Last year I frequently heard people complain. It would actually be fair to say that complaining seemed to be the main form of communication: anywhere from minor griping and bemoaning daily struggles to major dissent and protest. There were complaints about poor health and the deadly effects of the changing weather, magnetic storms, disobeying ( Read more... )

With the typical aimlessness of a vagabond at heart (nevermind my occasional corporate Barbie behavior - that's a show I like to put up to convince people, and mainly myself, of my responsibility and maturity) I like to wander around in my city, explore back alleys in the center and half-abandoned routes leading out of the city, where the pavement ( Read more... )

I go for a walk just after the rain, when the dust has settled, the air is still brisk, and the city sparkles in its newborn pink tufa glow, rising from the ashes of the scorching summer fever. My steps take me downtown, to the main square and then to Vernisage. There is something I absolutely adore about that place, something that cannot quite ( Read more... )

 I sit in the loneliness of my minaret, known to most people as my apartment on the 13th floor of an ugly cement box - a gem of Soviet architecture, sequestered from the world by the threat of buckets of ice cold water.  By late afternoon the shouts of children die down and what replaces them is a familiar symphony, coming from an unseen balcony ( Read more... )

Another discovery I have made having spent all this time in the motherland is how fond we as a nation are of keeping up appearances.  This tendency runs a very wide spectrum actions: from minor daily acts to major lifechanging decisions, we always wonder what the neighbors will think.

Growing up one constantly gets told at every misstep "Have some ( Read more... )

 Sitting here missing my apartment on Park Drive, the Fens, lunches at Brown Sugar, which doesn't even exist any more, the sounds of Red Sox games bursting into the windows of my apartment nearly every day during the summer, and knee deep snow in the winter.


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Running late to work as always, I burst into the cab and tell the driver to step on it, please.  I rolled out of bed only a few minutes ago, but the crisp air  and the chocolate bar in my hand (breakfast of champions!) have managed to wake me up after having gotten only about 4 hours of sleep.  I'm genuinely glad it is Friday, because I don't think ( Read more... )

Lately I have been struggling with my identity. As much as I identified myself as an Armenian in America, here I feel like I stick out like a sore thumb. And I don’t mean that in a teenage “No one gets me ‘cause I’m different” kind of way. But rather in very many minor things I see that my opinion deviates from what is considered the norm here ( Read more... )

 I have become rather accustomed to seeing flags and banners flying in the wind in front of schools and government buildings.  And, though not particularly patriotic, but rather a believer in impending globalization, I generally feel inspired by the sight.  In the last two weeks the only cloth I have seen fluttering in the wind have been white ( Read more... )