There is something about the smell of freshly mowed grass that makes me interminably happy and makes me revert to the times when finding a jar big enough for all the fireflies I had caught and finding just the right flowers: daisies and cornflowers, to make wreaths out of were among my biggest problems.  In those days I never stopped to consider ( Read more... )

The more I think about it, the more convinced I become that I am a child of the Soviet Union: I am rather proud of having been born in Moscow, I feel violently nostalgic, when I watch old Russian movies and cartoons, I still think that milk cartons can be used as planters, and I am a strong believer in friendship between nations.

A couple of ( Read more... )

I get assailed with memories rather often these days, particularly for someone my age. I would have expected this forty years down the road, but right now it takes me by surprise that, for example, I am transported to the Yerevan of my childhood when I am just sitting on the windowsill watching it snow outside ( Read more... )

The thing I loved most as a child was listening to the nightly stories of my parents. However, unlike most children I did not insist on fairy tales or made up stories, but rather on the chronicles of my parents lives. Maybe that was when I realized that life was really much more interesting that fiction. One thing is for sure, that was when I ( Read more... )

I took these way back when, in 2006, at Hampton Beach in NH. But my love affair with sunrises dates back all the way to 2001 and the first inklings of my insomniac tendencies.


( Read more... )

A poem by Constantine Simonov has been on my mind all day long.  I understand that the poem is really about a soldier hoping to return home from war.  But  the feeling of love, longing, hope, waiting, and nostalgia it conveys feels universal and so close to my heart (particularly the first 8 lines, below).

Жди меня, и я вернусь.
Только очень жди,
Жди ( Read more... )

 I was taking the T home from work last night and listening to Tigran Mansouryan.  My commute from the city takes about 45 minutes and I generally like to read during that time, so as to feel more productive.  Well, last nights commute was not productive.  As I listened to the melodies of my childhood I was assailed by hundreds of memories from ( Read more... )