spoiled

you’re spoiling me. it scares me when you do that. i know you. i know you like me to be scared. i know you like me to lose guard. i know you like me to want more. i know you like me to feel in control. i don’t like being spoiled. i don’t like being off guard. i don’t like wanting more. i don’t like feeling in control. i don’t like changes. i like you.

red

you are crossing a street. you feel blinded by the red beam of a traffic light. your fingers feel numb, your legs, your toes feel numb. your head feels wet, you are not sure if you are sweating or if it’s raining. all you see is red. you hear silence.

dark

what creature are you? your eyes change color when it becomes dark, you facial lines change directions, your lips change shape. as soon as the moon shows up, you look different, you act different. i like you this way. i like you when it’s dark. i should never tell this to you.

girl

a teenage girl is sitting on the steps of a brownstone holding a cell phone and a yellow balloon smocking a cigarette. a garbage track comes by. she gets up. she throws the cell phone and the yellow balloon in the track and walks away. she keeps walking down the street. you stand and keep watching her until you can’t see her anymore.

recharge

do you feel gloomy? do you feel tired? do you feel worried? do you feel worthless? load gogol bordello to your ipod, put on your sneakers, go outside. see what happens.

dehumanization

when i was young learning about the holocaust and then stalinism, i always felt tremendous sense of tragic horrible mistake. there were oppressed and oppressive, and it was obvious to me who was good and bad. what i could not understand was how millions of others were able to coexist with what was happening. how so many people could have been so wrong, how the world could have been different if they were voicing their thought and fears. i understood they were afraid to tell the others, but i could not understand why would they think the others were unlike them. i thought that the conversations could have caused a public riot, could have changed history. i could not understand how so many people could have been so wrong about human nature. i thought human nature was to be kind, to not kill, to be honest, to expect the same of others.

later i came to think that the human nature is to let to be brainwashed by the one with the most power or the most oratory skills. later i came to think that the human nature is to let others decide on important matters concerning others. later i came to think that the human nature is to avoid getting to extreme or dangerous situations. it is in your nature to want to stay away while you can in hopes to protect yourself if you are neither a humanity hater, nor a wannabe superhero.

i also realized the human nature is to adapt to any given situation regardless how far off it is. the more dehumanized a person gets, the more impossible it is for him to describe or mentally relive the experience. the more extreme, inhumane conditions are, the more similar oppressed and oppressive become. both act their best based on what they’ve got. something made the oppressive to take the job. he acts his best with being one. unless he is a true killer or incredibly brave, the best he got is blocking it out. something made the oppressed to be captured. he acts his best with being one. he acts his best to survive, he acts his best to block it out.

the reader movie is the inspiration for this post. an uneducated simpleminded 20 year old girl, probably an orphan, becomes ss guard. she is not a hero, she is not a killer, she just does her job well, she guards. here is another young girl – she is there because she is captured and she is jewish. she is not a hero, she is not a killer, she tries to survive. you see a sad lonely old woman in prison, and a successful park avenue bitch, and does it look like justice or does it look like a sequence of more or less random circumstances that can happen to anyone?

yourself

can you say that you know who you are? can you say that you know the truth about your desires, behaviors, reasons, and motives? do you feel like each day alters your personality somewhat? do you feel that today you are a bit different person from whom you were yesterday? your life is so busy, you spend it in conversations with people around, you talk to them the way they need to be talked to, you talk to them about things they need to hear. are these your words? are these your thoughts? did you have them before? do you remember what did you want to talk about? do you remember what did you want to hear? does not it feel like this hustle takes you further and further away from yourself? can you keep up with knowing yourself? can you keep up with defining yourself? you feel like a giant snake trying to collect yourself, get your thoughts together, but by the time you locate your tail, your head is some place else. you go home after a hard day at work trying to find your inner balance, your peace, but by the end of the day you are either so tired you drop dead asleep or you go wild and get busy having sex. either way, tomorrow arrives, and your head is another foot further away from your tail.

turtle

my friend and i are walking on campus. we see a turtle. it looks so cute. i want it as my pet. we take it to the next class and let it go around the classroom. everyone has fun, especially the teacher. the teacher is so cute, all the girls flirt with him. he flirts with my turtle. i take it to the dorms. i introduce it to my roommate. i don’t know how to take care of it, i don’t know what to feed it, i don’t have time to do any research. there is no internet. i throw cucumber peels and leaves all over the floor for the turtle to eat. i put some water in there. my roommate is bothered by my turtle. my roommate is bothered by the fact i don’t buy herbalife from her. my roommate is bothered by the fact she has no money. my roommate does not feel that great these days. i go home one weekend. i come back. the turtle is gone. the roommate does not admit throwing it out, but i know the truth. i feel uncontrollable sense of anger. i start smoking in the room. i start playing loud music. i start keeping the lights on. i hate doing all that, but i feel the need to. i can’t stand her. she threw my turtle. i go to vacation, i come back. my roommate is gone. she switched rooms. i get another roommate. she is nice. i never find my turtle.

coffee

you place brazilian, colombian, and french coffee bags on the counter. you chew a bean of each. you smile at the thought of brewing all three bags, pouring them in different cups, lining the cups like obedient victims of your experiment, and seeing how fast you can drink them up. you smile at the thought of having your heart jumping out of your chest. you smile at the thought of throwing each cup on the floor upon emptying it. you smile at the thought of cigarette taste in your mouth. you pour a little bit of colombian coffee in the coffeemaker. you put the bags back in the cabinet. you put tinted moisturizer on. you put mascara on. you put pink lipstick on. you put on black wool pants and blue cachemire sweater you prepared the night before. you take few sips of the coffee you made. you leave the cup on the counter. you go to work.


on the coffee subject, i suggest a fun movie by the name of coffee and cigarettes, if you appreciate the beverage. as a matter of fact, i suggest everything by jim jarmusch, especially dead man, mystery train, and stranger than paradise if you appreciate somewhat unconventional witty genre.

true story about how i got my driver license

here i am, finally in new york. i did it, i made it here. eventually i will need a job, but for now for the first few months i am going to attend english school for free. this is my first week here. my father is overly neurotic. my father says i need to get a driver license. my father says i need to do it right away because a) i have time now, and b) a driver license is the most important form of id, and i should get one. i have never driven a car in my life. i have never paid any attention to others driving. obtaining the license process consists of two steps – answering multiple choice questioner and the actual driving test.

i need to focus on the written test right now. i can do it. i just need to study questions and answers. they allow you to take the test in russian, so it should make it easy. i study for few hours. next day i go to the motor vehicle department. i am not sure how to get there, my cousin goes with me. they ask for my choice of language. i ask for the russian version of the test. i go to the room. i circle the answers. i give the test back. they tell me to wait. they come back. they say i failed. they say i can try again if i want. i do. i get another russian test. i go to the room. i circle the answers. i give the test back. they tell me to wait. they come back. they say i failed. they say i need to come back if i want to test again. only two trial attempts per day are allowed. my english is pretty bad. i tell them in my broken english there must be a mistake. there must be a problem with the russian translation of the questions. they ask me if i want to test in english. i tell them my english is not good enough. i ask for the test in hebrew. they tell me they don’t have one. i yell at them. i ask how can it be possible, how can israeli people be discriminated like that. they apologize. i tell them they need to give me a third chance with the russian test because they don’t have one in hebrew. they agree. they give me another test. i circle the answers. i give the test back. they tell me to wait. they come back right away. they congratulate me. they tell me i passed. they tell me to expect my learning permit in the mail.

i take driving lessons. i am pretty bad. i have no sense of directions in a vehicle. i don’t feel the vehicle i am driving. i can’t parallel park to the death of me. still my teacher thinks i am ready for the test. we go to the test location. my examiner turns out to be an old lady. my instructor tells me she hates when people drive slowly with her. i drive fast. i forget to stop on the stop sign, i am driving so fast. she tells me to stop and parallel park. i can’t do it quite right. she tells me i failed. i take one more lesson. we schedule another test. i get middle aged talkative hispanic male. i smile at him throughout the test. i talk to him. i look at him. i don’t pay much attention to the road. i don’t look to my left, i don’t look to my right. he tells me to stop and parallel park. i can’t do it quite right. the guy smiles at me and congratulates me. he tells me i passed. he tells me to expect my driver license in the mail.

clown

you put your clown hat on. you don’t feel comfortable without it. it is the only way you could come up with an excuse. the hat is an excuse from the expectations of acting by the script. clowns are exempt. they don’t check clowns for faking. one’s content with being a clown is good enough proof. no one in the script can have such desire. they all like clowns in the script. you just have to be a good one. you just have to remember you are a clown.

books

i don’t think it is possible for me to come up with a true list of top 10 books. i can’t favor the same way a book that i loved 20 years ago. and i can’t omit it from the list because 20 years ago i loved it much more than i love my favorite book today. so far, i think, there is a favorite book for each period of my life. here it goes backwards:

10. geek love by katherine dunn
9. diary and invisible monsters by chuck pahlaniuk (tie between these two)
8. letters to milena, and some of the short stories, and some of the castle chapters by franz kafka (tie between these three and i can’t count the entire content of the castle)
7. one flew over the cuckoo's nest by ken kesey
6. arc de triomphe by erich maria remarque
5. the forsyte saga by john galsworthy
4. three musketeers by alexander dumas
3. set of stories about pioneers-heroes by different authors
2. the wizard of the emerald city by alexander volkov (improvisation based on the wonderful wizard of oz by l. frank baum)
1. il romanzo di cipollino by gianni rodari


i am reading a book now (the final confession of mabel stark by robert hough) that can get close to ending on this list as well, although it is highly unlikely to expect it to knock out geek love.

cacophony

a girl on stage is playing violin. it is undoubtful she is trying to pull some avant-garde improvisation here. some people seem to be buying it, but unfortunately for her, in reality this cacophony is pretty pathetic. and unfortunately for me, i can only associate it with sitting on the toilet. wait, there is a person i know, who’s communication attempts i associate with this activity as well. now, this can be fun. next piece of music is starting. next person comes to mind. i like this game. and i have a new friend. and i am drunk. perfect.


talking about music, there is a singer i recently discovered – kt tunstall, who is famous by that devil wears prada theme song. she seems to have some interesting selections that can be good as exercise music and as listen while work music.

text

they say, people experience world around them using mainly one sense out of three – seeing, hearing, or touching/smelling. hearing is obviously my weakest sense. next goes the touching and smelling. i guess that makes seeing the strongest one for me. but i don’t think it works like that. i don’t necessarily like to be presented with images to see. it is much more interesting to have something to build the images off. i like having the material, like text. text is perfect. your image is as elaborate as the complexity of the material you give me. you give me boring text, you simply don’t get an image. work on your text if you care for one. and leave some empty space for me to fill.

fencing

i am watching you through the fencing mask. your body seems trained and exited. i can’t see your face, you are wearing the mask yourself. you are trying to scare me with the tactic screaming. it doesn’t make me afraid, but i really don’t like it. i am trying to hit you. i don’t want you to lose. too bad i can’t see your face, i can’t see the way it moves when you’re attacking me. it would be nice if i could.

walk

i am walking the streets of my city with my best friend. she is walking with me all the time these days. i think she does not trust me to walk on my own. i think she realized i’m going to be gone. i did not realize it yet. she says i will realize it later, maybe few days after i will move. i feel like i have a tennis ball jumping inside my hollow body. what other streets do i want to walk? i don’t know. we walk into an entrance of a random apartment building. i take a stone off the ground. i scrape some words on the wall. they read – everything that is done is done for the best.

я иду по улицам моего города с моей лучшей подругой. она сопровождает меня постоянно эти дни. мне кажется, она не доверяет мне ходить одной. мне кажется, она осознала, что меня здесь больше не будет. я еще этого не осознала. она говорит, я осознаю это позже, может через пару дней после переезда. я ощущаю как будто теннисный мяч прыгает внутри моего полого тела. какие еще улицы я хочу обойти? я не знаю. мы заходим в подъезд какого-то дома. я поднимаю камень с земли. я царапаю что-то на стене. моя надпись говорит – все, что ни делается, все к лучшему.

zombie watch

it is pretty difficult to hold a job that is not a careless 9 to 5 job but also not a job you spend your life at. on one side there is something like self-contained google empire with restaurants, shops, gyms, beauty salons. everything you may need is there for you to enjoy for free while staying productive. you never need to leave, you never want to leave. i wonder if they have dating services on premises. on another side there is a regular asshole 9-5 job at some crappy office where you can have plenty of time for yourself on evenings and weekends. still you feel unhappy because most of your day is spend doing routines you are far from enjoying. you want to make it interesting, you want to be involved. it is not easy to maintain sanity trying to do well at your job without going overboard. going overboard means getting brainwashed and being turned into a zombie. this process usually takes a while to work on you, and you often miss the signals. then it is too late, and you are unable to realize the transformation ever took place. here is the top 10 list of symptoms to watch out when suspecting you’re turning into a zombie at your place of employment:

10. you willingly accept relocation to help out your employer when it interferes with your own life

9. you give away your pet because your long working hours prevent you from taking care of it

8. you are so overwhelmed by the number of meetings and the amount of work that you don’t have time for personal conversations

7. you check your work mail at least 8 times on weekends

6. your idea of lunch is spending 10 minutes chewing dry food in your cubical watching cnn.com

5. emails about organizational restructure make sense to you

4. you’re holding off going to the bathroom until you hit the send button

3. re-reading 80% of your own business emails show you the sender must be taking a happy pill

2. you think of something related to your client or process during childbirth

1. you notice you’re starting paying attention at meetings

rabbit

you are standing in the backyard taking the skin off the decapitated rabbit you killed. the blood is dropping on the ground off your knife. you are remembering petting this rabbit’s nose, looking into his eyes, stroking his years. you are thinking whether you should bake or stew his meat. you swallow your saliva. you feel sudden hunger. you put the rabbit in the freezer. you take ice cream out. it is chocolate strawberry flavor. you put it in a waffle cone. you lick the top.

spam

we all get bunch of spam from people we know. people like something, they think it's funny or pretty, they spam others who don't find it interesting or amusing at all. we all do it. i send spam to you when i like something and think you would like it as well. i don't expect any replies because of the reasons above. i don't get them most of the time. there was a weird pretty uncommon creature in our backyard the other day. my husband took pictures. i sent them to you. everyone replied. some of you said the animal was cute, some of you said the animal was ugly. it does not matter what you said. you did not take it as spam. you were interested. i was interested seeing your replies. was it because you like animals? was it because you found this particular animal so intriguing? was it because you wanted to communicate with me that day?