The Red Sky
Did you know that there's a term for bombing past the point regarded as desirable? Saturation bombing. My brain is oversaturated in languages, but I’m not done trying to learn them. I try to sop up a few more coarse phrases interspersed with delicate spoons of grammar but I can feel my brain interacting differently with language than it used to. Admittedly, I approach the subject differently now, with an overconfidence brought on by fluency in a more than my native tongue. But I studied French intensively for six years before I moved to Paris. And I studied Italian for two years with native speakers. And the Turkish that has stayed with me I learned when I was nineteen. My brain hadn’t been squeezed and stretched and imploded quite so much back then. It’s like my brain got pregnant and now it has stretch marks and incontinence instead of stomach muscles that just love to flex when they hear new words, keeping them, like our organs, in place.
And now I’m immersed in yet another new language. This is my seventh. Or is it eighth? I learn by exploding outward, for lack of any other way to describe it. But the lexicon doesn't stretch if you have an image without a concept, and that's what has gone missing it seems. I just can’t seem to stuff more into my brain at the same time that I reach for certain words in other languages only to find that they’ve fallen out. This is the first sign of aging isn’t it? Beyond the sagging and the wrinkling, there is the weakening power of the brain. The frightening moment when you’ve pushed beyond your limits like you’re supposed to and find that the limit didn’t stretch. It’s a bit sad, but I suppose I should take it as a warning sign to hunker down and grunt through it, maybe benefiting from all those mental games people play. I should learn math now, and put in those 8,000 hours to get really good at it. And if I want to learn that new instrument, I need to get deep into it yesterday.
I go for random walks through the city by my lonesome. Here, I am not afraid. Perhaps I should be. Guards run past with machine guns at the ready. And they are definitely loaded. I never registered with the local police station, now did I; although my visa is in order I don't carry my passport on me like foreigners are supposed to. I keep a copy in my pocket, but have no real proof of identity when I'm out on the street. Something about the national character induces one to sit back, overeat, spend all the roubles in your pockets and miss the last train so you must flag down a gypsy cab . There aren’t many actual cabs in these parts and when you accidentally wave one down, you shake your head when you see the sign on the root because they’re more expensive. Taking a cab is a game of hitchhiking. Citizens with vehicles drive around and take you places for a negotiable rate. Which, come to think of it is potentially hazardous. And that is why I don’t make a peep until we’re climbing out of the vehicle. I don’t want to become human traffic; unlikely as it is, the possibility worries me. I can be a good little slave and take a goddamn heavy beating, but only when I want to be. That’s my limit.
The market is endlessly entertaining, but each in the same way. There are goods for sale. I am a consumer. I want some of certain goods the vendors are selling and they’re going to try to get the most money out of me that they can. No, I cannot select my own plums. No I cannot buy less than a kilo of carrots. I understand that there are rules and that some, but not all, vendors will cheat me if they can. It might help if I knew the number system here, as well as Cyrillic. One, two, three, four, German and Romanian are no help. I understand more before people realize I’m basically deaf and mute, because I watch their hands to glean what they’re talking about. And I use my fingers like a child, holding up four on each hand to signify that I want eight persimmons. Yes, eight. Then I point to myself and repeat the gesture. I find my face stretching like a child, with overt enthusiasm, as if it would be more excusable for me to be so linguistically lacking were I a few more brain cells short. I play a similar learning game with Babs, Gallina, the resident babushka. She needs to feel in control of the household so I have to find a way to tell her where I’m going, why, and how long I’m going to be. Running is no problem, and running in place is a good warmup. Prior to visiting the supermarket, I pat the canvas bag tucked under my arm and mime opening and closing the refrigerator. If my aims were a little more esoteric, I could really have fun with this. If, for example, I were going to a seminar on existential philosophy, I wonder if I would need to stage an entire play.
So I’m in Russia. That’s funny. Absurd, really. Why the hell am I in Russia? And for almost a month? I suppose I was really enamored of my father’s stories about his journey through the country thirty years ago and wanted to share it with him. I found him an amazing matryoshka doll. It begins with a depressed looking Medvedev. Inside you find Putin, then Yeltsin, then Gorbachev and Brezhnev, all the way down through Stalin, Lenin, and Czar Nicholas to Peter the Great, ending up the size of two apple seeds. The mise-en-abyme technique together with the onion metaphor is altogether baffling. Last night I was walking back to the apartment With Sash at two in the morning from the metro station after a dinner party by the train station where all the homeless people sleep. And by all, I mean two. The city has cleaned up its streets. It is so starkly at odds with Romania. I’ve seen three stray dogs total and only two cats in the street. The rabid consumerism fuels the economy and the economy in turn fuels the people shoving their way through the massive shopping malls better than Red Bull and vodka together. Everywhere there are bright lights, tall, beautiful buildings and similarly tall, beautiful women. One of the drawbacks to my comparative dwarfism is that I cannot find socks that fit except in the children’s section; adult stores don’t sell any sizes under 38.
Now I’ve gone from buying my persimmons to socks. This whole stream of consciousness jaunt could really get me into trouble if I were a foreign spy or some such. Or in journalism in these former Soviets states. The news outlets receive lists of what they are to cover each week. And each outlet employs censors whose job it is to go through each article or clip or radio broadcast before it airs to make sure nothing slips by. Nothing is disseminated within Russia that isn’t first approved by the Kremlin. The absolute lack of journalistic freedom chafes and I can’t even read the papers. I would feel like I'm being tumbled about in a basket, punching the sides, trying to find purchase when I keep slipping. Still. Sasha plays a game with her editor, phrasing things a certain way to see what she can slip by. It’s ingenious; she was born to play a guileless reporter telling it like it is with enchantingly zany turns of phrase that skids under the censors’ radar until that day when she is forced to flee. But why? This, she cries to the four wings on the cliffs edge before scrambling down and boarding a steamer bound for the free lands. Not that I could give anyone directions on how to get there.
Now why am I even thinking about journalistic censorship when it makes me so incredibly frustrated? Because I have a job interview tomorrow and I already know I’m not going to take the job if they offer it. I wouldn’t last a week.
And now I’m immersed in yet another new language. This is my seventh. Or is it eighth? I learn by exploding outward, for lack of any other way to describe it. But the lexicon doesn't stretch if you have an image without a concept, and that's what has gone missing it seems. I just can’t seem to stuff more into my brain at the same time that I reach for certain words in other languages only to find that they’ve fallen out. This is the first sign of aging isn’t it? Beyond the sagging and the wrinkling, there is the weakening power of the brain. The frightening moment when you’ve pushed beyond your limits like you’re supposed to and find that the limit didn’t stretch. It’s a bit sad, but I suppose I should take it as a warning sign to hunker down and grunt through it, maybe benefiting from all those mental games people play. I should learn math now, and put in those 8,000 hours to get really good at it. And if I want to learn that new instrument, I need to get deep into it yesterday.
I go for random walks through the city by my lonesome. Here, I am not afraid. Perhaps I should be. Guards run past with machine guns at the ready. And they are definitely loaded. I never registered with the local police station, now did I; although my visa is in order I don't carry my passport on me like foreigners are supposed to. I keep a copy in my pocket, but have no real proof of identity when I'm out on the street. Something about the national character induces one to sit back, overeat, spend all the roubles in your pockets and miss the last train so you must flag down a gypsy cab . There aren’t many actual cabs in these parts and when you accidentally wave one down, you shake your head when you see the sign on the root because they’re more expensive. Taking a cab is a game of hitchhiking. Citizens with vehicles drive around and take you places for a negotiable rate. Which, come to think of it is potentially hazardous. And that is why I don’t make a peep until we’re climbing out of the vehicle. I don’t want to become human traffic; unlikely as it is, the possibility worries me. I can be a good little slave and take a goddamn heavy beating, but only when I want to be. That’s my limit.
The market is endlessly entertaining, but each in the same way. There are goods for sale. I am a consumer. I want some of certain goods the vendors are selling and they’re going to try to get the most money out of me that they can. No, I cannot select my own plums. No I cannot buy less than a kilo of carrots. I understand that there are rules and that some, but not all, vendors will cheat me if they can. It might help if I knew the number system here, as well as Cyrillic. One, two, three, four, German and Romanian are no help. I understand more before people realize I’m basically deaf and mute, because I watch their hands to glean what they’re talking about. And I use my fingers like a child, holding up four on each hand to signify that I want eight persimmons. Yes, eight. Then I point to myself and repeat the gesture. I find my face stretching like a child, with overt enthusiasm, as if it would be more excusable for me to be so linguistically lacking were I a few more brain cells short. I play a similar learning game with Babs, Gallina, the resident babushka. She needs to feel in control of the household so I have to find a way to tell her where I’m going, why, and how long I’m going to be. Running is no problem, and running in place is a good warmup. Prior to visiting the supermarket, I pat the canvas bag tucked under my arm and mime opening and closing the refrigerator. If my aims were a little more esoteric, I could really have fun with this. If, for example, I were going to a seminar on existential philosophy, I wonder if I would need to stage an entire play.
So I’m in Russia. That’s funny. Absurd, really. Why the hell am I in Russia? And for almost a month? I suppose I was really enamored of my father’s stories about his journey through the country thirty years ago and wanted to share it with him. I found him an amazing matryoshka doll. It begins with a depressed looking Medvedev. Inside you find Putin, then Yeltsin, then Gorbachev and Brezhnev, all the way down through Stalin, Lenin, and Czar Nicholas to Peter the Great, ending up the size of two apple seeds. The mise-en-abyme technique together with the onion metaphor is altogether baffling. Last night I was walking back to the apartment With Sash at two in the morning from the metro station after a dinner party by the train station where all the homeless people sleep. And by all, I mean two. The city has cleaned up its streets. It is so starkly at odds with Romania. I’ve seen three stray dogs total and only two cats in the street. The rabid consumerism fuels the economy and the economy in turn fuels the people shoving their way through the massive shopping malls better than Red Bull and vodka together. Everywhere there are bright lights, tall, beautiful buildings and similarly tall, beautiful women. One of the drawbacks to my comparative dwarfism is that I cannot find socks that fit except in the children’s section; adult stores don’t sell any sizes under 38.
Now I’ve gone from buying my persimmons to socks. This whole stream of consciousness jaunt could really get me into trouble if I were a foreign spy or some such. Or in journalism in these former Soviets states. The news outlets receive lists of what they are to cover each week. And each outlet employs censors whose job it is to go through each article or clip or radio broadcast before it airs to make sure nothing slips by. Nothing is disseminated within Russia that isn’t first approved by the Kremlin. The absolute lack of journalistic freedom chafes and I can’t even read the papers. I would feel like I'm being tumbled about in a basket, punching the sides, trying to find purchase when I keep slipping. Still. Sasha plays a game with her editor, phrasing things a certain way to see what she can slip by. It’s ingenious; she was born to play a guileless reporter telling it like it is with enchantingly zany turns of phrase that skids under the censors’ radar until that day when she is forced to flee. But why? This, she cries to the four wings on the cliffs edge before scrambling down and boarding a steamer bound for the free lands. Not that I could give anyone directions on how to get there.
Now why am I even thinking about journalistic censorship when it makes me so incredibly frustrated? Because I have a job interview tomorrow and I already know I’m not going to take the job if they offer it. I wouldn’t last a week.