a week would be a disaster for me. Also, I am a stranger, foreigner, and do not feel that I have the right to be sick, or absent from work. This is additional stress added to the foreign language environment. It is as though one overperforms their work, so that there is nothing left. It is not that I forget that teaching is only work, but it overwhelms me sometimes. Your longer letter written about this subject was very welcome. I enjoy your advice, though Japan is an expensive place. I miss Russia sometimes. Boundaries between countries are quite real and substantial. Poland is a very different place than Russia. But this problem of there being really any place, that is the theme for a future letter.

I hope my corrections to the Agreement are helpful.

bye

Тема: Genderous?

Дата: 7 апреля 2004 г. 11:21

dear zhen

i am still here. this means, close to the same meaning, as “i am still alive.” i notice, however, that often you use the contraction, “i’m still alive.” do you think there is any difference? is one more or less alive when they use the contraction? on the subject of contractions, of time, space, history, etc. i saw on the news last night (and looked for some information about on the internet yesterday but could not find very much) about “barricades” in Iraq, civil disturbance it is called in polite English, civil war according to more politically nuanced users (of English). But I do not have very much information, just bits and pieces of images, that, again, looked like an insurrection. The news of this is important here, as Poland has troops there, and this is apparently very unpopular here, or, shall we say, more politely, “divisive.” that seems to be the current global trend, divisiveness. feeling rather in the dark, last night i subscribed to two news magazines in English, one from Prague and one from France. the urls for both magazines are

Le monde-diplomatique English edition, http://mondediplo.com

Central Europe Review, http://culture.tol.cz or, http://www.ce-review.org

The Central Europe Review has articles about Russia in Russian as well as English. I remember you liked Oleg Kireev’s nettime article that I showed you in Palangas. I haven’t been reading “the news” for some time, partly from sense that I am aware, theoretically, what is happening, and partly because it only makes me more gloomy. but there is also increased isolation from events so that when one does see (see?) the news, such as the CNN in Palangas, the world appears all the more strange, and one feels all the more estranged from it.

It is not from feeling of estrangement that I have not been writing so much these days, but tiredness which expresses itself by staying in bed until the last minute, moving very slowly (listlessly, we say), to be listless, without energy, motivation, or volition (willpower). Today I write you a longer letter because I have time this morning, except I must go to the doctor. More about this later.

Do you know, that you are not completely mistaken to mistake dangerous for generous? It is quite dangerous to be generous. Though i do not know if this works vice versa, if it is generous to be dangerous. or to live dangerous. to live in condition of danger. or, to live in condition of generous.

Was Bulgakov generous or dangerous? Have you ever read Isaac Babel? He wrote about at the same time, but not so much from an aristocratic/modernist point of view. I imagine Bulgakov to be a little like the Argentine writer, Borges in sensibility. But more important than my imaginings, is having a book that one returns to again and again, like drinking from the native language. Perhaps it is not so much the representation, as the rhythm, the sound, the tangibility of the language that we return again and again to the same book. This is probably, also, unteachable.

My very minimal definition of teaching esp. literature and culture is this, the one who is the person teaching, they are teaching because they read and write a lot, so the ones who are students ask the one who is teaching them questions about his or her reading. There is no syllabus, no schedule, no tests, no papers. All of these are obstacles to reading and asking questions about reading. All true reading cannot be monitored. Most true reading cannot happen in an institution, anywhere. The classroom in the university may perhaps only be able to teach a version of order, and esp. authority in relation to the work of literature, and no matter the writer is a right or a left or in between, they participate in a certain disorder, making chaotic, as soon as they begin to write. But this cannot be taught. It is terrible the fate of the literary work when it enters the university. You see what a dilemma I am in. I am in position of imposing order when it is the undoing of all that is the value of the literary, the undoing especially of our illusions, our complacencies, our comfort.

This unsettledness, and feeling that I am slowly being turned into something or someone I do not wish to be, simply by trying not to live dangerous, is (mildly) torturing me. It is a strong word, even just an expression. But I do feel contracted, or contorted. Recent (mild) health problems indicate this. Even not wanting to write just a few hurried polite words to you indicate this. You know i would rather write and write and write and if I began to write and write and write I would miss my bus. My 150 students would come to class and I would not be there. They would come to the door of my flat and the door would be locked. I would be attached to the computer screen, writing and writing. So I can hardly write at all, for fear of beginning to write and being unable to function in the functional role. Writing is fundamentally beyond function, both the object (the resulting work) and the process.

So, I complain. The hours in each day appear to me to be contracting. The horizon is narrowing. History is compressing. There are fewer and fewer choices. There are more and more weapons in the hands of more and more militaries. Even the 1970s, anywhere in the world, seem to have been a time of wider and brighter skies. Now? What is now? How is it possible to know where and what is this now? I think it is the names of the streets here that make me ask these questions. But, then, I used to shop in that street in Tomsk named, Dzerszhinski? This name that does not deserve to be remembered. I actually had read about this one before coming to Russia, already in 1919 he was considered by other “barricadists” to be a killer. Murderer. There are so many. Very quietly and politely going to classes does not simply the awareness of the history of one or another time and place. Maybe literature also tries to understand this process. It gives too much dignity to call it history.

Earlier this week at the parrot school I saw young girl about age 10 trudging (stepping very slowly) up the stairs, as if each step caused her the greatest agony. I was reminded of your saying how you did not care to study English when you were her age, so I imagined for a moment that I was walking behind Zhenya 30 years ago, sent to her English lessons (did you wear your Italian boots? did they help?) Now, all this time later, my dear Zhenya finds herself translating everything for her colleagues whose parents did not send them to English lessons when there was no reason to do so, except there are some precious parents in the world who feel responsible for making sure their child learns another language, and now also having to interpret strange letters from an even stranger foreigner. You are very kind and generous to read such letters as these, though all the time I worry that I do not write dangerous. That is another demand of the literary. Actually it is an equal demand, To be generous and to be dangerous. If the one that is writing cannot do both, then the writing cannot be.

It is helpful to remember these problems on a warm, raining morning. Would you send me the Bulgakov?

p.s. Yesterday I found two phone cards, one for 25 pln. and one for 10 pln. so I bought both. This will give 40 minutes, not 50 minutes, for calling you this Sunday. They do not have any 50 pln. cards yet. And this is the only card I know that will call Russia. So I will call you Sunday, but we will have only 40 minutes to speak. I think you will make fun of my gloominess. You mention that I “mock” you? When? It is no matter. It is difficult to laugh at such distance, and in writing. With writing. By writing.

Bye

Thu, 8 Apr 2004 07:26:25 +0200

Re: hi

dear zhen

the deliciousness of the variation is almost too much. usually at this time 6:45 a.m. I am finished writing you when I am writing you, which is most mornings, yes? then, 7:15 I leave to arrive at univ. at 8:00 for xeroxing of last minute materials, then classes at 8:30 and so on. But this morning, as I do not expect students, though I have not cancelled classes, and there may be one or two students who wish to see me, though I have not prepared any classes, after all, no one knows yet today if it is “Rector’s Day” (no classes only announced at the very last moment) so I will go to the univ. and 99 percent chance there are no classes. This is life in the cross culture. If you ask anyone, which days are the day off, student or faculty, they will greet this question as one of the most profound (and unanswerable) of all the existence. Maybe Thursday, yes, Friday, yes, yes, that is Good Friday, and Monday? Maybe Monday, or Tuesday, the students do not usually come to their classes again until Wednesday, etc., etc. You will laugh if I will say that this would be intolerable in an “anglo-american” place, since people would wish to make plans, but plans, here, apparently, in Poland, are to be open to cancellation at the last minute by the higher authority, who reserves an absolute and arbitrary power of decision. It is quite a paradox: both students and teachers have much, much more day-to-day autonomy (pure freedom) over their workplace, but the larger and for the most part entirely symbolic power functions are left to the administrators. I think this may be reflection of centuries-old co-habitation with imperial bureaucracies, of which the socialist-period bureaucracy was a further but related development. Everyone will be surprised if and when there is ever modernization in monitoring methods (what actually goes on in the institution) and monitoring methods mostly duplicate their own paradigms, models, accounting methods, which is the anglo-american conception of education: skill training. Here there is something more like benign chaos, though quite a few excellent students emerge despite or because of this. It might be that they have more choices, even when it appears they have few or no choices. So much for my morning analysis of education in Poland. I still have 30 minutes before I must catch the bus.

It is raining and raining and raining. Dark grey light steady rain, making everything wet and even the sounds a little softer. The car traffic outside my building does not sound so harsh this morning. Last night, too tired to read, I tried to watch American Playhouse movie of Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome, and could not help but laugh at how much it resembled (copied) Chekhov. Then turned off TV and went to bed. I don’t like going to bed when I’m not asleep yet, as it means sometimes 15-30 minutes of lying in bed waiting for sleep. I prefer go to bed after I am already fallen asleep reading. These are particular behaviors one develops after many years of living alone. Very often I fall asleep with all lights on, after reading, while reading, without gloominess of those last minutes before sleep when one simply feels too tired, too bored, too despondent, too listless, too lifeless. I felt like that for a moment last night, and then I remembered that I did not have to take the bus this morning until 7:30-7:740 a.m instead of 7:15 as usual, and my heart rejoiced with the expectation of variation and the delight of the little pleasures in life, such as a permutation, no matter how minute, in one’s daily schedule.

For greater variety, that is why I wish to begin reading the “local” news, so to speak. This will last for a while, and then it will sound more and more the same. This is the logic of the journalism, its day-to-day formula for events, though different events, there is a larger pattern, sometimes difficult to perceive. Once one perceives this pattern, all the language for all the events starts to resemble all the accounts, reports, interpretations, and one is reminded that the reading of the “news” is mediated by a form (the journalism) as artificial as a poem or short story. Another genre only, though with an attempted closer relationship to something that is or has actually happened, if anything ever actually happens. Of course it does. The problem is trying to understand what is happening, why what is happening is happening, and what may be the consequences. What, after all, is going to happen? Last night at the parrot school I came across a word in English I didn’t recognized the definition for: Do you know what is “rejoicing”? The reference in the text was to Public Rejoicings, said not to be common now as we live in a time of world peace (yes?!). The word means simply to me, Celebration, but as you know British English much better than me (or is it, I? does it matter?) –the problem is in the comparative–and whether or not the first-person pronoun is an object or subject–maybe you can tell me what is Rejoicing. My mind, the Shiites are Rejoicing this week, though I cannot understand from the news whether or not they have been suppressed yet. Last night there was brief image of dead body of U.S. soldier, very respectful: showing only the legs from the knees to the feet. Very different from Al-Jazeera photographs last year on Russian news where, as in the theater tragedy in Moscow, detailed attention was given to the expression on the faces of the corpses.

Cheerio! my parrot school book last night said that speakers of English say to each other when parting after visiting. Cheerio! Don’t you think I should start signing my letters to you, Cheerio? Is not this proper English, what? Cheerio! But I still have 15 minutes to write improperly to you. I don’t even know if my classes at the Dunce College have been cancelled or not. Everything is a mystery today, including the grey skies. I remember this Party Slogan from my childhood: Fly the Friendly Skies of United. This was commercial for an airplane. It was a great mystery to me as no one in my family had ever flown on an airplane, except once, my grandmother when she came to visit us. Before she arrived, we children would look up at the sky everytime wondering if that was her arriving. At the moment, I cannot remember any more Party Slogans. And you? Who were able to fly to Moscow for a few roubles only in the good-bad old days? All language seems to fall away here, in Lodz, more and more, it is the influence of the place, there is something very somber here, which is a word meaning neither dark nor serious but a little of both. I don’t care what the dictionary says. Well, it is 7:20 now and it will take me five minutes to put on a sweater, coat, shoes, collect my books, and catch the bus. And I refuse to say, Cheerio! So, once more, until you write again, or until I write again, or just until …

bye

Тема: reading news

Дата: 9 апреля 2004 г. 13:15

dear zhen

have you ever had such a juice made of grapefruit and pineapple? i thought i had made a mistake recently shopping and have been avoiding the carton of such a juice in my refrigerator until this morning and now i realize it is quite good, not as sour as i had expected from the grapefruit which is one that i do not care for. i have also a bag of oranges which remind me of your liking for oranges in palangas. i had almost stopped eating tangerines, though i am quite fond of them, since they were more and more tasteless, and then monday or tuesday i bought some of the first good tangerines, maybe it is the turning of the season. three ripening very red polish tomatoes await their inclusion with cucumbers in a salad today, and since it is good friday, i will cook fish (a very small trout, the earlier fish that i wrote you about could not have been a trout, though it looked and tasted like one, though three or four times the size of the trout i shall have for supper tonight). the cucumber and tomato salad with oil and vinegar i became quite fond of in russia, my first year in russia, though i don’t remember eating very much citrus then. there was an enormous marketplace in chita, though you needed good russian to buy what you wanted, the habit of the venders to tell you about their wares, and bargains, etc., but i remember being impressed from the crates, how many of the crates of apples and oranges, melons, were from china. here there are more products from the middle east, the dates for example which i buy (and which i forgot to buy last night!) are from Iran, and quite good, about two dollars for a kilogram, though now i remember paying 50 rubles for half a kilogram in tomsk, though of course i had no way of asking where they were from, and 50 rubles is almost two dollars now, yes? strange how the prices of food vary very little. yes, that is a play with words, they vary very much. English is full of such ridiculous sounds. Actually, I find quite amusing the variation in sound between the l and the barred l which sounds like a an english w in Polish, so that Russian biely (byelli) sounds like byewi in Polish. The w sound in English in an infantile-like sound, or sound used to sound like children speaking, incorrectly, babyish, and it isn’t pleasant to my ear, here, listening to Polish. But there are many softer sounds it appears in Polish than in Russian, though when I heard what to my mind must have been, may very well have been, quite 19th century Russian being spoken by several of the faculty members at the university in Chita (at a lunch at the dacha of the chair of my faculty, and after some wine, though not a lot of wine, no one had had “too much” to drink, as at a cafe sometimes) but the occasion, the arrival of spring, the company of good friends, even, perhaps, the performance for a foreigner who was (I like to believe) well liked, produced this extraordinary voluble Russian, such as I had never heard, so very expressive and bubbling like stream of a river, perhaps such as are found in Altai, and I have read subsequently about this 19th century Russian language features, very complex grammatically, in the inflections, the word combinations, the sound chamber. One would like to believe that the Russian and Polish languages were closer then, despite or (and language is such a strange element) because of the deportations to Siberia at that same period.

Now everyone says the languages are harshening. You yourself comment on the harshness of your students’ speech, its indifferent brutality, and I think many people who speak English would agree with you, whether they are in Los Angeles, New York or London. People say that about Polish too, here, that it is being emptied, partly by influence of English, which is overwhelming here, everytime I go to the hypermarket all I hear are American rock-and-roll classics, and this is a store where thousands shop. The prestige of the English language is such that people enjoy tremendously these songs. For no other reason, my time and energy at the Parrot School is valuable since I meet Poles from all walks of life, not just students, and get a better impression of the average business person, or aspiring professional, and students who did not do well in school, in addition to those young people who are so fortunate as yourself to have parents who send them to language school in the evening. But I don’t know why the languages are harshening, perhaps because of the contact among languages? The mixture? Perhaps the linguistic richness of the 19th century was the result of the severity of the boundaries around cultures, which is lessening now–our own meeting and being with each other and towards each other, and almost daily communication, is proof of this. so there is no doubt that we live in a world such as could hardly be imagined 100 years ago. i want to believe this, as departure, from even history, and yet i have so many doubts.

I read the news a little yesterday, news interpretations from the last month or so. Apparently there was a letter before the elections written from prison by the Yuccas oligarch, which I am sure you have heard of, and I know you have said you do not like to mention politics in emails, and all that impressed me was that I had worked for about 6 weeks at Yuccas offices in Tomsk, and so the reference was quite concrete. There apparently was also terrorist attack in Tashkent, and travel in and out of Uzbekistan is very difficult now. I am glad that I did not go to Biskek. This is always a good test: read the news one day and see if you can remember what you read the next day. If you cannot, then the news, what is called the news, such as broadcasts by radio and tv in U.S., become simply part of the noise of the enviroment, and sign swirl, the mud of meaninglessness from day to day. Some of the interpretations based on population surveys in Russia about attitudes of Russian citizens towards the past confirm some of the things that I’ve written, most recently in the manuscript, Pacifist, which I wrote my first year in Russia. To try as much as possible to let the writing absorb things that are said around you, to you, as a foreigner, without trying too much to shape them into your own perception. But Russian people in general are very proud of their past, including even (or accepting in different levels of —

We interrupt this broadcast to bring you the following information:

The professor responsible for my teaching at the Dunce College just called to thank me for teaching there (he is also head of the philological faculty there) and to make an appointment with me so that we may meet about the contract, though I did not understand whether or not my salary for March is already waiting for me, since I have signed no contract, but as we have agreed to meet at a certain date at a certain hour in a certain place, I feel reasonable confident that I will be paid for my time at the Dunce College. It would be preferable to continue there than at the Parrot School, as I have completed paperwork and it is an official teaching job, not unoffical as is the Parrot School. The Parrot School is for summer money only, and to be free of worry, so it is worth a little sacrifice now.

Now, as for accepting different levels of –? Who can say. I am not pretending to be able to say. But the comment that I read, that the only news the West hears from Russian is news shaped to conform to and to confirm western liberal pro-globalization policies. The other Russia is very difficult to learn anything about. There is always this mystique of the hidden Russia, the uncommunicable Russia, the Russia that looks familiar but which is very, very different than Europe or America. What else did I read about? I promise not to give you news summaries. One wonders just how much our emotions are inflected by the noise we absorb. I have not been able to find very much news about Poland yet, though I know from my students and from faculty that the participation of Poland in the coalition forces in Iraq is extremely unpopular. It is very likely there will be a change in administration, though the extent of the change is difficult for someone who is a stranger to the environment to be able to guess. Apparently there are fears of a Madrid-like event in Warsaw, though why that is news I don’t know. One article wrote that yellow emergency instructions have appeared in the subways in Warsaw.

If someone had asked me, just theoretically, what is the consequence of one country invading another to depose a ruler, I would have said: civil war. That is basic history. One does not need to know a lot to know this. It is based on the experience of colonialism. The invader tries to set up a friendly (puppet govt) and this govt and its new militia will suppress the resistance. This has happened again and again in Latin America, Guatamala, Panama, Nicaragua, El Salvador, sometimes the U.S. invasions were direct, sometimes indirect, if such indirection is possible. What I mean is not the overt military presence as today in Iraq. But the Middle East is not Central America, and there is the possibility of a significant defeat for the ruling class in the U.S. which will make them even more dangerous regarding civil liberties in their own country, the U.S. society. If the military adventure (and it is an adventure, with all the meaning of this word from 19th century colonialism) intensifes, the conflict will expand, and involve more countries. It is not a positive situation. And it most assuredly is not Chechnya. This is closer to the Central American experience for the U.S. A little war that goes on and on and does great damage to the country conducting the war as to the country at war, but which does not expand. The situation in the Middle East has just this expansive character, and that is why it is worth worrying about, and why it will politicize the younger (international) generation. It is even questionable whether peace could be made if peace were even attempted. The reminder of the exact specificity and even, organicism of democratic processes is sharp. Governments cannot be removed at will from outside intervention. They can only be changed from within. There is nothing worse than one country invading another. There is nothing more threatening to the relationships among nations, whatever the global region, and we are reminded that peace, whatever else it is, is always just temporary, an arrangement of convenience, in a world where war is a concrete alternative.

I write like this to remind myself of just how serious the contemporary moment is, and not to be lulled by the lullaby of teaching, even in the perpetual anxiety of a buffer zone. I hope that I do not sound too serious to you. It is strange to remember just how affected I was by your reaching the title in Zabolotsky, The Suffering of the Animals, and the images of the chicken-destruction in Thailand which has apparently spread to China, you said? In my heightened state, then, in Palangas, where each day was like floating, simply drifting with the current of whatever came my way, even Crocodile! (and this is what writing is like, one is not writing unless one is drifting, floating, spiralling among signs) the profound disturbance of the meeting of the line from the Russian poet and the broadcast image and these next-to-meaningless food objects tossed into graves by the truckloads seemed true, and this so rarely happens. 

Well, you see what happens to me when I have a day off. I will look forward to reading a letter from you tonight.

bye, Zhenya (I mean, Zhenya, bye, not, bye and signing your name, though I did, yesterday, create an email box for you on the server functions attached to my website, so in case you have further troubles with your email in tomsk, we may write to each other only through the one server, and perhaps this would be best anyway, its quite simple and i can show you when i’m in tomsk, the account can be configured through your existing outlook express software in the computer there)

so, bye …

p.s. do you know that i don’t wish to stop writing this letter this morning, but i feel that i should or that i shall try your patience? i will leave it to you to decide whether or not you are kind and the extent of your kindness as to the contents of this or any letter from me …

Тема: To coincide

Дата: 10 апреля 2004 г. 12:54

dear zhen

suggested changing “coincidentally” to “simultaneously” as “coincide” and “coincidental” do not mean the same things in English, coincidental means accidental, where the sense of the sentence means corresponding, parallel, at the same time, etc.?

you said the you were told that the translation is an important one, so why don’t you send it again after reviewing it once more?

it is strange to read the agreement the same night that I read an article from Le Monde Diplomatique about war planning of Washington shifting from traditional attention to third-world states to potential conflicts with the “peer” nations of Russia (over Caspian oil basin) and China (over diverse points Asian, especially threatening conflict with N. Korea). Of course, this always sounds like doomsday thinking, but I was interested to the extent that I often accuse myself of thinking too darkly, too extremely, over the future, from just basic conceptual framework of recognizing intensifying militarization and arms expansion, then I find my intuitions corroborated. Le Monde Diplomatique is a little to the center compared to sources of news information I have relied on before, but among its occasional contributors are various intelligentsia whose more academic writings I generally respect. So does that make it a trusted news source? News is the epitome of the particular and the interpreted. One cannot read journalism without theory, and it is the theory that my own writing has been suffering the absence of lately. Actually, I feel very far from both journalism and theory, but if my writing is to develop the historical consciousness that I wish for it, then this is my element. The danger, always, is abstraction, and the equivalence of the place-name. Especially since I have very poor since of geography. Strangely, too, journalism reads like fiction, it narrates, though the events are strictly the so-called external, legislation, treaties and agreements, conflicts and threats of conflicts, explosions and the movement of armies. The discourse that attempts to account for this objective-material focus almost seems over-rational at times, and yet it is for a reason (reasoning) beneath the apparent disconnectivity that one searches for. The worst is to give in to the appearance of the disconnection, the irrational, in the accounting for world events, and even worse, to give in to pessimism. Mostly, as regards writing, I feel immobilized, unable to move in one direction or another, without some confidence in the importance of writing anything at all. I refuse to write for the sensation of mere production. There must be something at stake, something crucial, that needs to be thought. I think this is one reason for my return to journalism (reading jounalism, not writing it, though it is possible to conceive of a textuality that is event-driven, conceptually). Also, I find that when not thinking this way, it is easier to glide past this or that political statement even in the writings by artists about making art. The articles about Sokurov reminded me how little I knew about Russia, just in terms of events in the past ten years.

But the event always escapes the conceptual grasp, frame. This is part of the elusiveness of things happening in time. What I distrust greatly is being solely affected by this or that image that flashes across the media. This cannot be an emotive basis for any serious work. It is simply spillage, and deceptive, and if a writer depends upon it for orientation, the writing will become more and more ignorant and emptied of thought. Thought? What do I mean by thought? One always begins with sensation of emptiness, blankness, whiteness. Malevich always claimed it was not a color. Yesterday I was thinking of purple and greys. I don’t know why, and it was for only a moment, so was this a thought? Is the sensation of shape and color, thought? Or, the reading of journalism? It is striking how the form of the writing about the event seeks to contain the event in a strict field of reference, and the formula of the news interpretation actually works against aggravating the material to produce the stubborn, irreducible detail, and if this detail is an image, this image is far more complex than its broadcast equivalent. One imagines a critically poetic writing capable of aggravating the detail. Making that detail unforgettable, even, only, perceptible. We see hardly anything of the events happening around us. Even with, and perhaps especially because, of the intensification of communications.

These are some of my thoughts as I begin a new phase of reading. Only one day off and I am beginning to conceive of writing, working. I am too busy now, and that is a problem. It is an art in itself, to learn how not to be consumed by demands on your time. I don’t know how to teach indifferently, so I over-prepare. I work too hard at doing nothing. Probably I could get by in teaching with half the work, teaching, but then the logic of the system, everywhere, but it seems so especially here, is that the parameters of what is required are so intangible that no one knows exactly what they are expected to do. So, one over-compensates, and one over-performs. And the system wins.

With this cheerful and rueful thought, hardly a thought as we both live its reality day to day, I’ll send this letter written to first coffee and the expectation of a free day, to read and wander (just a little) among unsettlements, disturbances, premonitions.

Thank you for missing me and kissing me. You know that I believe in reciprocal actions. So you may imagine my response, following yours. Your responses. You who are very warm and say you are not. You who are very kind and say you are not. Principled negativity?

b y e

Тема: Last reading day

Дата: 12 апреля 2004 г. 13:43

dear zhen

i’m trying a new experiment this morning, weaker coffee. not that i have an argument against strong coffee, but the size of my coffee filter in the machine i bough in oct. only permits enough coffee for one cup, and as i fill it quite full, the effect is to distribute coffee grounds after percolating in the water chamber, which produces something of a film in the chamber, and effects the purity of the water, and is also an annoyance, as i have to clean the chamber every time i make a cup of coffee. i thought you would be glad to hear that my life is so full of complicated problems.

today is the last day for dreaming. i’ve been able to read more for myself in the past few days than in the past two months, and the reading turns me to writing. at this point, one just wants to write in any direction possible, and only after a period of time to notice patterns. i am at least very much aware of the thought that i’m disturbed how few facts, if any at all, i can recall from journalism that i read only the day before, if you asked for me to summarize one news story that i’ve read recently, i couldn’t. and yet i am not an indifferent reader. and i quite well understand the frame of reference for the journalism. so as a kind of negative gesture, i would say that i’m interested in writing a prose that is like trance music, electronic music, which tells no story, has no basis or center in any plot, but something that would give the illusion of progression from many, many perspectives, though i don’t like the word perspective. there’s a touch of this in Bulgakov, the scene where Berlioz loses his head. it’s brilliant the way that the scene is told from the angle of the one about to be guillotined, and the tram that runs over the editor is the French Revolution. Nabokov must have enjoyed Bulgakov immensely.

Many writers still tell stories this way, though the story itself has never interested me as a form. Too many details (too many words!) seem purely arbitrary, part of the form, they function too obviously. Poetry teaches the one that writes it too pay very close attention to the way words shatter at the touch. The language one writes in becomes a precious object. To be able to write a kind of extended, even massive prose surface that would be legible (one could still read it without having to reread) though without reference to external events, this is something i would like to write. at a certain point, to write narrative prose, you have to give in to the voice that tells about something having happened, and it would be to examine very closely this starting point, the very question of something having happened, without the ability to name it, without the ability to say what it was, without any illusion in the writing’s ability to represent the event, that would be a book worth writing.

There is also the sensation of wanting to feel like i am learning to write all over again. It is the worst danger, to write the same way. To succeed in a certain familiarity with figurative processes, whether working from notebooks, or writing, as I did in Tomsk in September, more or less spontaneously, without the meandering river of words that accumulate from one’s reading in one’s notebook, so that the writing becomes terribly disengaged from any self-awareness of how it is coming into being, into the condition of writing, a verbal object. Most writers, of course, do not concern themselves with this, even poets, though such self-awareness of the way the writing takes form is a characteristic of poetics. Perhaps, very simply, I am beginning to write in such a way now that allows me to hear my own language, which I do not hear very often, and towards which I feel more and more mute.

Personally, I also wonder about developing eccentricities on my part, in my daily life, which of course writing also, however obliquely, reflects. More and more I avoid people, as I get more and more in the habit of not talking to anyone except in formal service-delivery contexts, such as the classroom. Nothing leaves me more exhausted than small-talk, aimless conversation, etc. I feel further and further removed from the outside world, insulated almost, and do you know this tendency to self-absorption goes back to my early childhood. I hated playing with other children. They used to make me go outside as a form of punishment (like you, I read very early on, though unlike you, I did not have childhood health problems to use as a defense against being thrown into the faces and voices of other people). What is strange is the survival of this feeling, that I always feel that when someone, anyone, speaks to me, that I am being thrown into their voice and face, and so I feel defenseless. I always talk to people out of politeness, and this politeness exhausts me sometimes. No, it is always exhausting. It is comforting to use a stereotype: people who write are not sociable. Maybe that is true. I know that I do not like being sociable, and I have never been able to tolerate mere sociability, though I tried during the time of my early writing life. As always, if you are not sociable, you are punished severely, for you have to represent your writing in some way, and all writing cultures still make the mistake of associating a personality with the writing.

I have no personality. This seems like a very important thing to say. It is rather like being a chameleon, or something (distant reptile cousin of the crocodile), able to change colors, skins, according to the danger. How do other people represent a danger? Their voices disturb, overwhelm. I always find other people’s voices overwhelming. Like a flood you cannot control. There seems to be a requirement made by most people, a form of demand: they want you to give them something, and I have nothing to give anyone. I have only what little energy I possess to give to writing, and as you know from Kafka’s journals, writing, all writing, whether prose or poetry, is extremely self-obsessive. Even though it has nothing to do with the self. Writing is always about being somewhere else, being someone else. More and more I am never the person writing, however personal my writing sounds, and the poetry has always been extremely private, excavating the private, or rescuing it from meaninglessness. That is my greatest anxiety, that everything that has ever happened to me that I’m aware of had no meaning. None at all. Anything and everything was simply accidental (coincidental). At certain times in my life I have been able to concentrate on writing to such a degree that everything else in the reality of the social world dissolves, and this has tended to make something of a chaos of my life (this word chaos that you were very interested about in Tomsk).

So I write to you on the last day of my holiday, and I don’t think I’ll do anything but read, though reading always sends me to writing, and I have placed a writing table in a corner of my flat that took me sixth months to discover, did you know that corners of flats are like that? You know that I have four rooms, including the kitchen. The writing desk is in none of the four rooms. Somehow, that seems significant. There is a hallway which connects the four rooms, the length of the flat, maybe it is 16 meters long. At the one end is the door to the stairs. At the other end, a recess on which at either side is the door to two rooms, the room where is sleep on the left (to the left of the writing desk) which has a window that faces in the direction of Inflancka Street, a large avenue which is also the old border of the barbed wire of the Jewish ghetto during the war, and to the right, what I have called before the beige room, very nice desk, wardrobe, bookshelf and sofa all the same light color, with a window that faces in the direction of the university, and which also represents the center of the old Jewish ghetto, and in this direction many of the old buildings still stand. What I like about the writing desk is that I can not look out of either window, because of the walls of the recess, so it is a little like writing from a foyer. There is a lamp on the desk, which, at night, or on grey days, throws light against the wall in front of me. There are no pictures on the walls anywhere. I rather like this reductive effect, a kind of purging of extra and trivial details, such as I would like my writing to resemble. If one could write in such a way, when the historical detail did enter, the archival sign, the irreducible atrocity, the very symptom of the collapse of a civilization, for it to have any referential power at all, you have to begin with an erased surface, with a white canvas. With a canvas, a surface, on which there are only gradations, degrees, of whiteness, so that the light has very little to interact with.

You see that I like to think a lot about writing. This to the detriment of other tasks, which, if I do not perform them adequately, can make my life difficult. Teaching is the best example, though even eating from day to day presents a problem sometimes. The greatest difficulty is reminding you of my own difficulty, my own obstinacy, my own fault (if it is a fault) of inability to think about other people. If they are in front of me, and speaking to me, then I try to obey whatever it is that they want from me, and do you know that most people just want to talk about themselves? As if their lives were at all interesting? Worse, most people want to overpower you. It makes me very afraid of others sometimes. Or cautious. You are very funny (with a grain of truth) when you say that which suffering is worse: suffering from your absence or suffering from your presence. Because we do make other people suffer. Often this seems like a negotiation. One cannot finally bear to live entirely alone, and yet I know from my own experience that there is nothing worse than trying to share your life, if there is very little life to share. That is what I mean by having very little personality. Very little presence. Even the thought of taking a walk seems like an exhausting activity, though if you were here we would go for long walks every day. Some writers swear by the act of walking, that it does something to their brains. So maybe there is something of writing in walking. Certainly you see things, very often quite familiar things, that you see in a new way, when walking. But your allusion to your own obstinacy, your own inability to endure the presence of another person, this is encouraging, to me, perhaps as a recognition of just how important is the private life, of keeping to oneself, of having a room to which one can shut the door, and be alone with a book or notebook, and not being obliged (required) to speak, to entertain.

I don’t think that I think enough about writing, and I never feel that I am writing enough, whether I am not writing at all, or whether I am writing all the time. This creates a permanent condition of unhappiness which sometimes approaches misery. I don’t write this for pity, even self-pity. It seems to be a requirement of giving in to writing, of making writing the one important, crucial and necessary activity. For it is extremely difficult to make anything worth reading. I’ll stop here with these somber comments. But I think you agree with most of them. Do you?

It felt very good to call you last night before you fell asleep. This is something I wish I could do more often. It reminds, also, don’t you think, how good it is for there to be someone to say goodnight to?

Which word do you prefer, nice or good? There was an English writer, Dorothy Richardson (you would like her novels very much) who once remarked that the word nice required a twisting of the lips, and it is true if you think about it like a language teacher, which her main character, Miriam, is, at the beginning of a seven or eight novel sequence. When you say nice, your mouth almost bites down, or bites back, in response. There is a meanness in the way the word is formed, compared to a word like good. It would be interesting to explore just how many words in English are like this, simple monosyllable words that disguise great violence. The German philosopher, Theodor Adorno, once wrote about that casual conversation on the train in which one finds oneself an accomplice to murder, and I wonder just how often this occurs in daily conversation in a language that is more and more applied to murder, responsible for such high thresholds of mortality. This is a writer’s thought, hardly scientific. But it is another reason for wanting to write in such a way as would explore words like nice that one simply cannot use any more. More and more there are more and more words in English that someone writing in English cannot use, for fear of the violence they inscribe in their semantic depths. I am surrounded by this violence in the Parrot School textbooks. I have probably never read such linguistically aggressive texts. This disturbs me, troubles me, to say the least. The word nice is written all over those books, manifold.

b

    y

        e

Тема: Familiar woods

Дата: 13 апреля 2004 г. 13:48

dear zhen

do you like this passage from a novel i was reading yesterday?

“Then, early one evening in the middle of September, he decided to go out for a walk. The weather had turned by then, and the air was crisp, infused with the smells of fall. He put on his woolen hunting jacket and tramped up the hill beyond the house, heading north. He figured there was an hour of daylight left, which meant that he could walk for an hour before he had to turn around and start back. Ordinarily, he would have spent that hour shooting baskets, but the change of seasons was in full swing now, and he wanted to have a look at what was happening in the woods: to see the red and yellow leaves, to watch the slant of the setting sun among the birches and maples, to wander in the glow of the pendant colors. So he set off on his little jaunt, with no more on his mind than what he was going to cook for dinner when he got home.

Once he entered the woods, however, he became distracted. Instead of looking at the leaves and migrating birds, he started thinking about his book. Passages he had written earlier that day came rushing back to him, and before he was conscious of what he was doing, he was already composing new sentences in his head, mapping out the work he wanted to do the next morning. He kept on walking, thrashing through the dead leaves and thorny underbrush, talking out loud to himself, chanting the words of his book, paying no attention to where he was. He could have gone on like that for hours, he said, but at a certain point he noticed that he was having trouble seeing. The sun had already set, and because of the thickness of the woods, night was fast coming on. He looked around him, hoping to get his bearings, but nothing was familiar, and he realized that he had never been in this place before. Feeling like an idiot, he turned around and started running in the direction he had come from. He had just a few minutes before everything disappeared, and he knew he would never make it. He had no flashlight, no matches, no food in his pockets. Sleeping outdoors promised to be an unpleasant experience, but he couldn’t think of any alternative. He sat down on a tree stump and started to laugh. He found himself ridiculous, he said, a comic figure of the first rank. Then night fell in earnest, and he couldnt’ see a thing. He waited for a moon to appear, but the sky clouded over instead. He laughed again. He was safe where he was, and freezing his ass off for one night wasn’t going to kill him. So he did what he could to make himself comfortable. He stretched out on the ground, he covered himself haphazardly with some leaves and twigs, and tried to think about his book. Before long, he even managed to fall asleep.

He woke up at dawn, bone-cold and shivering, his clothes wet with dew. The situation didn’t seem so funny anymore. He was in a foul temper, and his muscles ached. He was hungry and disheveled, and the only thing he wanted was to get out of there and find his way home. He took what he thought was the same path he had taken the previous evening, but after he had walked for close to an hour, he began to suspect that he was on the wrong path. He considered turning around and heading back to the place where he had started, but he wasn’t sure he would be able to find it again–and even if he did, it was doubtful he would recognize it. The sky was gloomy that morning, with dense swarms of clouds blocking the sun….”

I quote this as an example of narrative transparency. The passage depends entirely on the expectation that something is going to happen in the plot, so the details are descriptive, functional, and operate on the act of reading as signs along a highway telling us how many kilometers until the next village. It is linear, in the sense of one sentence leading directly to the next, point A to point B to point C to point D, etc. I like though, the playfulness with the metaphor with being lost in the woods, and its complete minimalization, or trivialization, into the domain of the familiar and recognizable experience. This is nothing that couldn’t happen to anybody (except perhaps zhenya?) and the transparency also depends on this familiarity. When writing lyrically, one rarely gets past the smell of leaves, or the gap between yellow and red, not to mention the almost oppressive memory of Dante’s famous wood, selva, and all the poems that even only in English work from this, not to mention also all the forests of European fairy tales. None of that is here of course. For it to be there, the writing would have to become denser, thicker, allusive, and the road signs would disappear. The average reader would become impatient. And the story would eventually begin to dissolve. Neither is there a single word in this passage that stands on its own weight, the effect instead is cumulative, and it is instead of the story–in fact, for there to be a story, the material weight of the words themselves must dissolve. So, is it bad writing? Maybe not so much as bad, as typical. This kind of writing always reminds me of the kind of writing I cannot write. One becomes bored after the second sentence, when writing. Even the fact that the scene stays within the same subjectivity would be a problem, for me. The alternative? Dense writing, allusive writing, the kind of language that keeps asking itself what it is and what it is doing, the kind of writing that is always beginning to come to a stop so to start over again, from another direction.

Just a few thoughts about writing this morning, on my last day of reading before having to go back to work. And you?

  b

 y

e

Тема: Counter-clock

Дата: 14 апреля 2004 г. 11:29

dear zhen

this morning my alarm clock went off and though I could hear it, for a moment I could not find it, as Ihad left the clock in the next room, actually on my writing desk, and for that moment, hearing and responding to the sound waking me from sleep (I had actually awakened about half an hour earlier as the light now is rather strong on clear mornings) without being able to find the source of the sound, I had the experience of someone who is dragged from bed not from the surprise of the sound of the alarm, but the problem of finding it. Don’t you think it would be an innovative idea to invent a mobile alarm, one that hides from its sleepers? One might name such an alarm, Sleepers Keepers (if you know the old children’s game, Finders Keepers). If you find something, it’s yours. In this case, if you find the alarm, you don’t have to get up. The obvious paradox, of course, would be that you are already up, and awake, and conscious, torn from sleep, dragged to attention, thrown into the conscious state, which, as we all know, is the domain of illusion, at the very least, mirrors of power and rhetorics of control, so why wake up at all? Why not let the alarm ring? Why try to find it? There has to be a motive for getting out of bed, so, to circumvent the time-honored tradition of the arm reaching from the bed to turn off the clock, the clock should be able to hide (time should be mobile!) and it’s finder, rewarded with a day off. Now that you are awake there is nothing you should do. Such inventions might constitute a reinvented world, where all the coordinates, though they remain, would point in unexpected directions, and nothing–no social process, such as going to work, for example–would function as expected, though the processes themselves would remain. People have to go to work, don’t they, even if they do nothing once they are there, or the work that they do goes nowhere, has no effect on anything other than the completion of a register recording that the assigned task was completed, on which date and at which time?

How quickly the morning cup of coffee disappears.

How suddenly I find myself thrown into the next day. I would resent this more, if I did not feel the eventual progress of the season (again, the light is spectactular this morning, and it is only a quarter past 7) and the arrival of summer, so?

There is nothing to complain about. Do I sound unhappy? Rather than unhappy, and I don’t think that I am, there is this sensation of not quite caring about this task or that, as regardless of my intervention, everything will proceed as before. There is, in fact, no intervention. Would you say this has been already discovered? No one makes the slightest difference. Not in art, not in history. Innovations are permutations, but the system itself remains unaffected.

Systems, processes. Where are we in all this? Parroting! There is much to be learned from Parrots. More than it is comfortable to realize.

Are you comfortable this morning? Did you notice, recently, a certain (or uncertain) gap between our letters? I can sense sometimes in your writing, the writing itself, beyond the direct response, though I don’t think that you care to be reminded of this. Perhaps it makes you uncomfortable. But that is another paradox: writing depends on the discomfiture of its writer, though, as you know, discomfiture means something somewhat different than discomfort. Why, after all, do we seek to be comforted? Of course, I could only ask this question after 7-8 hours of deep sleep, and waking feeling rested, greeting by the strong light of an early spring morning. That, in itself, is comfort. As is the choice, if I want one, of a second cup of coffee. As is, the fact, which you will enjoy (with irony) that I really don’t have to do anything today until about 15:00 (with the discomforting realization that my 17:00-21:00 parrot classes will exhaust me, and then I will return home, and exhausted, prepare tomorrow’s classes.

So, I have about 6 or 7 free hours today. Soon, by Saturday, I will have some more (free hours). What in the world is a free hour? What is free time? This seems very contradictory to me. The very consciousness of time (which begins as soon as we open our eyes in the morning) is the source of our sharpest oppression. So I think I am writing you this morning a letter against time, or at least, giving it the least attention. Thank you very much for the care and wit of your letters lately. It makes me feel (comforted!) when you are able to give a few moments to writing, and that writing is addressed to me.

bye

Тема: Divine intervention

Дата: 15 апреля 2004 г. 2:50

dear zhen

i am writing you tonight as tomorrow there will be no time, heavy day. tonight i brought home 1300 pl from the parrot school (about 350 dollars and who knows how many euros) and felt, for a moment, the sacrifice of my sanity was worth it. the tone of your letter is perfect, extremely energetic. you are, after all, very energetic, though you contain your energy, always. how do you do this? my energy is going somewhere i do not know where. tomorrow i have too many classes. in the morning class, first morning class, we will discuss Ice T, the rapper, and his killer cop lyrics. in the second class, american culture, we will discuss the shopping mall and its distant ancestor, disneyland. in the third class (linguists!) the recommended topic is: serial killers! then one hour break, and conversation class at the Dunce College. my life is a weird combo now, like a bad soggy sandwich which no doubt you were served many in Alaska. my head feels like a big soggy sandwich. mayonaisse on a croissant with cheap cheese and even cheaper meat, sliced ham or turkey. synthetic, or polyester. does this sound like complaining? if the visa invitation does not go through, do you know what we should do? we should go to cyprus. there, that will make you wish the invitation is not approved. i would like to go to cyprus. i will have enough money. or, i would like to go to capri, benjamin’s and gorky’s old stomping grounds. malta also sounds nice. somewhere where there is sea, a lot of sea. i need the sea. and you? you? you? do not forget that you are not insane. you are one of the most completely uninsane people i have ever met, and yet, you have every good reason for being insane. so, i think, this is a compliment. tomorrow i will act completely sane, though it is (the situation) completely insane. Rap, shopping malls and serial killers, with “Lost on Mount Everest” as the topper, in conversation class. Not to mention, Karen Silverman, of Radiation Secrets Exposure fame (she died mysteriously in the conversation textbook materials, long before Chernobyl). Pray for me to some Wrathful Hebrew Deity.

bye

Тема: My regards

Дата: 16 апреля 2004 г. 10:48

dear zhen

your report of your dacha very painfully (for me) reflects on a metaphor, roof, consciousness, etc., when as you know I am well aware of just how important this place was and is for you, as a center and focus for well-being, even escape. So you must know that I feel terrible about it, for you. I am very sorry this has happened. It gives the sense of violation, more than the theft itself, that something is fundamentally wrong, everywhere, and with everything. Now there is the practical concern for exposure, the potential for damage to the interior, and the problem of immediate repair and the threat of bad weather. Has anything like this happened to any of your neighbors before?

In comparison, it seems trivial to complain about life here, at least today will not be as bad as yesterday. then interlude. Monday I have 5 classes, the first one at 9:00 in the morning and the last one ending at 9 in the evening. Something is wrong about this also, but is nothing that I cannot solve myself. It does not have the frustration of the arbitrary and violent threat of destruction which the theft at your dacha represents. I am worrying for you, about you, how this must make you feel, knowing that you will pretend to find in this event an irony, but there is potential for deeper, emotional damage. I hope none of my words contribute to this feeling (sometimes it is called despair).

Would you smile if I told you this morning the procedures have been reversed? Instead of shower first and then coffee, I am drinking coffee without having showered, so I am writing you in state of unawakedness. I do not know whether it is the shower or the coffee that wakes me up. And what does it mean to be awake, mechanically obedient to the day’s schedule? Well, I am beginning to complain again. Sometimes my words to you sound like so many sighs, as on a long walk uphill. I wish we were walking somewhere today, together.

bye

Тема: Practical words

Дата: 16 апреля 2004 г. 23:51

dear zhen

then I am writing this in the early evening after coming home from the Parrot School and reading your letter. I feel badly for your father and please, remember me to him and say to him that I am very sorry for what has happened, for I have been a visitor there, to this place that he built for his wife and daughter, and I appreciate how beautiful this place is, and how much it must mean to him. Would you please tell your father this? He was once quite kind to me in conversation, saying even that I could speak Russian (maybe this may even become so this summer). May it become so.

Strange words? Shock. I suppose. If I were in Tomsk, I would bring your family a gift. Something for the garden. I feel darker and darker all the time, and such events resonate strangely for me as ominous coincidences. As for theft, it is impossible to inhabit this psychology, though the actual behavior is easy enough to understand. You must feel sometimes that the world around you is growing more and more harsh, and unpredictable. And if I may say so, the defense system is too successful sometimes, when words and angry words, protesting, are good and helpful for the one who is hurting, the one whom someone has hurt.

Especially difficult is the absence of an object at which one may express their anger, frustration, sense of violation. It is wrong to enter someone else’s house. It is a terrible wrong. This, despite the relatively relaxed custom of welcoming strangers, in your part of the world. In the remnants of that village culture. What good are words? What can they do? What can I write that may appease the violation of the very space where you rest, read and dream?

So, I will write something very practical. You need to erect a tarp of canvas or plastic as soon as possible to protect the floor and the walls on the upstairs, or inclement weather will damage your dacha further. This should be done this weekend. It should be possible to buy rolls of strong plastic used in construction, and this can be stapled with a carpenter’s staple gun to protect the building. Your father may be too upset to do this. Do you think you can ask some of your friends to help you, perhaps Sunday?

Why do I write this way? Because when I was a child, I helped to build my family’s house, and I also one worked in construction, building houses during the summer. Let me know what you are able to do to protect the rest of the building.

Тема: Thank you for calling

Дата: 18 апреля 2004 г. 14:19

dear zhenya,

i am hoping you check your email before leaving the office, wanting to write to you only to thank you for the pleasure of hearing your voice, and the reassurance that you are quite alright despite the vandalism of your dacha. Your voice does sound very good to me. I will try to call you next Sunday, availability of phone cards permitting. Now, finish your lecture and go home and get something to eat, then read a good novel, like Kafka or Bulgakov. Don’t you wish there were more? Novels worth reading, I mean, not more of my rather predictable advice.

I miss you

bye

Тема: Re: Thank you for calling

Дата: 19 апреля 2004 г. 0:09

dear Zhenya,

I am writing tonight a short note (we say, dropping a line) as tomorrow I will go to the university early, around 7:00 a.m. for xeroxing before going to Dunce College.

It was a quiet day today, calm, I think from influence of hearing your voice. I read for my own pleasure for awhile, went shopping, returned, prepared conversation classes tomorrow (they are exhausting, as one must have activities planned, since the students do not prepare, so everything must happen according to the moment and their mood, but fortunately, all three classes are the same so I simply have the same class three times) and prepared also for one of my seminars on Tuesday, since I won’t have time tomorrow. My supper was a cold supper, leftover chicken, beets and carrots in marinade. Yesterday I made excellent carrots and onions fried in olive oil with herbs. So, I have eaten well the past two days, and this also, as you know, improves one’s mood and ability to concentrate. Now, at 20:00, all my work is done, and if there is a half-decent movie on tonight, I may watch it (as you also know, my standards are rather low).

The best thing today, other than your call, was the idea which I even made notes towards, for Fall Seminar: Representations of American History in the postwar novel. As I mentioned, for escape, I have been reading novels lately, very many, sometimes almost one a day, about 200-300 pages (I tend to read novels very fast as they present little interest in way of language), and I realized that at the library there are many such novels, which are very good for language teaching, the students like reading them, and it turns out that quite a few address specific historical periods, so I can mix literature with history. The idea was so simply, it bothered me I had not thought of it before. I was too ambitious this year, trying to teach from concepts such as the Vernacular or City Spaces. The trick is to start out simply, and let the students do the work, if they wish. If they don’t want to work, that’s their problem. The greater problem, what will I propose to teach next year, was also solved.

I have no more problems to solves tonight, so I will say goodbye, with also the reminder that it feels very good to be liked by you, dear.

bye

Тема: Before leaving this morning

Дата: 19 апреля 2004 г. 10:28

dear zhen

it is a few minutes after 6:00 this morning, and though I should be reading “Bribes for Tests” for discussion in my 9:00 o’clock class, it is more of a pleasure to write to you, even if there is nothing more than the time allows me to say than that my coffee tastes good this morning. Sometimes that is an important accomplishment. An unusually heavy sleep made it difficult for me to respond to the alarm clock, even though I went to bed before midnight, and lately because of the light I have been waking up between 5:00 and 5:30. Reistance? Not wishing this day to begin? Does it begin when my cup of coffee is empty? When this letter is finished? When I board the bus? I have reconciled myself to leaving the apt. at 6:30. One hour from first stunned reaction: Where am I? Who am I? Why aren’t I sleeping? (Why cannot be said ‘Why am’t I sleeping?). Then shock of shower. Shaving, then stumble to kitchen. Coffee. Than first consciousness. Now I am the person who will work from 9:00 until 21:00 today, with hour long bus from downtown Parrot School to my flat, which means I will get home at 22:00 and still have two hours preparation left for a seminar meeting tomorrow, as the book of essays we are reading from is at the library, which I must remember to get this morning, or I will have nothing to say tomorrow. Yesterday, however, was a pleasant day. Did I tell you that I heard from my friends Dima and Julie in Chita? They are very happy, having moved into a three-room flat. This is a big change, as you know, from two-room flat. Something is amiss. I skipped the intermediary stage. I went from one-room hotel room to three-room flat. Or else, my two-room flat year was in Chita, though I don’t know if in Russia you count the kitchen as one of the rooms. It felt to me like one-room flat. If you sleep and eat and read and watch TV all in the same room, it is a one room flat, yes? At the museum in Chita, there was a show of Stalin-era “homes”: one room, one table, two chairs, one chest of drawers for clothes, forks and knives, not much else. Except for picture of you-know-who. Why am I remembering going to that museum this morning? I think there must be many Russias. At least as many as there are of any other place. I should not try to write on a day when I must teach conversation.

Perhaps you will write to me today so that I will have something pleasant to read when I arrive home tonight?

As for the mysteries of language, in English there is only one letter difference between roof and room but the ending letters _f_ and _m_ make all the difference between the two words. Roof semantically is never ceiling, strange noun that has no root morpheme. Roof is heavy, tonally, and room is lighter. The end of the second word is not so sharp, not so complete closure. The plural of roof is always a problem in English, like hoof of the horse. Roof of the house. Hoof of the horse. But the duration of the vowels, although they look identical, are not the same. Hoof sounds like sound in “enough.” English is a very strange language, don’t you agree?

Тема: still alive

Дата: 20 апреля 2004 г. 10:01

dear zhen

yes, it is true, i am still here, among the living, after yesterday. the evening ended with the bus breaking down at 22:00 and my having to walk the last several kilometers home. The second time this week a bus or a tram has broken down while I have been availing myself of such services as public transport can offer. Twice in one week. I will not read into this any more meaning than the utterly random. Everything is random, isn’t that a consolation? The only patterns are those they sew into the rugs. Everything else is pure coincidence, happenstance, chance. Did you know the difference between the expression of probability and supposition in English? Yesterday in the British Council library I found a newer edition of the grammar/vocabulary textbook you brought with you to Palangas, and it looked like an oasis compared to the Parrot School textbook. According to the Parrot School textbook, Winston Churchill was a round little man with a smile like a little boy. It is absolutely bizarre (as in, absurd) to hear students repeating this. When I am not tired, the hours of this rubbish are simply extra money, but when I am tired, as yesterday, and as this morning, more sinister shadows of thoughts prevail, and for the moment I grow hateful of the language in my head, my verbal impulses and reflexes, no matter how pleasant I try to be, the fact remains that I speak English, and I know who Winston Churchill was. What else is new? I am writing to you by now a familiar lament. No thoughts about eating, today. Did you manage to go to the restaurant? Do you know what the four meanings of _keep_ are? Conserve, maintain, hold and continue. Just in case you were wondering. There are other meanings of other words, in case you are interested. Myself, I am less and less interested. Seriously, English appears to be disappearing before my eyes, and this is a strange phenonomenon for a poet. I will try to write you another few lines this evening, again late in the evening, to assure you I have not fallen beneath a tram as the editor whose name I have already forgotten in the novel I have yet to finish.

bye

Тема: Simple

Дата: 21 апреля 2004 г. 11:33

dear Zhen

We have a saying in English, The simple pleasures of the poor. In Russian, it is probably, The simple pleasures of the still alive. A day off is one such simple pleasure. Today is not exactly a day off. In 12 hours I must go to the Parrot School for a private lesson (one student). Between the three schools, in the last two days I have taught 16 hours plus one hour faculty meeting and two hours office hours. 19 hours in two days, plus about two hours transportation, so let’s say, two 11-hour days. Yesterday the bus breaks down. Here, when the bus breaks down, the doors open and everyone melts into the surrounding streets. In U.S., the bus driver apologizes to the passengers, and calls a back-up bus. It is assumed, I think, that if a passenger gets off the bus while their ticket is still active, and an accident happens, then the bus (the city transport service) is liable to lawsuit. Just one example of the intense legal environment of the U.S. I only notice this by its absence, which is interesting in itself. Here, the idea is probably, When the bus breaks down, your ticket is cancelled. You no longer have a contract with the city. In the U.S. also, teachers are always told in memorandums that their syllabi are legal contracts, and some students have sued colleges for breach of contract if they are not taught what is stated on the syllabus. Now, wouldn’t it be nice if we could sue our students for failure to prepare. That is the great problem here, and one that is tiring for me. Half the students do not read the material, and they are by custom inclined to only listen to the lecture, so I cannot expect students to ask me questions. Instead, the expectation is that I talk, they listen. It is very boring for me, and tiring. And you know, I am bored rather easily. More than the hours, it is the intense boredom that troubles me now, here. Boredom is not a simple pleasure, it is rather complex feeling, one that evolves and develops, and the more often one is bored, the more intense the boredom, and the greater the expanse of boredom. This you call the Dull, yes? Dull Dunces, Dolts, or, more simply, people just struggling to get by. That is the kinder interpretation, and perhaps today, as it is a day off, I feel more kind. Why should anyone want to read anything that they don’t have to? What will I read today? Yesterday on the email list I subscribe to there was very long first-person account of recent battle in Iraq, in Falluja. The fallen world. The news, and it is news, a report, is terrible. This is the first thing I will read this morning, a very warm, wet and green morning. Then I will feel a moment of anger, and then the anger will subside. I will probably feel hungry, and after eating peanut butter and jam on bread, I will no longer feel either hungry or angry. This is a big joke in the Parrot School textbook. First I ask, What do you do when you’re angry? Then, What do you do when you’re hungry? If, in answer to the first question, the student answers, When I’m angry I eat, the teacher is supposed to laugh and then lower the boom: When I HHHHungry I eat! (Cruel laughter with fist hitting against palm of the hand). When I’m angry I shout: Long live the Lancers of Bengal! Long live the Charge of the Lightbrigade! Long live Winston Churchill! God Bless England! God Bless Racing Pigeons! (There is actually page-long description of pigeon-racing tricks the student must memorize). I do not believe I have ever been exposed to such stupidity, or, it is mass psychosis. Onward, the 600 hundred, etc. That was in Crimea. There were Russians there. Last night, in answer to the question, When did soldiers stop using swords in battle (the answer in the textbook was more than 100 years ago, i.e., the Charge of the Light Brigade) one student answered, 1939, and then explained, the Polish cavalry used swords in 1939 against German tanks. You see the implications of such moments. Another question in the textbook is: Is is possible for a man to kill another man with his bare hands? And the answer the student is given in the textbook is: Yes, it is possible for a man to kill another man with his bare hands by putting his hands around his neck and pressing his throat until he is dead. This must be British humor. Or, one gets a glimpse of the Old Guard British Absurd. And there are Parrot Schools all over Poland. Thousands of Polish citizens having to learn English to survive (or fear of survival) learn how to repeat repeat instructions for killing another human being with bare hands. Do not we live in an absurd universe? Can we go to the Kharms theater production this summer? Even if we must go to Moscow? Well, I think it is high time to read about all the people dying in Falluja. Suddenly I do not feel like writing this letter anymore. Sudden absence of energy. The fingers can barely touch the keys. I want to fall over and fall back to sleep. I want to fall down. In this fallen world. Fall will be in September, though I do not know exactly when Fall arrives. Spring arrives on the 21st of March. Winter arrives on the 21st of December. Of course, in Russia, the dates are different. I have still a few dates from Iran left. Perhaps I will eat them this morning. Last night I drank the rest of my Grape juice (the kind we use to buy in the shop in the dacha village). Today I have only water, and coffee and tea, to drink. I almost never drink tea. I never drink more than two cups of coffee a day. This is not humor. Simply the simple pleasures of the poor. You might add, and rather poorly written! So, now, for now, today,

bye

Тема: 19:20

Дата: 21 апреля 2004 г. 18:21

Dear Zhen

Just a note to wish you well this evening. I am reading and resting today. After two hour nap, a phone call from the Parrot School informing me my class tonight had been cancelled. One free day! No doubt, you will say, The luxury life. This morning I read the article on the beseiged city in Iraq, Falluja, and was stricken by the fact that the article is one week old, and I have no idea what has happened in the interval. It is like living in dark house, or at the bottom of the sea. But it is a good sign from the world that I come from that such narratives, first-hand reports, are coming out of the horror of the war. In the book I am reading today, about post-war urban architecture, war is called “celebration of markets.” Do you know that growing up in Tomsk, you have been raised among an architecture vastly different from the space in which I was raised? You do not know what is an inner city, as you do not know the vast interiors of corporate office parks. What an atrium is. How does space contribute to the psychic space we carry with us. I like very much my memories of travelling by marshutka in Tomsk, and walking in minutes with you to vast open fields along the river. The custom of the townspeople in Tomsk of gathering at the side of the river on warm evenings, visiting and drinking. Our walk with Olga the last night I was in Tomsk before returning in September. Do you know that you live in a town? That is what has been destroyed in the U.S. during the course of urban expansion. I wonder how much the architectural space of the modern city contributes to the mental vacuum (abyss) (deep or depthless empty space) (void) where the spectacle of the destruction of others lives appears almost fantasmatically. The processes of social control and totalitarian mapping or urban space are the subjects of the book I am reading today. I hope you have already gone home for the day. I will write to you tomorrow morning. Back to my reading …

bye

Тема: Writing

Дата: 22 апреля 2004 г. 10:37

dear zhen

one thing that does not trouble me, is that i don’t often write to you as someone writing, or is this one more thing that does trouble me? so i write to you from the person, the first person, that someone you know very well, and from time to time that you say you like, and so i write to you as that person whose bus breaks down, whose classes irritate (as your classes irritate) and whose sensibility is disturbed by the text of the English which, in one way or another, is my reason for being here, and i should never forget that i am here only, only, as a teacher of English, not for my writing accomplishments, not for professional associations, not even vacation. it helps me that i do not feel that i am here as a tourist, but neither can i ever say that i am anywhere near being integrated into the place where i live and work. yesterday i wrote to you twice, once before and once after the encounter with the report from only one city in the world where people are being killed. something happened in mid-afternoon. the kind of intense empty space that i know so well from writing. also the effect of rest. the problem is that the convention, like literary convention, dialogue or montage, of writing to you from the person’s daily obstacles, and once in a while genuine small pleasures, does not permit me to write from the person writing. there is that person sometimes. no longer a person. writing has a way of effacing the person. also the trouble of the relation to whatever is understood to be reality, social or political, the world, in other words, which, for writing, can never be generalized into an acceptance of suffering. we accept this generalization every day, of course, simply to be able to function. writing is never about function or being able to function. there was a moment yesterday of pure paralysis. brought to the still point. hand tracing letters over pages, repetitions of sounds, trying to hear, trying to listen to the interiority of the one writing never quite a person. to write, perhaps it means to allow oneself to be the disturbance that interrupts the daily rhythm, which we both experience as a dominant and demand, or at least to follow the disturbance. that is all that i can say about writing this morning, except that i almost never write from the person writing, and as compensation, the other person, that other person who gets up, goes to work, comes home, eats and sleeps, the shadow self, exaggerates what happens in a day, so as not to write about what or what is not happening on the page of writing.

i hope you had a nice visit with Natasha. is she recording a new cd soon?

bye

Тема: Abeyance

Дата: 23 апреля 2004 г. 10:50

dear zhen

low energy morning. it must be the increasingly warm mornings. i would like nothing better than to stay home and read (reading for a course proposal that i have to submit in a couple of weeks). the articles i was going to write about regarding Sokurov are assembled, but i haven’t assembled them yet, to begin reading critically, can i ask one small favor? when does Larissa need the abstract? you begin to see, i am helpless with respect to dates and deadlines. difficult to concentrate on anything than immediate demands. already monday’s more and more dreaded conversation classes at the Dunce College are intruding into my thoughts. it is the familiar problem of having to come up with one’s own teaching materials. the concept of a textbook is entirely unknown here, and this places the stress on the person teaching, while removing from the school any responsibility for providing teaching materials. an old problem, in this corner of the gutted world. that time given to reading, though, with the change in the weather, conducive to floating states, even momentary clouds of contentment. passing moments. i won’t however, extend this to advice, that you should stay home at least one day, just to rest. then, does one rest at home? do you? or is there simply another rhythm parallel to the work rhythm, when what is needed is an entirely new rhythm. there is a word i like in English for this idea: abeyance. i am curious as to what is the Russian translation. There are surprisingly (why it is surprising, i don’t know) few details to report on daily life, or at least none that I’ve noted. as i indicated yesterday, lately it feels like looking at life in passing, and from quite a distance. all the senses there are in the word, removed. i have one consolation, in comparison to the sudden and unexpected demands you mention re translations: my work at least is predictable, and no one asks me to do something other than teach the classes i was given. my mistake was taking too many classes. i hope (against hope!) that i do not have to teach at the parrot school tonight.

today i am going to try to find a phone card, and if i am successful i will call you on Sunday. of course i will write again whether or not there is a card available which permits calls to Russia.

have you heard anything more about the Kharms production? i am curious about tne receptivity among general public of this period (absurdist experiments). is there a website for the theater production?

how long has it been since you have been to the theater? are there any music or other arts festivals to take place in Tomsk this summer? of course, one never knows until rather suddenly. it is what we call, almost idle curiosity. i remember that you do not care to go to the cinema. at least as much as I remember your story of watching Solaris when you were a child. maybe after the experience of such a private cinema (in contrast to commercial ones now) there can be hardly any interest. the cinema for faculty in your childhood would have played a film like Sokurov’s.

my mind is wandering this morning. you can see, i don’t wish to do or be anything except inert.

so, inertly and ineptly, yours

bye

Тема: Good news

Дата: 23 апреля 2004 г. 17:43

dear zhen

not even 13:30 and i am home for the afternoon and for the rest of the day. Parrot School tomorrow for three hours, and the rigamorole does not begin again until monday, another monster day, 5 classes, 19 hours scheduled next week mon-sat at parrot school (190 dollars) and i was clever (sometimes i am clever) i went to british council to check out textbooks to use for dunce college classes and found one CAE and one FCE teacher’s books, and this will help to the end of the semester. Monday i am supposed to be paid at the dunce college, i have no idea how much. i am a bit of a dunce myself. at the british council, looking at list of events, i saw that yesterday and today in Crocow one of my old teachers and a published translator of Zabalotsky was part of a panel at the university there on translation. had i known, i could have cancelled my classes and gone there, though it has been almost 20 years, don’t know what i would say. still, i would have gone had i known. it is a reminder that i am living beneath the sea here, without much awareness of where i am or what is possible. i have a lot of novels related to the course for next year i am going to propose and post-war imaginations of American history, it turns out that there’s quite a lot of material available here at the institute’s library, and most of it writing that i have never read, so i am interested (not bored) at least for a while. actually, it is a very old idea, reflection of historical processes through fictive constructions (i am sure you encountered this when at the university, or in russia, probably high school, reading Tolstoy (it is the way Lenin reads Tolstoy–representation of the peasantry, etc.). Well, i am going to try such an old idea on contemporary fiction, and see what happens. i am at the very least interested in talking about the imagination of history, and not formal properties of novels, as i have no interest in novelistic technique. And, it means a lot of reading. That is all i am going to do until midnight. 

“the light is very bright today”

bye

(until speaking with you sunday)

bye

Тема: Half a letter in twice

Дата: 24 апреля 2004 г. 11:05

dear Zhen,

I was just returned to old times. After writing about half an hour, my email program had a glitch, as we say, and I lost the letter. So, I begin over again. Sometime I will try to explain what I mean by old times. I never forget them. It is why I can never live again in the U.S. though that sounds rather dramatic, without the explanation of what old times means. The challenge is not to fall into nation or even people hatred, and this is intensifying here. I try not to teach anti- anything, but last week one of my classes (fifth-year students) indulged in Stereotype theme for discussion, and this gave them full room for expressing how much they hate Americans. Only one or two of the students had either been to England or America, so the emotion is reflection of many factors, I think. It is not hard to imagine what those factors are, but it is a collision, and the immediate older-generation here for many years was extremely pro-American, and now especially with much of the language about EU integration, there is, in the air, I suppose, a lot of country and people hatred which I have to negotiate. Sometimes it is tempting to participate in it, especially when I remember old times.

But there are new times, as this summer. It helps with the problem of having to find energy to teach at Parrot School (this morning, raining morning, dreamy morning) when I would rather read. With all the obstacles (house-cleaning, shopping, laundry, etc) chances are I won’t be able to return to my reading until mid-afternoon, if not later. Then Sunday, for the most part without demands, except that already the classes for the Dunce College will loom, so that there is not a free day this weekend. The thought of this summer softens this demand, almost daily now, to go to work here and there, and though we can talk about it tomorrow, I want to ask about what you think about my taking a flat in downtown area for between 150-200 dollars, at least for July-August. It will be a very good time to write. Even the thought of the landscape makes me feel dreamy (which is not difficult on such a morning as this).

Well, I am sending you only half of a letter. It is 7:00 and I must leave in an hour for teaching. Would you like to give some time this summer to visiting Novisibirsk? Perhaps going to some galleries and studios there? I remember very well your comment that Novisibirsk was like Moscow, only without the pretentiousness. Again, something to talk about tomorrow. I hope you do not have to work too hard today. Very likely I will return at 1:00 today and do nothing but read.

bye

Тема: Saturday postscript

Дата: 24 апреля 2004 г. 17:09

dear zhen

i hardly think you will be in your office at this time now 13:02 though it is not unimaginable, and i also often forget that your childhood was spent in the flat on the next floor above your office, so it is a different space that my word for it. i am home now and I have about 24 hours of freedom before having to begin worry about Monday. today the bus police checked tickets only minutes after i had punched my second one (and it was a debate raging in my head, whether or not to try to make it to the end of the line, my stop, without punching new ticket worth about 70 cents. If i had not, today, it would have cost me 80 zl. on a morning when i made 90 zl. so you can imagine that i feel quite satisfied that i spent 70 cents to save 30 dollars. i was rather upset when both times the tram and the bus broke down last week i still have several minutes time left on my ticket. one longs for the simple system of russian bus conducteresses or conductresses, i don’t know which is the correct form, as there is no such person in English-speaking countries. What are they in Russian? Attendants? That would be the best word i think in English. So now i am returning to my reading, though low air pressure on this warm rainy day has given me a headache, and without even the pleasure of wine the evening before. like bus ticket, it feels a little like having been cheated. if i have a headache, it should at least be in compensation for wine, not weather. i hope your saturday evening is pleasant, and i will call you about 15:00 your time tomorrow at your office? if this is not a good time, write me when.

kisses

bye

Тема: Diasporics

Дата: 25 апреля 2004 г. 22:02

dear zhen

i am writing you late sunday afternoon when you are asleep of should be. Attached is the article i mentioned. the aspect that concerns me about national patrimony is not the abstraction, ie. to which country the art belongs, but the fact, if you compare this article with that from the writer from novosibirsk, writing about art there, is that with the hardship economy and the difficulty of travel young russian artists are deprived by the international art market of tangible contact and communication with an earlier generation of artists. my article for larissa’s conference is beginning to take shape. get the visa first, you will say. do you know that all day i have been having presentiments (intuitions, which i believe in) that if and whether it might be possible to publish a book of poems in English in Russia (the book about the Russian art appear to be in both Russian and English) so the thought, the idea, that I might contact your neighbor from your youth who works in Moscow and who has met V. Shklovsky and likes Prigov’s poetry, and propose a publishing project, a book of poems about 200-250 pages, in English, which I would pay for, and which would be an experiment of publishing poetry in English in Russia. The idea is based on the low cost of books in Russia. They did this in Paris in the 1920s. That is where James Joyce’s Ulysses was first published. Of course we would have to exchange letters, and I would meet him, with the proposal already stated in writing, did I leave any copies of my book Recent Events at your flat? Well, it is only an idea, but it might be possible for the letter of introduction and the arrangement for a short meeting, lunch, for example, during my flight to Tomsk in late June. Sometimes a lot can be communicated in conversation. these are just thoughts. but there is no reason to think that the summer does not need to be active, you will be translating your fathers textbook, and i will help you as i can, as much as i can, and i will be writing, and designing two new websites. also, if you inquire about the repairs to the Macintosh laptop, could you also inquire about the cost of installing a digital video card into an IBM 600E laptop (your friend who is a computer wizard could probably tell you how much this card, called a video card, costs). Here, in Poland, it would be about 200 dollars, though it should be about half that price. I want to make a series of very short digital video films for a 50 megabyte website for publication in October next year.

Do you know that I think sometimes that you prefer me to have ideas about doing things than talking about how I feel on a given day? Today has been very good. All my coursework reading is done, Turkey Breast is cooking in the oven, I will read tonight, and my course for next year is a solid concept. From here, from across the ocean, I can actually think about American Culture more solidly, concretely, often even without rancor. Or bitterness. Your words about forgetting and forgiving are very beautiful, from an earlier letter. but what are you really writing about? there is so much that we don’t know, about the choices there are to make, perhaps this summer our minds will be as clear as the skies above the Thom River. Really I don’t imagine much beyond long walks along the river with you, Salo and Black Bread and Dark Beer, quiet and calm in a flat in the downtown near your flat so that the two flats will seem connect, close to one another, and I hope we may have dinners sometimes with your mother and father. this summer can be very, very beautiful if we wish it to be so.

Kisses

b y e

Тема: Monday night non-news

Дата: 27 апреля 2004 г. 1:52

dear zhen

thank you for mailing the invitation on such an icy day. it is hard to imagine from here. my thoughts about book etc. are long range, not something about near future, but part of thoughts about russia and part of how glad i am to be able to come to russia again (i know, wait till visa, etc). today i learned i am being payed 41 zlotys for 45 minutes teaching at the dunce college, which means about 1 zloty per hour, so you see i have improved from 1 ruble an hour last september. each class i teach is 82 zlotys, so for one hour and 30 minutes i receive the same pay as 3 hours at the parrot school. today i taught in both places, and earned 100 dollars: 4 and one half hours at dunce college, 4 hours at parrot school. i almost forgot i have two seminars to teach tomorrow morning from university which arranged for my being here in the first place. i am also starting to feel like coming down with a cold. headache, nose, sore throat, etc. too much cold, damp rain lately, and i am too much in it all the time, without umbrella. today the tram broke down again. everyone got off, including woman with baby carriage, then tram started, and everyone jumped back on. would you believe i have nothing else to report, except that i am tired, sneezing and sniffling, and i have to read some more tonight before going to sleep. wednesday morning you may expect a longer letter from me, now it is only monday night. tomorrow i have to go to the university early, and 4 more hours in the evening at the parrot school. i miss you.

bye

Тема: Cold coffee

Дата: 27 апреля 2004 г. 11:02

dear zhen

what would be a morning without coffee and writing you a few words. we say few to mean not many and a few to mean some, little and a little mean the same, though we do not say littler and littlest as it does not sound pleasant to the ear. we say instead fewer and fewest. so, here a a few words, with the Parrot School textbook introduction on the profundity of the difference between few and little. i have a new name for the Parrot School: Obstacle School. you place obstacles (meaningless information) between the student and the language. like, what are tricks for racing pigeons. like, how can a man murder another man. like, how many special verbs are there in English (i have always read of them in language teaching as modal verbs, very interesting aspect of English, hard to think what English would be like (if it could express any emotion at all, or doubt, or hesitation, without modality) but we only make them memorize the 12 special verbs and their 9 functions. or, perhaps there is military genius or total reduction at work. you see i am already preparing for tonights classes. we have another saying, money in the bank. yesterday i lost my good writing pen, a parker fountain pen, breaking one of my few rules, never take good writing pen out of house. i took my writing pen out of my flat, and promptly lost it. this one was almost 8 months old. i liked it very much. i think i will be in mourning for it the rest of this week. yesterday, for more than an hour, it was all i could think about. where is my pen? where is it? where did i leave it? then the tram broke down, and for a moment, there was another problem: how do i get from here to there if i don’t know where i am, here? so you see, my days are full of events. the good news is that it appears i will have three days off at the end of this week: saturday, sunday and monday. i am making a promise to myself to do absolutely nothing for my classes during these three days. no preparation, no grading. perhaps i will write the essay for larissa’s conference. with the article about the 20s art i sent you yesterday, another article about film in a scholarly journal, Slavic Review, and six-eight review type articles (including one long theoretical one) i have enough background sources to complete a summary and perspective, on the theme of art and national identity, with the idea of patrimony floating somewhere in the background. on the one hand, it is almost an intellectual consensus that national identity promotes ethnic antagonism, and you may remember yourself saying that under the old regime in Russia, communism was nationalism. this is absolutely correct (though you don’t need me telling you this). however, there are less abstract ideas (ideals?) involved: very practically, shouldn’t artists working in the country of their language have access to art made in their language, culture and country. Is the West looting Russia, the Middle East, etc? What about so-called progressive Western representations in contemporary films, are these superior to native films? How much influence do filmic and other visual representations have anyway? All of these are rather vague questions, but tolerance (the sense of the limit, bounday, dividing line) is what i wish to write about. is there a deadline for at least the abstract for larisa’s conference? that, also, i could write this weekend. what is truly exciting for me (and i sense it here sometimes) is that we are today in the middle of a collison of cultures, and there are dominant and minority or perceptions of strength/weakness or even reductively, good/bad operating in notions of cultural products, especially in the markets of film and the visual arts. Western perceptions almost always involve some notion of superiority, or modernity, of progressiveness, and whether or not this is true, what is the cost of being blind to the pre-modern, which tends to be forgotten in the accelerated historical processes in Europe and America.

Enough for now. I must to teach. To go to teach, I must. And you? Are teaching today you also? We today teach both too much.

bye

Тема: Our plans

Дата: 27 апреля 2004 г. 18:34

dear zhen

you should be home by now but on the off chance you’re not i’m writing at 14:30 with two hour break before going to Obstacle School formerly known as Parrot School. I received a memo today informing me that i have been appointed to the summer and september examination board, and the dates fit perfectly with our dates, if i recall, for the invitation, June 23 – Sept 20. My presence is requested for the 7-9 of June and the 22 of September. Larisa’s conference is scheduled for Friday, Sept. 17th? Or Saturday, the 18th? Thought you’d be glad to know that so far our planning is well within the range of reason. That sounds like a nice phrase. I wonder what it means. Hope your day went well. Mine is half over.

Тема: Re: Your nb plans

Дата: 28 апреля 2004 г. 12:56

dear zhen

it’s great (did you know that great means large in both the physical and spiritual sense – more tidbits of Parrot School wisdom) to have a practical problem: which notebook for Zhenya. Do you know the best thing about notebook – it will pique/peak your interest in all things computer, which i sense in you a natural proclivity for. It is also inviting place to write notes, diaries, odds & ends, subscribe to mailing lists, communicate with others around the world – mobility, mobility, and speed! All those great(?) western attributes. Now, for practical matters, the Macintosh screen is 14.1 inches (this ibm is 12 something and i think the reduced size is compensated by the lightness of the machine, only 2 kilos. But 15 inches is great for eyes, and for multimedia presentations, even powerpoint and spreadsheets which at least in your job you have need for. What is the difference in price? More important, perhaps, is the megaherz – when i bought my macintosh i could have paid 400 dollars extra for 400 megaherz and bought 233 instead, which is almost minimal speed for multimedia, especially digital video, and costs very much to upgrade. I assume almost all laptops nowadays run at 400-500 megaherz, but it is an important attribute. This is literally the speed of your harddrive. Did I tell you that when i was in the u.s. i bought both hi-speed cable modem and router? this is for networking, so (if and when with your notebook) when we are finally in the same space we can run all three notebooks off a network which affords more protection with built-in firewall than dial-in modems such as you use in your office. This use (and speed of access) opens up the internet and research and communications resource, and yet one that is not limited to a single place (time is another problem). but this is the future. as internet is (the cliche you remember from the IELTS materials). Could you ask your friend about video card for IBM600E? They are necessary for multimedia gaming so i am sure there are plenty in Tomsk as through the rest of the world – wherever there are computers, there are video games. But, more and most seriously, from time to time I follow announcements of conferences, events, at universities in europe and u.s. and the virtual on-line dimension is avant-garde, experimental, in all languages, and it is such a new development, so that a good machine becomes a survival tool for an educated person. If you can think of it this way, as a new direction of life development, then it makes the object more important than most other objects which, as i have rid myself of all the objects that once surrounded me (all those conveniences, even books), the notebook is one object – one modality of processes – that i could not function without, neither as a reader (even of journalism) or writer, or even teacher. and yet the past three years have been something of a discipline period for me, as i only use the internet sparingly, conscious of my limited access, the expense, and the self-observation that i am not quite ready to make full use of on-line resources. I could go on and on …

Malevich: Take the road of world technology, the spontaneity of light …

Now for conference dates, this means I will leave Tomsk on Saturday morning, 18 September. Which of course means that I will take bus to Novosibirsk late night of 17 September. This means I will arrive in Warsaw on Sunday, 19 September. This is important to me as it is the same days that i travelled last September and so good luck. It bothers me that i do not have clear conception of flight from Warsaw to Moscow to Novosibirsk. It should not have to take more than one day, as i do not wish to stay overnight in Moscow. Are Sibirsk airlines still the only airlines that operate out of Dom. airport or does Aeroflot fly to Novosibirsk from there also? I only ask as Dom. airport is much nicer place to wait for 8-12 hours than Sher. airport. You see that I like the minor, minor details about travelling. Actually I become more and more obsessive about them, expecting everything to coordinate as planned with minimal waiting. So you see how inconvenient an airplane accident would be. My last act i am convinced would be, anywhere, to look at my watch. This gesture I have learned from you. Am I a good observer? Zhenya, what time is it? (She knows to the second).

It is time to go home! (That is why one looks at the watch – the end of the lesson has finally arrived!)

So has the end of this letter.

Last word about computers, compare compare compare (not prices but attributes, what is the machine made of … you can find descriptions of different hardware components very easily on the web. So, for example, get list of the hardware features between the two or three machines and compare. They are almost always different. This ibm for example is built very differently that the macintosh. I mentioned before that the Macintosh has much better hardware components, though it is slower, heavier, and only 2 gigabytes compared to the ibms 6 megabytes. neither one is better really than the other, they are only built differently, and so they are for different needs. Also, macintosh has built in and very good video card, unlike the ibm.

missing you

bye 

Тема: Another long day

Дата: 29 апреля 2004 г. 10:46

dear zhen

one of several things i have noticed is that i cannot type on the keyboard with my watch on my right wrist. another is that i no longer drink coffee black, using condensed milk which is available here. many varieties (weights) of smetana are sold, though so far i have avoided the temptation, and use yoghurt instead (though not in my coffee). yoghurt for cooking instead of smetana for health reasons. one imagines that the step towards smetana is irreversible, given its popularity in cooking here. however, by now i am rather addicted to tomato paste, in almost every other dish that i cook. perhaps this is one reason why i do not cook much with rice. today i have only pierogis, unless i want to make egg salad. two items left in fridge, without the time to shop, either today or tomorrow. sounds like a good time to go to the restaurant, though at my favorite restaurant they serve too big of helpings (the two of us could eat a single sandwich) and i am too faltering in my polish to ask for bag to take the rest with me. you see that my life is full of crises. today i should be finished by 11:30 with no parrot school, but there is committee meeting and then semi-obligatory special interest meeting, so i will not be home before 21:00 tonight. i have great plans for the weekend, though i am worried that instead i will read for myself the entire weekend having surrounded myself with quite a few pretentious contemporary novels. i do not think you wish me to write any more about computers, though the samsung sounds impressive. the machine will become something you are doing most of the time, processes instead of an object. it is amazing how much text they can produce. there are a lot of theories that remind me of 19th century pseudo-sciences about neural dimension, the writing into the machine space, i think they ran out of things to think about in france. and of course, whatever france writes and thinks about, america is quick to follow. on the other hand, there is a deep social change. when i was in u.s. the market was pushing for multiple terminals in the family home, on a network, with faster and faster cable connection speeds. no one hardly uses a dial-up modem any more. isn’t this curious. it will be years before 56k connection speeds are supported by the communications infrastructure in russia, when the shift in the past several years has been towards dsl/adsl/cable connections. this makes downloading almost immediate. especially for music and video files. for example, if i want to send a file with recorded sound and video to my web server, on a dial-up model it takes an extremely long time, hence the need for much increased speed of transmission. here, adsl costs about 80 dollars a month, so it is mostly used for business. there are probably other options that i am not aware of. very likely a cable connection would be possible in the building where larissa’s flat is, since the same building, the hostel, has cable tv. i don’t think i need such “connectivity” for the summer, and it would probably distract me from writing, as i would spend most of my time looking for materials on the net. but it is a consideration. you might ask about what kinds of on-line connections are available in tomsk. yes, i am positive, there is not a day when i do not write or even read from my notebook, though without the permanent online connection i have overcome the habit of using online for simple purposes. the greatest problem i have discovered in the past is the surplus of information that one has to find a system for organizing, so that you almost feel like you become a librarian of your own computer. there is another possibility, of course, in experiement with randomness, employing searches in your own archives and files just as you would search on the web, so that the notebook becomes always a space whether textual or graphic of more sources and possibilities than you can comprehend at any given moment, much different than a home library. but it is a library, and that is what is most important for me, that i am surrounded by sources, sourcings, other texts, other voices, and so i move among them wandering through one or another site that i have downloaded or text or book, and i am sure it affects how i approach, or re-approach, my own writing. when, that is, i have time to write. now that is the greatest concern for me. last night i was so tired i could hardly keep my eyes open to make comments on student papers, and began misspelling simple english words. i am reaching threshold of saturation with english. sometimes it appears to me as raised and brittle surface from which the background has been washed away so there are only the braille-like surfaces remaining, without any semantic depth. i don’t want to hear any nouns or verbs, only the sound-rhythm staccato of the particles, though even those are rather rigid in their use and order. have you ever heard of an american fiction writer, E.L. Doctorow? my students in Chita were reading passages from a novel, Ragtime. Here i have been reading a book called World’s Fair, and if you could find it translated into Russian, i think you would enjoy it. the story is about a Jewish family in New York in 1930s, narrated by several voices, rather quiet and humorous. sometimes i am curious about which authors are translated into russian. here, the translation culture is intense, and there is something of an economy to support it. perhaps this weekend i will visit some bookstores. already i am making plans that do not include writing. i see that i have filled up my screen with this letter, so if you do not mind i am going to go to the university and earn my keep. missing you.

bye

Rest day number one

Sat, 1 May 2004 09:11:56 +0200

happy may day zhenya lukyanova at rambler.ru!

yesterday was a day of coincidences which caused you some concern, for which i am very sorry, that you were worried for me (though it is rather nice to be worried about). i wrote you in the morning to your “jewish” address, since you had written that your university account was not working. apparently you did not receive my letter. i left home at 7:00 in the morning and returned at 22:00 in the evening. more and more a typical working day. now i have three days off and a sore throat. i started to lose my voice yesterday, teaching, and for one of the first times, starting experiencing mental blanks where i could not remember what i was talking about. this in the culture classes in the morning, though i had very good class teaching melville story, an early study in urban alienation, called bartleby the scrivener, but which my students read as heroic, they read the character who says to his employer, “i would prefer not to” as protest against work regime, and this felt very polish, or russian, or eastern european (whatever designation one wishes or prefers) and the passivity of the figure was understandable to them. in a meeting the night before my polish colleagues were recalling period of martial law in early 80s when there were only two tv channels – with documentaries on farming and farming methods. this has little to do with melville, though this writer i highly recommend if you can find russian translations.

you do not say, but i imagine, whether wrongly or rightly, that your mother and father, because they are modest and careful (and very gentle) people, may however softly express skepticism about your samsung, and i know that you respect their thoughts. why do i mention this? because i think you should feel rather proud and good about yourself and your decision, that it is a wise use of the money you have earned working so hard and for so many people, much wiser than an automobile. you are one of a very large number of russian intellectuals, though you will immediately deny this, according to your character and your humor, and it is essential to have tools and interface with the global information surface. besides, now you can write to me from your home! i remember very well your recognition and agreement with the text by Oleg Kireev, and he is one of a vast number of russians of your generation (Alexei Shulgin is another to look for work and writings by) who do not conform and who refuse all forms of ignorance – this mentality to me has always signified the russian intellectual, Chaadaev being one of the first. (If these comments seem a bit much to you, I am remembering your mentioning debates about how to control the internet – and this is a debate, though with different terms, everywhere. it is an important space to defend, and defending this space means participating in it. this is what your samsung might mean to you. also, you spend so many hours working at a computer screen, that the experience should be more pleasant, and the machine at which you work should run optimally.

yesterday night coming home on the bus one of my students at the university who is a friend of one of the Parrot School students saw me and spoke to me and since i was in a distant region of the city the subject of my Parrot School came up and she said that her friend said that everyone was talking about the American who made everyone do much more work than their Polish teachers. so there is the accuratne again. i could not tell if it was a positive or negative remark. it was a reminder to me that everything i do i work very hard at, even to the detriment of my own health (sore throat this morning). word of caution: do you know that i am a miserable person to know when i do not feel well. this is a very bad personality flaw. i become extremely irritible. very likely you do as well. i said nothing about your mention of depressive mood lately, though there is a saying “takes one to know one.”

if you call today or tomorrow, i will be home, although i have only one bag of pierogis left and half a jar of yogurt. the stores all appear to be closed. yesterday for the second day i ate in a restaurant and went in to a new restaurant where there was a promocja for gyros for 10 zl (about 3 dollars). i found myself in a very nice restaurant with waiter who served me a large dish of grilled lamb, potatoes, and salad just as you might taste in cypress or greece, but without the pita bread. i thought it was an interesting variation, as it is hard to imagine a gyro without the pita bread. an amusing instance of cultural translation. what is sold for fast food in u.s. for example becomes resemblance to french restaurant in poland. there are very many cafes and restaurants here, and now all the restaurants built outdoor pavillions as in russia for people to eat and drink in the open air.

no more on the warm weather here. i am as sorry for the recent snow as for your worries on my behalf yesterday. always here, and always, yours, bye

p.s. this email should have at the end a “signature” with my km@hypobololemaioi.com address which, come to think of it, i don’t really need, as all i have to do is write the address as in the line above, but, anyway, since i know you like to answer my emails directly, please answer to this address. for some reason i cannot send emails to you from this address, though i can receive them. okay? thanks. (in polish they say djenki which sounds a little like drastvi (the same abbreviation logic – russian and polish are so close)

Second rest day

Sun, 2 May 2004 08:42:17 +0200

dear zhen

have you noticed when with cold, the mornings are the worst? congestion, cough, the cough progressing deeper into the chest, discovery yesterday that the heat has been turned off, and a moment of anger, what kind of system is this where people cannot control the temperature of their own living spaces? yet i cannot bear to bring myself to wearing sweaters. it is another overcast day after bright sunny day yesterday. i should have done my laundry yesterday.

read late into the night last night after afternoon repeated cups of tea, lemon and honey with, surprisingly, very little brandy, enough to put me to sleep until early evening. it is almost like a poem, falling asleep at an unaccustomed time, as this morning and yesterday morning i have awakened to the 5:30 alarm and turned it off and turned back to sleep until 8:00 when usually I am up and at the university if it is monday or tuesday or thursday or friday or saturday. wednesdays are for reading and preparation, so i get up early then too. i keep reminding myself that this is only temporary, though rather typical of most periods of my life – work, working, worked.

there is very beautiful music on the classical station this morning. i have a small battery radio which fits in one’s pocket, and it sounds rather nice connected to desk speakers. there have been many live concerts the past two nights to celebrate EU entry. as for other news i am not a reliable source, though several of my students went to anti-globalization mobilization in Warsaw Friday and Saturday. I hope for their sake and for the general sake (what is sake? suddenly the word appears rather strange) that the demonstrations were democratic without violence. there is from the solidarity movement years a strong memory of democratic rights and their expression here, and what happened in genoa several years ago did you follow the news around that event?

there was developing a form of theater or performance of confrontation in addition to random groupings with property destruction tendencies (this happened in seattle also) which i feel rather opposed to viscerally, more than merely on principle. historical memory. fascists like to destroy property, especially small businesses and public property. it seemed to me at the time that a kind of fascistic embryo was in evidence, and actually being cheered on by observing intellectuals from their remote terminals, though at the embryo stage fascism never calls itself that, rather it appears under a progressive or anti-capitalism sign. these are complex dynamics and too much for my cough and congested head this morning. but i have some confidence in the historical experience of this country which, according to even those among my colleague who are harshly anti-american, the u.s. was then always looked to as something like a spiritual mentor (there is even a figure from Polish history who participated in the American Revolution). now, with the war in iraq, much of this credibility, or worse, is being lost, and perhaps this is a good thing. sometimes my students are surprised at the criticisms of american culture in the texts i teach, whether social discourse or from american literature (the american writers beginning in the mid-19th century are very much formed in opposition to the commercial culture). but this thought began with a thought for hoping that the demonstrations went as planned, if they were organized, and that none of my students had a bad time of it. there are always riot police, though they do not look as forbidding as in England and U.S.

please remember to write me at km@hypobololemaioi.com as this is really your mailbox, and i like checking it for a letter from you several times a day without having to harvest the spam etc. of the other more public mailbox. i am glad you did not think i sounded too badly yesterday, perhaps my cold is more imagined that real, though it is difficult to imagine a cough as it migrates into the chest. have you any folk remedies? i don’t care to take cold pills. there are compounds i am aware of that can be put on the chest, or breathing solutions for clearing congestion. cayenne pepper perhaps, as you remember i have a fondness for these.

bye

Re: thank you for calling

Sun, 2 May 2004 09:17:10 +0200

dear zhen, just a note before i forget. it is important to distinguish between the msword program and the computer itself, for example the auto-correct function in msword can be changed under the options tag in the tools column of the msword (i use a very simplified form of msword 2000 without all the visual basic program which is buggy and which you may be able to turn off, or at least some of its functions. the general rule is that the more shortcuts and invisible processes a software program has, the more little warnings are produced – extemely annoying and unnecessay.

microsoft in gneral does not allow very much access to the computer processes itself, so i am not sure what can be controlled through it. i have always more difficulty understanding all the files (and there are many invisible files automatically generated) compared to either macintosh or linux. this summer i will encourage you to run a small linux program (it is very easy to install on intel/ibm architectures). the tree system is very simple to see and conceptualize, and gives the user more access to the machine itself. even though i use microsoft (outlook express example, for convenience) it is the linux system which does not make me feel helpless or that i am being used by the machine processes.

you might consult with your computer friends about how to minimize warning messages. one notorious one from microsoft is: this machine has performed an illegal function and will be immediately shut down. one nice thing about microsoft though, when you delete (if you delete) you can always restore the files unless you clean out your trash. with 40 gigs, there really isn’t any need to do this. what i like least about microsoft is that it’s rather difficult to work from several screens, so i cannot read and write at the same time, one screen closes as soon as you start working from another. this is another virtue of linux, you can operate multiple functions simultaneously, as well as create different spaces (different identities) for different kinds of writing and thinking, all of which you have access to as the root user. microsoft has none of this. because it does not operate on the design of a tree, though you can use a tree is you know DOS which hardly anyone does anymore, and which i have always found harder to learn than basic unix/linux commands. there is much more documentation on these latter commands. you will find very many sites in Russian about linux, and i remember seeing books about linux in bookstores in Tomsk, in Russian. this approach to the computer looks difficult, but it is comparatively more simple than the invisible architecture of the folder-icon system microsoft developed from early graphic interfaces of apple computer in mid-90s. by now all the linux systems have very nice GUIs (graphic user interface, i.e. the folder-icon system) that respond (were designed for) computers that have the speed and memory capacity of your samsung. linux is simply a faster and cleaner system and does not fill your computer with junk the way microsoft does. it is also fairly virus free. (not susceptible to viruses, though it is susceptible to hacking). but i am not an authority, only that i’ve used macintosh, ibm and linux programs on both and there is a very strong difference, and positive difference. as i said, the advantage of linux is that it empowers the user, whereas microsoft makes the user feel stupid or powerless.

i was amused at your telling about staying up until 2:00 a.m. working with the computer. i have sometimes stayed up all night with a web page, or trying to figure something out (successfully sometimes, more often than not, unsuccessfully). it is an interface with processes for text, graphic, sound and image for which there are multiple solutions for multiple problems. the author becomes the producer. i am certain that my relation to language is changed by the keyboard than with writing by pen. so there is a different relation to the inner voice of the one writing. for your translation work, the machine can simply do a lot of your work for you, if you let it.

bye

bye

3 мая 2004 г. 11:25

Third rest day

dear zhen

so begins the third morning. i slept in only for an hour this morning. congestion worse, though my cough seems to be abating, not so deep in the chest. i am miserable when i cannot read, and it is impossible to read, to concentrate, and i am tired of lying down. yesterday i watched a tennis game and a basketball game (women’s league between team in Poznan and Lotos, wherever that is). there were two african-americans on the one polish team, and i was curious as to whether there is possibility for travel for foreign athletes, or whether, if it was a professional team, these players had emigrated to poland. Venus beat Svyetlana in tennis. Then a mindless comedy which did, however, have one of two moments when there was an alligator. then i fell asleep, hardly even 9:00 p.m. i was able to finish a novel in the afternoon, but that kind of reading is almost as bad as no reading at all, barely able to remember or notice the difference from one chapter to the next. usually i read, especially novels, as a kind of physical exercise with language, listening to the language, and i can’t listen when i feel this way. please pardon my complaining. the fish was a catastrophe. though i recommend the scales of the fish for tiles on your dacha’s roof. 30 minutes to scale fish, 15 minutes to fry fish, and 5 minutes to taste fish and realize the fish flesh was mushy, and full of bones and bone-like bits and pieces. maybe it was a sea bass. i have sometimes have them in restaurants before, oven roasted, and they are de-boned at the table, but never fried. i am still picking up scales from the floors and walls. salmon, only salmon from now on. today’s menu is very simple: oven-baked turkey breast with fried eggplant. if i feel better this afternnon i will buy some wine to go with it. that will be the highlight of today, i’m afraid. it is very boring to lie down and wait for oneself to feel better while watching time pass. i feel cheated of my three-day vacation. i was very suspicious on the buses the last two weeks when i heard so many people coughing, and i think that is where i was exposed. contaminated. what you say about travelling sounds true, at least according to my experience. the outside is very solid, like a wall, though the advantage is that you can perceive this outside where in the native language and environment, even though this outside is there, it passes unnoticed. i think travelling has made me more alert and perceptive, and certainly more hesitant, cautious. there is the paradox of sameness and difference. so many things appear to be different, the very spaces people live in, how they move from one place to the next, by bus or tram, movement in stores, shopping, milling, etc., and yet the difference often appears rather superficial. there are greater contrasts sometimes within a country than without it. for me the greatest difference is neither language nor culture, but very personally the living arrangements. both in russia and here in poland the university provides living quarters and this is not done in the u.s. there is very severe boundary between living space and work space there. maybe we have talked about this before. another year or two away from there and when i might return, i am sure to be overwhelmed by the pace and weight and movement of the average large city, the loudness. these are all very subjective comments as you know. i enjoy very much your recent long letters written from home, they remind me of our conversations during long walks. i hesitate to mention this as i do not wish you to feel that i am expecting long letters. but they are very nice to read. i feel absolutely empty this morning, congested, or conjugated, as the case may be, maybe i will go in search of a black radish. these are grown in gardens, yes? i only see the small red ones here. the process makes sense though, using sugar to make a medicinal syrup from a radish. ginger root is also used for this. i need to take greater interest in these things. most of the time i am quite healthy, but the few times i fall ill, it reminds me that i do not like to be ill at all. actually, as i mentioned, i don’t feel at all well, and felt much better at the time of palangas. stress, certainly, is a factor, and more than rest, i feel like a need a regime of exercise, diet, warm weather, and sleep. i am too sedentary here, and the accuratnost tendency does not help. also, i am very tired of eating by myself. but i promise, no fried fish this summer, especially of such fish with scales like shingles.

you know that i miss you, though very likely you would not enjoy my presence or company under the conditions of the past few days, so it is a good thing we are separated by belarus when i am not feeling well

tomorrow i will try to find the post office that has my invitation

bye

km@hypobololemaioi.com

4 мая 2004 г. 2:07

Re: from you

am just now reading your letters from earlier today, it is 22:00 and i am wishing i was tired enough to go to sleep. this afternoon i felt somewhat better, and took your advice about the onion peels. we will see about tomorrow. below is the letter sent to jmail on friday. tomorrow will be a rush, as i will probably stay up late not wishing to end my last day off, but i will try to write you a short note good morning. i am worried about busy schedule tomorrow, there is a guest speaker at 14:00 at the university (which i am more or less expected to attend) and then parrot school at 17:00. so i won’t be able to go to the post office until wednesday.

bye

—– Original Message —–

From: “Kevin Magee” <magee@uni.lodz.pl>

To: “женя” <zhen@jmail.ru>

Sent: Friday, April 30, 2004 7:10 AM

Subject: Re: from You

> dear zhen

>

> and you say nothing about the difference between the old and new computer. what is the difference? the screens should feel smoother, and moving among folders, etc. keyboard? the keyboard on my ibm is very different from the macintosh, etc., etc. i know the feeling of being tired. i should have cancelled my classes today. everyone else did. the famous, fabulous May 1 holiday. brought to you from the labor movement of U.S. what was that? it disappeared. what else is new. i have a sore throat. worse in the mornings, but i am afraid of coming down with a long-term cold, headaches, chills, sore throat, many people are coughing. the spring is wet, and cold. i turned my heaters off then had to turn them back on again. i am still wearing a sweater. this weekend i should like to sleep. it would be very nice to hear your voice. i am sorry about taxes, were they unexpected? i have two classes this morning and two classes this evening and five hours in between and i live too far from either school to come home and rest. do you detect a note of bitterness? the british council library is open until 15:00 but it is a strange place, the jewish ghetto museum is next to it. i am not generally susceptible to coincidences. i should like to read and read. about nothing in particular. about everything. we say, everything and nothing. do you know that it means something different from, all or nothing? how can the difference between everything and all (they are the same) change the meaning of a phrase. this is the genius of language, any language. sometimes i am glad that i write. yesterday i ate in a restaurant penne with salmon in cream sauce with glass of red wine. the sun was very bright in the windows, the street outside, busy with passersby, the music contemporary jazz, and for a moment i did not wish to ever live anywhere else. i was in my fantasy of europe. (you will have great fun with this admission). then i went to meeting and the topic was, zbigniew libera, who works with holocaust themes (he builds leggo replicas, leggos are a children’s toy). it was very strange when my colleagues began trying to remember when leggos first entered the stores here. it is a u.s.a. toy. do not you think it is, well, interesting? to build concentration camp models with u.s.a. toys? something was going on in that idea, and the memory of my lunch in the cafe was, rather, ruined. it must be the architecture.

>

> bye

4 мая 2004 г. 11:14

Tuesday morning rush

dear zhen

don’t holidays seem to make life more complicated? even with cold, i am glad about having yesterday off, as it saved me from 5 classes. a significant holiday. my morning class is small to begin with, and 5th year students at that, entirely unmotivated, so whether or not they come today will make little difference. i tried to rest as much as yesterday, finished all my unfinished novels (not that many) and felt towards late evening something like fever breaking, though i wasn’t aware that i had a fever. however i feel significantly better this morning, no cough or sore throat. so, i will try to complete the day. the worst is energy, as i simply wish to lie down, period. and today, as yesterday, and the day before, it is difficult to connect one thought to the next. the postoffice is not far from here, though the one with my invitation is a postoffice i have never been to before, so very likely i won’t have time today to try to find it, and so tomorrow will be the big day. i still have to get blood test for the visa application, so it is likely that i won’t go to warsaw to the russian consulate until middle of the month. it is a two-week application, so there is plenty of time. the problem is that is need the passport for buying airplane tickets, so i cannot wait too long. you see i must be feeling better, as i am already beginning to worry.

bye

4 мая 2004 г. 20:26

Invitation success

dear zhen

it is past your work time but not past your bed time so i thought i might write you a few words in the hope that you will check your email before going to sleep.

i have it, the invitation. i have not read your letter yet, just getting home. i took your advice and cancelled my parrot school classes so i can rest tonight, though i didn’t like all the trouble i had to take to find substitutes. the experience confirms me that i don’t wish to teach in this place after this month. it is a headache not worth the extra money.

the walk through a park to get to the post office where the invitation was gave me the thought that my cold is really an attack of hay fever. the pollen everywhere, and enormous tufts on trees not quite as severe as the poplars in tomsk but similar, so it is strange ecology for my system, and even though i have never suffered from hay fever in u.s. all the pollen here may be what is giving me such a hard time. suddenly everything and everywhere is intense green and bursting.

thank you for your picture. it makes me wish to kiss you. may i? soon?

bye

(tomorrow i go for my blood test so maybe next wednesday i will go to warsaw)

Тема: From school of simple ideas

Дата: 5 мая 2004 г. 11:42

dear zhen

i am writing to you at your university address as it is in the middle of your work day and this is the address you wrote to me from this morning. you see how your new notebook has altered our rhythm of communication. after your work hours, you may expect me to send to you messages at the rambler.ru address, and during the workday, here, for as long as it is working. i seem to remember your mentioning that you can access your university account from home, is this true? i know that i can here. for example, when i write to you from uni.lodz.pl i am writing to you from home, only using the university server to send the message to you. in your accounts tag under the tools in your outlook express you can configure this, if you have not already.

i have not been up as we say, to the toilet and to make coffee, for more than 10 minutes, and already i am sneezing and it is not gentle or casual pressure from my respiratory system to free itself of microbes (most likely pollen). this morning after parrot school lesson (10:15-12:15) i will go to the supermarket and buy some pills for this, if there are some. i notice on tv many commercials for the pollen effect. what is strange is that i have never suffered from this before, unless perhaps the first year that i moved to iowa in the midwest, and in the spring there is notorious hay fever time. still, the sore throat and the cough that developed friday followed all the classical symptom signs of bad cold, so i do not know what it is that i am trying to recover from, except that i slept well last night, and felt rather good upon waking. this was true yesterday morning also, and then by the time i arrived at the university and tried to talk for an hour, i felt like i was losing my voice, and coughing, coughing.

today i have to teach 4 hours at the parrot school, but the classes are divided between morning and evening, so my voice should work okay. tomorrow morning i do not have classes until 10:00 so i will get my blood test for visa done tomorrow at clinic next to the university. the price is 17 zl. about 5 dollars. in u.s. the same test is 50 dollars.

yesterday there was a guest lecture from university professor in American Studies currently on a fullbright from a university in California. then there was a presentation for our faculty later in the afternoon. i attended and participated in both, pleased to see through the superficiality of this professor’s ideas, and pleased as well to be reminded how, for the most part, u.s. university professors are competently specialized, but generally parochial and ignorant. his presentation was on the frontier, and concept of the west in the u.s., and he used a largely discredited early figure from writings about the west and the west as shaping influence on the american national character to criticize Walt Disney Land packaging of the west as entertainment. his big ideas were the importance of geographical place, the local and particular, and writing about what you can see and hear. very anti-theoretical/speculative. the writers he referred to, Joan Didion, Garrison Keilor, William Stafford, Russell Banks, all of them i regard as idiots, or worse than idiots. If one were suspicious, as i am from time to time, it is possible to glimpse the new academicism in the u.s. as one of a return to regionalism and away from the horror of the contemporary, saying something such as gosh, you know, that’s really terrible, what’s happening over there, in that war, but i can’t know anything about it except from my study of Dimebox, Texas. we’re all basically alike, aren’t we?

this professor represented the Nice Simple Folk school of culture in the u.s., terribly sorry about the recent invasions, and unable to do anything about it. this is nostalgia, which is very deadly. Van Wyck Brooks, F.O. Matthiesen, Leo Marx – part of a pantheon of Americanists who wrote in such glowing terms about that certain uncertain country. now when i hear such talk, i am very glad to have escaped a world i was once uncomfortable close to, intellectually.

speaking of one’s mind, i have been upright for 30 minutes now, and already my head is beginning to gel with congestion, discomfort, pressure, irritation. i think i am going to go cook some onion peels.

i am looking forward to a letter from you this afternoon. thank you again for your picture. i know you do not like images of you, but it is pleasant for me to see the candor in your face.

bye

km@hypobololemaioi.com

Тема: Travel plan preliminaries

Дата: 6 мая 2004 г. 2:35

dear zhen

just a quick note before going to bed. tomorrow will be hectic in the morning, but i should be able to write you in the early to late afternoon, so check your rambler.ru in the evening, dear.

now, for a favor, yet another. i did a preliminary glance at airfare prices Warsaw to Novosibirsk and the news is glum: about 500 usd for roundtrip ticket by LOT Polish Airline from Warsaw to Moscow and add another 200 usd for Aeroflot from Moscow to Novosibirsk each way and the total is about 900 usd. This is about the same for roundtrip ticket via Aeroflot from Moscow to Novosibirsk: 882 usd.

I would prefer to fly Aeroflot from Warsaw to Novosibirsk, as this would qualify me for international travel and better luggage restrictions. At your leisure, could you inquire at the travel agent where we consulted before about any other possible options? The dates are quite close, as I need to be here in Lodz by the 22 of September at the latest to sit for exams. My preferred dates of travel are leaving on the 23rd of June and leaving Novosibirsk on the 18th of September.

Does 440 usd sound like a lot to you for each way? The expense seems to be from Warsaw to Moscow. Do you remember if my invitation said I had to fly in to Moscow? Would another airport be an option, as in Samara? Or St. Petersburg (I doubt if that’s cheaper). Obviously I would prefer Moscow, as it’s like a routine by now. But, I don’t know, really. I won’t save money by taking a train to Moscow on the way there unless I take a train from Moscow to Warsaw on the way back, and the dates between Larissa’s conference and the 22 of September don’t seem to permit that.

Any ideas?

bye

km@hypobololemaioi.com

Тема: One small wish

Дата: 7 мая 2004 г. 11:56

dear zhen

there is still one email from you yesterday that i have not yet read. the subject heading is in russian and there is an attachment. did you send this? there is always possibility of what is called a spoof and it is a popular game among people who communicate a lot online in the u.s. you send somebody an email with the identity of someone who have before sent you email. there are other tricks, but they always bore me to think too much about. i only ask since you usually you tell me if you are sending me an attachment, or if you have forgotten to attach a document. do you need help with recent translations?

today is as grey and rainy as yesterday was full of sunlight and falling blossoms. i have not bothered to buy an umbrella as my umbrellas tend to suffer the same fate as my fountain pens. today i have two classes in the morning at the university, and one class at 17:00 at the parrot school. all classes are over at the university by May 28 then one week of exams, then i am free. i will also stop teaching at the dunce college after the first week of june, and i will stop teaching at the parrot school at the end of may. so, i will have two weeks of rest and reading and sleeping before making easy trip by bus directly to warsaw airport, and flying (more or less) directly to novosibirsk. i was kind of me to suggest that i can find my way to tomsk from novosibirsk, but the unkind (selfish) part of me (very significant part, i am afraid) wishes that you might meet me. it is against all odds that you will have to sit on the floor of the van once again, but i do not think you will let me forget this. besides, the trip to tomsk with you is (was) quite lovely, and this is what i wish for most of all. but these are only wishes, and wishes may be modified by the counter-wishes of the one the one wishing is wishing for.

you will say: get your visa first. i am not confident by nature, but i am more confident actually than last september. i am rather more worried about the paperwork for my work-residency here next year, wondering what regulations have changed with entrance into e.u. especially for foreigners from the u.s. i will not know about these changes until i begin the new paperwork process, which i will do before leaving for russia.

these morning letters sound too perfunctory to my mind, as you may imagine that i am rather restricted by the thought of the day’s demands, and sometimes even a little tired. yesterday afternoon i indulged in a long afternoon nap, waking at nightfall, and then of course had trouble falling asleep until around 2 or 3 a.m. and so, up at 6:30 i both feel rested and unrested, though i don’t think i can say unrested. unrest is a noun, but it won’t turn into a verb. without rest? oh yes, restless. no, that means something slightly different. though most of the times un- and -less and without mean the same thing to the word they are attached to. i am trying to say that i feel tired, or maybe i am too tired to say. we can have tiredness but not tiredless. it has to be tireless. there is no such thing as untired. but you can say untiring. yes, it is a maddening language?

missing you

bye

km@hypobololemaioi.com

Тема: Warmer?

Дата: 7 мая 2004 г. 15:51

dear zhen

i am home before noon as it is a beautiful day again and there was a student festival so my second class pleaded to be allowed to enjoy their youth and spring, how could i refuse? No! we must study effects of advertising in u.s.! so i came home. your “no attachments’ reminds me of many select swear words for the sender of the prank email, but it is boring – that is the best word – to dwell on, though a reminder always that the email traffic is – how shall we say – watched in passing? monitored? observed? again, it is not worth dwelling on. there is well-advanced hacker culture (subculture) in u.s. and they resemble (are soul cousins) of the faces of the u.s. soldier-torturers lately in the news. for your sake of evenness, though, i will not make comparison to u.s. in general, though if one is an american, the very first thing they must do is apologize for being one. enough of this though, you will think i am angry.

now, i hope you do not view my requests for help as immediate. i am going to go to the russian consulate on wednesday, so by monday if you could look at the russian consulate website in poland and let me know what they require. i found a phone card today so i will call you on sunday. maybe we can talk about it then. i am going to read for a few hours, then go to parrot school. i think your advice about tourist agency is a good one, and i will try to find one either in lodz or warsaw. it is probably not the best idea to go directly to aeroflot office in the warsaw airport (assuming there is one). i only asked if you could consult the travel agency we have used in the past for comparison of prices, but it is not an urgent demand. obviously, i wont buy tickets until end of may or first week of june.

wishing you a nice May afternoon of warm(er?) weather …

bye

Тема: Russian consulate in Warsaw

Дата: 9 мая 2004 г. 16:47

dear zhen

as there is not an information page in english at the russian consulate website, i would like to ask you again if you have the time today or tomorrow to consult the following url

http://www.poland.mid.ru

so that we may review together (tomorrow when i call?) all the items i should take with me to the consulate wednesday, such as

1) price of visa in zlotys (pl) and whether there is choice of one week or two week processing (i will chose the one week if it is not much more expensive)

2) how many photographs and what size

3) does the Migration Card need to be completed at the embassy or when i arrive in russia? (in sept i filled it out in the airport)

4) how many copies of visa applications (i have downloaded this and can complete it this weekend)

5) my passport and any other documents?

6) and anything else?

you may imagine that i am concerned about getting to warsaw and needing some document or other that i have left in lodz. do not worry about the work arrangements for next year in poland.

i hope you are having not too bad of a day. it is cold here suddenly, and again i did not feel well, feverish, chills, congested, etc.

my mood and my voice will be better tomorrow than last Sunday, however. i promise.

bye

11/05/2004  dear zhen

now it is my turn to write a hibye. not exactly a felicitous neologism, but effective and to the point. i am up later than usual this morning, falling asleep exhausted last night, what would i have done had i had to teach the other two classes? now, this morning at university, several hours break in the afternoon, then four hours at the parrot school. you are getting tired of hearing about this routine.

it is difficult to say what is the danger level here in Lodz or elsewhere in Poland. always, my comparison is to the U.S. and i see and hear far less violence here, and i never hear gunfire, which is not an uncommon sound in cities in the U.S. the news alwasy exaggerates, though hooliganism is a problem everywhere in Europe, even in Moscow. there are some (not many, but some is too many) anti-semitic slogans on walls here, or stars of david superimposed with a cross. that memory has not gone away, nor has its causes: resentment and the need for a scapegoat. if anything, after recent deaths of Poles in Iraq, i feel in danger because i am american, so i feel uncomfortable speaking english in public, which happens sometimes when i meet a student on the bus or tram. as soon as i start speaking english, i feel like a potential target, and this may be a rational or irrational fear.

today i have to teach two specimens of literature, and i feel so far away from literature at the moment, i haven’t the slightest idea what i will say. improvisation i am able to do, but it is like a performance without context, or rewards. more complaints …

i hope you are able to contact the russian consulate in warsaw today. the latest flight price for aeroflot from warsaw to novosibirsk is 551 usd, so maybe it will be easier than we think.

missing you

bye

km@hypobololemaioi.com

Тема: Re: you may laugh at me

Дата: 15 мая 2004 г. 19:27

dear zhen

to remember is that you are spending the money so you should get what you pay for. unfortunately, there are not odometers on computers, but you can tell if it is used by what’s on the hard drive, but you would have to go into DOS for that, maybe. it wont show on the MSWord loaded onto it. you should be extremely careful when cleaning the screen, laptop screens are more sensitive than PCs. enough advice. i can’t believe that they sell many laptops in tomsk, so maybe that is also the problem.

my day if finished and i feel like saying daragoya, ya domy, only you arent here for me to say it to.

it was an easy day, actually, well worth the 60 dollars. but i don’t feel like i am stealing the money yet as i work very hard, even when there are only two students (for the second class – cold and wind and rain today). i will go out later and buy the groceries i should have bought yesterday. they sell tasty pre-cooked salmon here, quite expensive, but i think i don’t feel like cooking. tonight, reading, and if there’s anything on tv, i’ll probably watch it. lately there’s been a lot of corny westerns from cold war period – allegories of u.s. against communism, which was the old evil, before terrorism.

are you fighting evil today? tomorrow? that’s what they do in america. everyday. all the citizens. because they alone on the earth know the difference. (don’t laugh – most americans really think they know what it is). that’s one thing i really like about being a foreigner. more and more i don’t know what anything is, or what for. sunday, i do know, is a day of rest.

bye

Тема: Done, Fin, Konec

Дата: 18 мая 2004 г. 18:21

dear zhen

i have been to the authorities and they were very efficient. Most of my

time was consumed walking there and back from the Warsaw train station. It was a good thing that I completed the long form from the NY website as that is the form they began to give me, in a terribly carbon-smudged form, but I had my own already filled out. The visa they said will be ready by the 26th of May though I won’t be able to pick it up until the 31st. I think I shall spend that day in Warsaw. The avenue where the

Russian Consulate is was splendid, botanical gardens, and the

Contemporary Museum of Art nearby. Everything went very well. If there

is any problem, it will be my medical insurance, as I have insurance

here in Poland, but I doubt that it covers me in Russia. Still, the

form is official, with my photograph, and administrative stamps, so it

may pass, if the insurance is questioned at all. Let’s hope for the

best. I miss your long rambles in English when you had the computer at

home.

and i miss you in other ways as well as you well know

bye

Тема: Re: Gazprombank

Дата: 19 мая 2004 г. 16:41

dear zhen,

i found the agreement i signed when i opened the account at the Gazprombank in Tomsk, though i cannot find an account number, and this is what i would need were i to transfer money from my account here to this account. Do you have any ideas, suggestions?

Walking home just now from a lesson at the Parrot School I realized that i did not fall asleep early last night from nervous exhaustion, but physical exhaustion, as i could hardly put one foot in front of another, and I was too tired to go to the Passport Office for my work permit application for next year. I will try to do it tomorrow or Friday. Apparently, 4 kilometers each way is too much for me to walk in a single morning. Suddenly I feel a little older than it is comfortable to feel, though grey hair does not trouble me, neither mine nor yours.

Missing you and your nest of hair.

bye

Тема: Re: Wednesday May 19 3:26 PM

Дата: 20 мая 2004 г. 11:09

dear zhen

something is up with the servers, yours or mine. i just received your message from yesterday this morning (7:00) and i first looked for mail when i was up at 5:30. so, whatever, whenever, whichever – the old story. today are two classes in the morning, no classes in the evening, a good day to catch up on unfinished details and i have to also design some conversation topics for end-of-the-year exams. busy work. which you know well. i would like to read a book someday just for myself.

i think it was something of a shock – perceptual – to go to warsaw on such a nice day. i work according to a strict routine and my perceptual field – what i see around me, the streets, buildings, even people – is strictly controlled. partly this is habit, partly also method of coping with living in foreign language environment. then, suddenly, the stimuli of the new, modern (postmodern) transnational Warsaw – and i walked for 40 minutes in it – English is everywhere there, it almost felt like New York – and Lodz is not like this at all. the two cities are also mirror opposites of one another. when i return to the russian embassy on 31 May i think i will spend the day in Warsaw. if the museum is open, anyway. or perhaps i will go there some day in june. there are lovely and quite large public parks, gardens, etc.

when are you going to have a day that is not so busy?

missing you, bye

Тема: accompanied to continue

Дата: 20 мая 2004 г. 17:40

dear zhen

writing a few moments before leaving university hoping you haven’t left

yet so you’ll rec this message, though of course i do hope you’re home

and resting, that’s more important than a few words from me. as for me,

i’m undecided whether it is determination or suspicion or pessimism or

all three. I know I am working too much (though probably not as much as  you) and it isn’t good for my writing. If I am not writing, I become

miserable, and really, unpleasant to know. But as the trip to Warsaw

reminded me, I am moving in a new world, even to come to Tomsk this

summer for the summer, for you, for time, for writing, is new, and I

need to remember this. The next two weeks will be overwhelming. Though I went to the passport office today without problems, and I have plenty of time to apply for my work permit next year. So life goes on.

When I am tired, the first thing I lose is my sense of humor. Then

comes the grim determination to persist. How do you like that word? To

persist, instead of survive. Kind of sounds like an insect, yes?

What will you do this weekend? Will you go to your dacha?

I miss you. Bye.

Тема: Re: N/A

Дата: 31 мая 2004 г. 18:54

dear zhen, i’m writing from the university where i stopped to pick up

any late essays hpoing maybe you are still at the office and can read

this email at 8:30 in the p.m.

Yes, i have visa and tickets for the 23rd of June.

We should celebrate. I am too tired right now to be more than satisfied

and yes, rather happy. But I have to mark papers all night long.

I’ll write to you tomorrow morning at greater length.

bye

Тема: Re: N/A

Дата: 2 июня 2004 г. 17:54

dear zh,

the money issue (the bank) is not important, so don’t trouble with it.

You mentioned before that Irina is going to be gone much of the summer, is she looking for someone to rent the flat from her. September’s flat was very nice and quiet (probably more quiet than Irina’s) but I have no internet access there (not even dial-up, because of the phone connection) and I need at least a dial-up connection (or at least I think I do). Also I am remembering your reluctance to stay there late in the evening or for the night, and maybe you will not feel so

uncomfortable in Irina’s flat, since it is like a second home to you.

If that is true, then by all means, Irina’s flat? Yes? My day is almost

over here. And yours?

Bye

>

>

Тема: Yesterday’s letter you did not receive?

Дата: 10 июня 2004 г. 11:27

dear zh, another exam day. yesterday i bought a kilo of strawberries on my way to the tram from the university and i was walking along the sidewalk quite happily and thinking i would write you about new strawberry life, strawberries in my hair, eyes, nose, ears, everywhere strawberries, when i heard not 50 meters behind me a terrible sound of brakes on a car and when i turned around a young woman had been hit by a small truck on the very crosswalk i had just crossed (one without red-green lights). fortunately, the ambulance came, she appeared alive, and they arrested the driver. this is when something terrible happens: when we are walking across the street with a big bag of strawberries.

i do not comment on your recent massages, except that i do not agree that there is a problem with your head. even in the parrot school book they say: overwork causes bad health. still, you are much healthier than me. i do not think i would survive a massage. lately, my lower legs cramp very badly at night, very painfully, from too much walking, i think. i am starting to keep intellectual hours, which means 9 hours sleep one night, two hours sleep the next night. you would really be surprised by my living habits when i am mentally active. for now, mostly i am bound to try to get my computer fine tuned before leaving in two weeks, because i dont think i will be able to find any software there for the new operating system. i still do not have any sound, but i have the sound program and the drivers, and now i must figure out how to reassign IRQs on the hard drive. very tricky, and a good way to shut your system down. i can also see the limit of the particular brand of the linux i am working with, they were good for several years and became too commercial and the software reflects this by this later version. i am sure you are not very interested in this.

are you interested in why we the _s_ in sure the same as in should? why is it not spelled: shyour? english you know has not so many s, sh, sh, sch, sounds as russian. without sound, i cannot study my russian. i hope i will be able to make it between airports in moscow. you are diplomatically silent about meeting me in novosibirsk. i will understand if you do not wish to make the trip. the problem is the psychology of the getting off the plane, it is very lonely to arrive by oneself.

i cannot think of anything to write that can make you laugh as at the massage. so perhaps i had better go and examine some more students speaking skills.

bye

Тема: After your call

Дата: 10 июня 2004 г. 11:48

dear zh, you are a woman of few words lately? i dont know what happened to mine yesterday, unless the reference to strawberries in one of your postcards indicates that you thought yesterday’s letter was from the day before. the only difference between today and yesterday is that today is a holiday and i have no more exams to give. yesterday i gave exams with three other colleagues from 9:00 to 18:00. a good day’s work. much better than parrot school, especially with topics about terrorism and iraq. the general consensus from both boys and girls is the u.s. president is a terrorist. you can imagine that i enjoy teaching such students. i think my senior polish colleagues were a bit shocked. Halina thought even that since i was an american, they were trying to provoke me, but those students who have taken my classes know that i am a free thinker (such an idea is important here, as there are many who do not think except very traditionally, like Bogdan Krakovian whom i wrote you about). the feature of the oral exams is that students tend to talk about their world, their outlook, their beliefs. a recent incident here (only weeks ago) when police shot and killed two innocent people during a hooligan raid on a student festival has angered the students, and then when there was a public peace rally, the city officials blamed the students for the deaths in their speeches. they seem to equate the police here with guns and killing into crowd with pictures of u.s. soldiers (and polish soldiers) on the news. there is also i think the youth tradition of being against war, especially aggressive war such as is the period we are in now. most importantly, for the second year, so many of the students are very articulate, even eloquent, in the second language, the English language, and really i hear from them more beautiful expressions than from students in the u.s. so yesterday and monday were very meaningful days for me. i have left only three demands on my time and attention: a letter of support for a student who is entering the graduate school here, a letter of critique for an m.a. thesis, and a party tomorrow for our faculty. after monday i hope to be entirely free – free time – what shall i do? do you have any suggestions. i know you will say not to forget to write to you every morning, though i do not, and i wonder if the connection is not so secure? about exchange rate, i never understand, except i think that lower u.s. dollar means more expensive for me to buy? the last time i looked i think it is about 4 zloty per dollar. when i first arrived in october it was 3.7 (to buy dollars – i think this was the price i paid before meeting you in palangas). it is strange a little for me to have no more dollars, i.e. i must buy them. i wonder if i will learn to live without them. it is not so hard. i hope you receive this letter. strawberries and yogurt await me.

b y e

Тема: Russian keyboard

Дата: 10 июня 2004 г. 11:59

zh, i thought you might enjoy this and i of course always think you should write a journal about your arctic explorations (should is a modal verb which you will grind your teeth at) -might, may?- online tools like blogs and the list talked about below really are an aid to writing, and now you have a powerful machine …

(this posting is from the same discussion list as the article by Oleg Kireev which you liked when you read it in Palangas)

<nettime> Russian LiveJournal: National specifics in the development of a virtual community by Eugene Gorny 

To: “nettime’s on/off connector” <nettime-l AT bbs.thing.net>

Subject: <nettime> Russian LiveJournal: National specifics in the development of a virtual community by Eugene Gorny

From: olia lialina <olia AT profolia.org>

Date: Mon, 07 Jun 2004 17:39:12 +0200

Reply-to: olia lialina <olia AT profolia.org>

There is a very interesting article on Russian online community and its

total removal to Live Journal published now in Russian Cyberspace magazine.

http://www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/russ-cyb/library/texts/en/gorny_rlj.htm

Eugene Gorny

Russian LiveJournal: National specifics in the development of a virtual

community.

The community of users at LiveJournal.com (LJ) is currently the largest

virtual Russian-speaking community, uniting Russians from all over the

world. In February 2004, it reached 40,000 users and this number is

rapidly growing. In April 2004, according to the statistics of user

distribution by countries, the Russian Federation with its 48,000 users

was in fourth place after the United States, Canada and the United

Kingdom and leaving behind Australia, Germany and Singapore. To gain a  more accurate idea about the population of Russian-speaking users, one  needs to add those living abroad. According to “The LJist Companion: A

Guide to Russian Language LiveJournal”, their number can be roughly

estimated at 2,000, most of them living in Ukraine, United States,

Israel, Estonia, Germany, and Latvia.

Dynamics of RLJ

1. Conception

The early history of RLJ was highly personalized. Admittedly, “the

father” of RLJ is Roman Lejbov, lecturer at the University of Tartu,

Estonia, an online journalist and one of the pioneers of the Russian

Internet. However, chronologically he was not the first Russian in LJ.

The first user from Russia registered on the LJ site on November 27th,

1999. His username was “linker” and his journal got a notable number 666  [80]. However, he created his account “just in case”, did not write

anything for a long time and has not produced anything noteworthy

afterwards. The fact of his appearance was discovered much later. The

first entry in the Russian language [81] was made in LJ three days

later, on November 30th, 1999 by user “at” [82], in real life Aleksej

Tolkachev, a Russian programmer working in the US. After writing one

more entry, he abandoned his journal and returned to it only two years

after, when LJ became a hit [83]. Both users stayed in prehistory

because just to be the first in time does not create an event, which is

the basic unit of history.

The real history of RLJ began on February 1st, 2000 when Lejbov (who had  opened his account the day before) started his journal with a test entry  that ran as follows: “First attempt at writing [proba pera]. Let’s try

it in Russian… A funny thing!” [84] As he asserted later [85], he knew

about LJ from Misha Verbitsky’s posting of December 22nd, 2000 at the

guestbook at his site “Lenin”, the so-called “Anti-culturological journal”. Verbitsky, having analysed the referrer log for his site,  found out that two users visited Lenin from LJ, followed the links and  then made a short note about LJ: “It is exactly for such sites the Internet exists. People sit there day and night and tell about  themselves, in hundreds.” [86] Having become curious, Lejbov followed the link and decided to play with the new toy.

Unlike his prehistorical predecessors, who content themselves with the

mere fact of becoming users, Lejbov started immediately to explore the

possibilities of LJ for creativity and self-expression. On his first day, he made 18 entries in various genres including an opinion (about the qualities of LJ), a pun, a characterization of his psychophysical state (insomnia), a remembrance of dream, a sketch (about his wife and a  cat), a quotation (from right-wing philosopher and nationalist politician Dugin) with an ironic commentary, a plan for action, a reflection (on the idea of the taught course of history as a reverse narrative), a joke on an actual political event, a critical remark on a musical group, a description of a fact of life, a rumour, a poem (by Pushkin) and an extract from the encyclopaedia. He also downloaded an animated photo of himself. Thus, on the very first day he used LJ in a variety of ways and sampled most of the genres that would be exploited later on. He went on writing and experimenting and missed not a single day that February. Many of his innovations have been widely accepted by  the RLJ community. He coined the word “lytdybr” – the Russian word dnevnik meaning “diary” mistakenly typed using English keyboard layout – which become a standard genre designation for entries devoted to description of events in users’ personal lives. Being a prolific dreamer, he frequently described his dreams in his journal and inspired many users to do the same. He also was one of the first who began to post photographs on the regular basis and introduced other innovations.

Some time Lejbov kept his journal privately but gradually the rumours

about the mysterious thing called “blog” ran through Runet and more

people followed his example. [87] At the first stage, LJ become popular

amidst Internet professionals, many of whom came onto the Internet in

the period of “Sturm und Drang” of the 1990-s and formed the so-called

“Runet elite”. As a rule, they did not use their journals for work but

rather for fun, for personal self-expression and interpersonal play. The

idea of using LJ for collaborative creative work was gradually emerging

from this playful activity but it was fully realized at the later stages

of RLJ evolution. However, RLJ could not gain popularity in the masses and would stay a toy for a few if the pioneers had not propagandized it and recruit new members.

…

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Тема: Sleeping late

Дата: 11 июня 2004 г. 13:43

dear zh, it was a strange and nice feeling this morning to lie in bed after waking to the alarm and neither sleep nor not sleep, drifting once again in and out of consciousness as i have almost forgotten to know how to do after these past few months of nearly daily demands on my time and subjectivity. strawberries are a small comfort, though they would not keep me from writing to you in the morning. which is more likely? my not writing (and saying especially that i did?) or server mix-ups? mail has been delayed and lost before between us, though it is not an argument that i feel worthy of attention. i was concerned though that you were concerned enough about me to call, so that gives more importance to writing than you indicated in writing. though email is a convenience, i never take it for granted, and this attitude is helped by the difficulty of access my first two years in russia. so it doesnt surprise me when letters don’t arrive, etc. i keep a send file which keeps track of the messages that leave my computer (very helpful for student correspondence) and also there should be a function in your Outlook Express program which lets you save my km@hypobololemaioi.com address so that you can click on that for an automatic completion of the address. whichever is most convenient for you. are you getting a little nervous about 23 June?

at least you have heard me read, once, my poetry, so you know that i write, as from time to time i write about writing, always like writing about a friend one both has and does not have. i don’t know my writing as a habit, or practice, or job, and i have made many conscious (and sometimes accidental) and abrupt and definite actions to protect this being, this way of being in the world, which by now has almost no external reference, which i know only as a special demand on the being towards language, as i recognize the fragility and vulnerability of my will and motive and being toward language, so i dont know this as a public life, for protection, we are surrounded by such powerful and absolutist definition forces, at least as i know it in the u.s., and there are so many reasons why i look to russia as a place, even if only a place for the next three months, but for me now it is like a sanctuary, a place of peace, and you should know that is how i think of Tomsk, and the flat, the September flat, seems like such good fortune, that i am worried about writing about it too much. but do you know that all my life whenever i have tried to be close to someone, they tell me that they always feel that i am not there?

i have mentioned it before, but during the three months i would like to try to arrange some visits with artists, especially multimedia artists, living in novosibirsk. i have one contact email for a writer there whose article i sent you published in artmargins. i would like to visit several artists, take some digital camera footage, and write about their what they say about their lives and work, using as a root declaration: artists are more sincere in russia (alexei shulgin) because there is no support whatever, and this ground zero of difficulty, well, i dont wish to romanticize it, which, by the way, is how i interpret Sokurov’s russian ark. so in some way this real-life documentary would complement the writing about the views on this film (and we should try to find a video copy of it somewhere? if you can find one on the russian net, i will buy it). this could be a project that we work together on, myself as writer and camerawork, you as translator and interlocutor, and a work that we make together, either for the web (this is what i prefer, as i know have the webspace at the hypobololemaioi.com website. basically, i want to put art in novosibirsk online, visiting the workspaces, and listening to the artists. if i do this project well, it may lead to future web-based projects where i visit and speak with and document the lives and representations of others. but i cannot do this without you, and so i would like to ask for you to think about it for a while, and if yes, i will draft a letter to send to the author of the ArtMargins article and perhaps we can send it in both Russian and English – depending on whether you wish to translate it or not.

this is a serious proposal for collaboration, and also one which suggests a possible future direction for my work.

emotionally, you know the best is always unsaid, so i will not try playing with words about the 23 january, though do you remember the strange moment in the train station in vilnius? why should not the same strangeness return on 23 june in novosibirsk. i think this strangeness is very positive. your existence is solid and material and concrete for me. you call me and worry about me and joke with me. and yet, i do not take your existence as an assumption, your real being and person, and i know of myself that i am becoming increasingly removed and remote from being able to assert my presence in three-dimensional space, so the meeting, the seeing one another again after 5 months, why should it not be strange and awkward and comical? still, i remember in the bus on the way to tomsk (how i love the landscape – the forests and fields and villages between these two cities) you very gently placed your head on my shoulder and we held hands. even this i do not keep in memory as an expectation, only as the so important natural gestures, which overcome the artificiality of our psyche constructions and projections.

finally, for the laugh, do you know that i have been struggling with tuning my computer to the new operating system, and finally i decided that the old operating system was better? simpler? the new one is made for the market and makes the user feel more stupid, just like microsoft! so i reinstalled the old system. now i think you are smiling a little at me, and i welcome it.

and i hope this letter reaches you, so i am sending it to both addresses. do you wish to look at my send file when i get to tomsk to confirm the letters i have sent you and when?

by

e

Тема: The periphery flat

Дата: 12 июня 2004 г. 12:05

dear zh, why do i have the feeling i have overslept again? to bed at 2:00 a.m. after the party and now after six hours i am awake and writing to you but it is probably already too late, you are of the mind that i wont write to you today?

i am beginning to notice an alarming trend: everything here is slightly defective. the cd player, the coffee pot (my morning coffee has just erupted again like a volcano with coffee grounds all over the outside of the pot and in my cup) and the cds containing the new operating system which, when i ran a verification tool, reported defective, though this did not prevent me from installing them one more time even after i decided that i liked the earlier operating system better. i paid 99 zlotys for the book with the cds, so i could not not use them, that is how stubborn i am about expenses.

perhaps i write such long letters to you since it is my custom to write during the first cup of coffee. i write a sentence, take a sip, write a sentence, take a sip. this reminds me, i think i will experiment with a new coffee machine at the Tomsk flat – can we call it the flat at the edge of the town? why edge? why not border? no, the periphery. The periphery flat.

i do not know what to advise you about your laptop. perhaps you enjoy the ambivalence, what to do with this machine, now that the basic uncertainties have been settled (sound of the motor, the shaking screen, strange lights on the console). remember that it, the machine, is in no hurry to do anything. sometimes i feel like mine is something of a crocodile, at least it consumes my time and energy. late nights trying to get this to work with that.

about my wish to make a project interviewing artists in novosibirsk, why do you feel cynical? i am not an australian meeting with bankers. what is there to feel cynical about? more important to me is trying to conceptualize and complete what is called a web project. i will try to find an early example, i think called Siberian Town, done some years ago by two women visiting Siberia.

i have finished my coffee rather quickly this morning, perhaps because of slight hangover. now what will i do for the rest of the day? how many hours are unaccountable in the time of one’s reading.

when are your correspondence classes finished? when does your summer begin? it is just now beginning to occur to me that i have no commitments, no job, no responsibilities, between now and the last week of September. really this is rather extraordinary. i think i am going to write a book. as always, my book will be about the impossibility of the book. this way, i always have something to write about, which is the problem of writing itself.

b    ye

Тема: Siberian Town

Дата: 14 июня 2004 г. 13:10

dear zh, i am resending this to your tpu address in case you dont receive the rambler.ru mail (my mail has been lost there before!) funny that when i searched for this website i looked under Siberian Town (one of the titles of one of the digital films) and i dont think i like the connotation of _Deal_ though it is used in so many ways colloquially. (the rest of the letter is the same and also, if you wrote to me at the uni.lodz address, could you resend to km@hypobololemaioi.com please?

 www.t0.or.at/~siberian/vrteil.htm

 if you have the time while at the university connection to download the two movies, they are good early examples of what can be done with digital video, at least to my mind, very sparse, minimal. i remember these videos before going to russia for the first time, and how important they were to me to see however momently and confined, an “image” of that strange and new world.

 here, same old same old. last night at about 22:00 a neighbor came to my door with the news that an upstairs apt. had been broken into. in my flat is most of my summer money and my laptop, so today and tomorrow when i go to the univ. i will carry my laptop and my money with me.

 today, i wouldn’t need to go to the university except that one of the worst students from the dunce college needs my signature, so i agreed to meet him at the univ. when he called. this is familiar to you but very funny to me: the students will find you no matter where when they need a signature. the worst ones would probably even come to siberia for the 3.

 you would be amused at my failures with my computer: still no modem connection nor audio for the new operating system. the modem i can live without, but the audio problem bothers me. in a positive sense, i am learning a lot about the relationship of the hardware to the ports and how the ports provide access to the programs, which run on principle of devices and modules. all problems seem to be solved by hotplugging, i.e., using usb and firewire cards, and reading the documentation for the older mid-90s machines, one understands what an advance this technology represented for expanding the power of the computer to render sound and video.

 the two problems i have spent the last two or three days on could be solved by one, the purchase of a usb soundcard and two, using ethernet connection with DSL or ADSL. in poland as in russia this is still rather expensive, though it almost standard now in u.s. with permanent DSL connection costing only 35 dollars a month, not even twice what a dial-up connection costs (usually 20-25 dollars a month). probably this is what i will arrange in the fall. and if one is online all the time, what is there?

 certainly it is a print environment, but i think more than anything i miss the visual and sound stimulus and the ability to visit many sites for though keeping track of them is always a problem. what is possible is the assembly of one’s own textual and visual environment, the virtual library, and of course this all important sensation of speed. i also dream of having a really good printer someday and printing out texts of more thing, making of them my own objects, again, this wish for a library.

 a library is in the three-dimensions also a place the mind moves around in, very different from using an external library for one’s reading. there’s something of a limitation no matter how many books i check out they are never the ones i am looking for. reading for writing is restless this way. this kind of reading is a very circular reading. browsing, really, though there’s more to it. the sensation of movement at the level of the word, maybe it feels sometimes like looking for words, though it is more like the reading mind, the ear for the language one is writing in, is constantly trying to find ports into the echo chamber, nodes where the language is still alive. that is one work anyway for the reading that is part of writing. still living the way that i do, it is something the absence of which i feel acutely.

 my coffee cup is empty and it is high time i turned my attention to the dissertation that i have to write a letter about today. two letters today and two signatures and i will be finished with university work for the summer. and you?

 by    e

Тема: Present dangers

Дата: 15 июня 2004 г. 11:20

dear zh, i had a burst of energy yesterday, or concentration, or determination, and revised my

For the Future City by the Inland Sea

website, if you care to take a look. not a lot will be immediately apparent. the design change was to use many, many files of shorter pages, which takes shorter time to load in the browser, and perhaps gives greater effect of attention to the page that is loaded. i am not sure that all the links work, as i will have to check them at the university connection today (it takes too much time on my connection at home).

i started at about 16:00 and finished at midnight. strange, but all the (as yet unsuccessful) work on trying to get my modem and sound software on the linux side to talk to the hardware settings on the dos side seemed to make the website program simple in comparison, and what before has been to me an arduous task (though i have done it many times) proceeded very smoothly. another summer project is to redesign my ebooks. at present they load in the download as manuscript pages (A4 size printable) and i should reduce the pages to more of a book dimension, slightly smaller, and perhaps using some graphics, at least for the cover pages.

how did the visit of the australian businessman go? have you finished interpreting?

i have had several offers to take care of any valuables this summer, and this is a strange concept, valuable, but with the recent break-in i cannot take it for granted that anything i leave behind will still be here when i return, so i will pack up my big green intl. suitcase with my printer, a few expensive books (worth about 30 rubles on the paperback blackmarket) and actually, since it is summer, i wont be bringing my two leather jackets, and these are the two most valuable items that i own, even more valuable than my computer. if i had to replace them, and i guess that is how one determines whether something is valuable or not.

today it is overcast and very cool so i will wear one of them, which means if my flat is robbed today they will only get the one jacket. yesterday (as today) i took with me to the univ. my computer, my dv camera, and my money. i am a very good target for a mugging. do you think the gang (as they are coming to be called) is reading my email? speculations abound. it is obvious to some that the building is being watched, so that when someone goes away they rob their flat. should i leave milk and cookies when i leave next week? so far i have been lucky. the only thing i have lost was due to my own absent-mindedness when i was setting a plastic container of yoghurt on the refrigerator shelf the shelf was a little unstable due to readjustment for day’s earlier large container of fresh strawberries (though i prefer them at room temperature, but there is a limit as to how many strawberries one can eat, and mine is about half a kilo a day – i have never lived anywhere where the strawberries are so cheap – they sell them by the wheelbarrow – everywhere i see people walking with kilo size bags of strawberries) and back to my yoghurt, it fell on the floor and broke, and i lost about half a cup, though the container was broken, so i lay the container back in the refrigerator on its side, thinking that i would eat it later, the contents that hadnt spilled, but now i am thinking i will leave it for the gang.

everything else, will go in my large suitcase and to a colleagues flat for safekeeping. even the chair of my dept yesterday offered to safekeep them. there is also the humor of having so few valuables, though this i rather enjoy. one begins to think strangely. yesterday i included in my bag my hotplug cards for usb and firewire, worth about 60 dollars each, and a real inconvenience if someone stole them. perhaps today i will carry with me various transformers and electrical cords, and my router worth 49 dollars. or should i just put price tags on everything and ask the gang for a donation?

i have decided to also leave them my 99 zloty elta cd player – which they would not bother to take, i am sure, as the brand name must be a well-known joke in poland – one of those companies that nothing works that they make. by the way, the big effect of european union status is now when i go to the supermarket i see many brands of german and swiss coffee, as expensive as the american brands. big changes, yes? actually, there is increased competition between the big economies, even if we only see it in the coffee. that is what is visible (all too visible according to my defective polish-made coffee pot) and one only wonders at the forms of economic competition that are not visible day to day to the average person. in the past this competition has led to war. i dont see any reason why this shouldnt happen again, though it will take some time, maybe about 20 years.

maybe ive mentioned this, but at the parrot school, from the textbook written in the 50s-60s, the question, do you think there will be another world war? was always taken very seriously by especially the adult students, and some of the expressions on their faces – because they understood the question – and so many answered yes. i give a special wisdom to inhabitants of the buffer zones. but today the problem is the unsafe flat. later i will worry about the world.

and you, dear zhen, you do not write or our emails are evaborating in the virtual sphere? if i can locate a card i will try calling you today or tomorrow (i dont know when the masters dissertation defense will be over, yesterday i got home rather late in the afternoon). i have been asked to read and comment on one more dissertation, and did not refuse. this is good experience, and i am glad to have the chance to write a few words that will go into the dissertation filed in the library.

bye for now

do you still miss me

or are you in condition of irritation?

( i know you a little, though just a little)

are you standing in the ravine?

Тема: Early morning words

Дата: 16 июня 2004 г. 8:06

dear zh, i am writing you at an unusual time, half past three in the morning, and yes, you guessed, i have been doing this and that with/on my computer. more work on my website, and as i have been having some time what are called bugs in my microsoft explorer browser, i downloaded what is called a mozilla browser, which i highly recommend. i know it from using it on the linux platform, and it is based on the netscape browser, but is an open source project (non proprietary) and the development has really come a long way. in a few days i may even have the temerity to uninstall my microsoft explorer, though that would probably be unwise, since it is the most common browser on the internet, and one has to design for it as for netscape/mozilla (at least among the graphic browsers). but you probably dont want to hear too much about computers. give your own some time, though, or, if you really dont like it (apart from the expressions of your bad character – remember mine is just as bad -) you should return it while it is still under warranty. i should have done that a number of times, and actually i did once when i needed a scanner, i would buy one, take it home, try it out, and if it didn’t work well or if the software was funky, i would return it. finally i bought one for 300 dollars on which i scanned the summer before i left for russia the first time all the important documents (notebooks, etc) which are in the storage disk in your flat. the originals i destroyed. you see, i have taken ‘going digital’ to heart.

now, about my printer, neither do i have of did i have any intention of bringing it anywhere, as neither do i have any intention of bringing my international suitcase – flying from poland to tomsk is hardly international? i am travelling very light, intending to buy clothes in tomsk. what i meant though it probably wasn’t clear, was that i was going to put everything that would fit into the big suitcase and take it the house of one of my colleagues for safekeeping. no worries about my losing the baggage ticket this time, i should be able to carry everything on the plane. another advantage of my little laptop, which, incidentally, and despite sound and modem problems, i am quite fond of, and really think highly of the ibm model. that is probably not what you want to hear me say. among the little contradictions in life is the fact that for my american culture class i teach an essay which accuses ibm corp. of revising history from their use of a charlie chaplin motif in one of their advertising campaigns, and yet, had i the money, and i were going to buy a newer model, ibm would be my choice. but two laptops are enough for now, though eventually when i get going on digital image work i will need a high speed and larger disk space. but that is a long time away.

the masters defense went very well, and i was given a bouquet of roses (tradition). i asked one not very hard question about the writers of the american renaissance. the letter i wrote though i think was the more important task, and i have one more such letter to write, probably this weekend. my words and signatures are entering the university library here. which brings to mind other thoughts about one’s life in writing which i wont bore you with now.

working on my website, i reread the poem i wrote last september and it gave me the very pleasant sense of anticipation of writing this summer. the poem is better than anything i wrote this year, more tendentious and and disciplined poems, affected by the fact that i am publishing them on a discussion list dominated by the brahmins of the u.s. poetry scene. one is more self-conscious in such a context than writing privately, and that’s how i felt last september.

my big project for tomorrow is cleaning the kitchen and polishing my shoes black. do you remember the new shoes in september? they are now very old shoes, but i will try to get three more months life out of them. turning them from brown to black is my idea of new shoes. i still remember buy the leather soap/polish at the store for 1000 things on lenina prospekt with you.

by the way, do you have or could you find that website in russian where my work at Zabaikalsky is mentioned favorably? i tried to find it tonight, and perhaps did, an article or part of an article by the dean of the faculty where i taught. of course i could not read it very well in russian, and saw only a reference to my name, and i thought i remember you writing that Tatiana Sukhanova had written something rather complimentary. If you can find it, could you forward me the url?

when do you start translating your father’s textbook. it would be very nice if we could work together this summer, in the same space, i will be writing and you will be translating. which ever room you prefer, i remember (and this is in the september poem) moving between both rooms. the kitchen has more light, though the fridge is rather loud, but i like being within reach of the fridge, unfortunately. the front room is more quiet, but colder. maybe we will try to keep flowers on the sill. it is nice having roses in the room here.

i tried to call you about 17:00 your time and maybe your cell phone will show that i did try. i will try again tomorrow afternoon, later, more in your evening, unless you write me that you will be out and about.

i am sorry to hear that you hate english, as that is all i am capable of right now. hatred i understand, though for me there is something of suspicion mixed with contempt, but most of all, profound distrust of the words, maybe that is it, distrust, instead of dislike, though it helps hearing how people use this language here, even in the dissertation defense today, than if i had to listen to it every day, which would be too much. it’s impossible to objectify, but i had this impression of overwhelming verbal assault my last two times in the u.s., just listening to people speaking and hearing the language on the broadcasts.

until tomorrow (oh no, i just noticed it is getting daylight outside the window, at 4:00 in the morning!

bye

Тема: The day before

Дата: 22 июня 2004 г. 12:52

dear zh,

i left early to write letter in support of a student applying to grad

program here and the last master’s thesis response. both letters

accomplished and i am now officially finished for the summer except the

defense is at 10:00 a.m. my pesel number came yesterday so today i will

try to retrieve my salary at the dunce college, about 500 dollars. then

i will go to the bank to retrieve euros. then i will go home and stare

at my now empty apartment. i have really cleared it out, and i am only

beinging a few changes of clothes, and my computer. which i really

knocked out, the windows part, still there, all the files, but

unbootable, as by pressing a single key i added more than 1024 kilobyte

restriction on the boot map of the hard drive, so now windows won’t

boot, though i can read it all i want from linux. there’s also an

emulation program designed to operate all the windows programs, so

maybe i will go that route this summer, and never again stare at

Microsoft Windows coming up on my screen. really, though, i feel quite

disoriented, kind of post-lodz, at the moment, though i am wishing i

had gotten rid of my flat, as it feels strange to leave it empty for

three months, and i hope it is not vandalized. i am sorry to cause you

any concern, you would laugh if you could see the mundane details of my  trip preparation. i expect it to go quite easily, and i should arrive

thursday morning almost refreshed. don’t forget about dinner thursday

at your favorite chinese restaurant. don’t be surprised if i am a

little shy, or whatever, as i really feel what we call “out of it”

lately, rather remote from myself, and feeling rather thick in the

head. it doesn’t help that it has been so cold here lately. enough

complaining. i am sorry i wasn’t home this morning. i took the 7:00

a.m. bus to the university.

missing you, bye

Тема: How many hours

Дата: 22 июня 2004 г. 12:53

and i miss you

i am reading my email from the past several days from you this morning

at the univ. thank you for writing. it sounds very nice to be able to

say that i will see you the day after tomorrow. how many hours? less

than 48 i think.

bye

Тема: What can go wrong

Дата: 22 июня 2004 г. 12:57

dear zh, i think i know by now that if i ever open my computer that

will be the end of it. the problem is not so serious, though i am

prevented from sending email, which i would not be doing anyway after

today.

have you any ideas as to what can go wrong on this trip? everything

seems too easy and simple.

i shouldn’t ask after bad luck, though, do you think?

bye again! see you soon!

(and with kisses if you wish)