Dear Alex,

I've been cold on gigantic, frosty boulevards before, but somehow today the classic Post-Soviet stroll was accompanied by a pervasive and eerie dissonance. I stopped for some horrible coffee and set out in a sunnier direction. All of a sudden, it hit me: this is it! This is the steppe.
Up until the beginning of the twentieth century, ( Read more... )

Dear Ruslan ( Read more... )

A taste of Tony H. for starters (that was then):

"...It's January, no, it's February, it's Pittsburgh
and I've been so twisted by craving and loneliness and rage,
I feel like curling up on the floor of my room and crying,
"You never loved me anyway, not ever!"
though I'm not sure who I would be talking to..."

"Florida's on fire. Someone set ( Read more... )

let's say that you won the race
and the prize was another race
that you didn't drink victory's win
but your own salt
that you never heard the cheers
but dogs' barking
and that your shadow
was your sole
and unfair competitor

"The Lebanese opposition has demanded a full investigation of Mr. Hariri's assassination, the resignation of the government, and an immediate pullout of Syria's 14,000 troops from Lebanon. Opposition leaders say they have consciously imitated the popular uprising in Ukraine, where demonstrators forced the government to call a new election after ( Read more... )

When one first hears Mao's comment about revolutions and dinner parties, it seems a a statement so obvious it could only be profound to crazy foreigners in strange lands - but today, on the eve of potential, possible, probable revolution, I am not being incited along with the masses or fading into the milieu (though admittedly I will be in a few ( Read more... )

Kyiv - (Amsterdam) - (Detroit) - State College ( Read more... )

So I'm twenty something now. What is one to do when one is the age, according to the norms of culture, that one's supposed to be, but certainly in a different place? Pray, I suppose. Reconciliations are everywhere, and I'm wondering how smart it is to bring the beauty of the present into the light at the expense of the ugliness of today. There ( Read more... )

The West, the West, the West. Big and attractive, like a large magnet. The West! But the East screams quietly and patiently in my ears - come, come to me, not because life is grander here or better here, but because you should live like plastic diamonds before life turns to stone.

One day far back I lost my face in stone...
(Andijewska) ( Read more... )

A postcard in reverse? I knew my Geometry would come in handy someday ( Read more... )