Life in November
The weather is nice, and so is life right now. I am sitting at home and watching naked Clark Kent on TV being tortured by evil girls in black leather. As far as I am concerned, this visual is the main point of the story.
The least probable question one can reasonably expect to hear from the guard at the US Consulate who is searching through one’s bag:
So, what do you think about the character of Jane?
(Jane in question is Jane Brailsford, from Caroline Stevermere’s The Scholar of Magics, the book I had with me.)
I had the most pleasant visit to US Consulate this morning. Surprise, surprise. And tomorrow I hope to have the visa!
What else to tell you?
I've always fascinated by time. "Big-time" time - astronomical and
geological, and the historical time, seemingly tamed by people. I used
to close my eyes and try to imagine the Universe - young, the stars I
can see - newly born, something that was before so long ago, that no
can really comprehend that distance.
I used to stand before dioramas in a geological museum, trying to
connect the Earth that is now with the Earth that was, with strange
continents that nobody put on map, where there was a deep sea in the
place where Moscow is now…
I used to look at the pictures of ruins, trying to imagine people that
build them, and how they lived, and how they thought. I felt history
and time as something tangible, alive in its own right, and
perpetually amazing. I remember the first time I saw a mummy of some
unfortunate Egyptian priest in a museum. I was ten, and he was dead
for more than four thousand years. I was standing for several minutes,
imagining his man alive, old, young, thinking about his future.
Whatever his ideas about after death were I was sure they didn't
include lying in the glass box four thousand years since, and me
staring at him.
For all my fascination with time I still haven't managed to use it properly.
The least probable question one can reasonably expect to hear from the guard at the US Consulate who is searching through one’s bag:
So, what do you think about the character of Jane?
(Jane in question is Jane Brailsford, from Caroline Stevermere’s The Scholar of Magics, the book I had with me.)
I had the most pleasant visit to US Consulate this morning. Surprise, surprise. And tomorrow I hope to have the visa!
What else to tell you?
I've always fascinated by time. "Big-time" time - astronomical and
geological, and the historical time, seemingly tamed by people. I used
to close my eyes and try to imagine the Universe - young, the stars I
can see - newly born, something that was before so long ago, that no
can really comprehend that distance.
I used to stand before dioramas in a geological museum, trying to
connect the Earth that is now with the Earth that was, with strange
continents that nobody put on map, where there was a deep sea in the
place where Moscow is now…
I used to look at the pictures of ruins, trying to imagine people that
build them, and how they lived, and how they thought. I felt history
and time as something tangible, alive in its own right, and
perpetually amazing. I remember the first time I saw a mummy of some
unfortunate Egyptian priest in a museum. I was ten, and he was dead
for more than four thousand years. I was standing for several minutes,
imagining his man alive, old, young, thinking about his future.
Whatever his ideas about after death were I was sure they didn't
include lying in the glass box four thousand years since, and me
staring at him.
For all my fascination with time I still haven't managed to use it properly.