both hands

So grey outside, a vast random fog. I hope it is gone by Sunday. I want to drive around in the sunshine under one of those impossibly blue and bright Texas skies. The kind that is endless, makes you want to turn up the music and just keep driving, driving, drive right out of this... it makes me feel good to be in the sunshine on a cold day. So alive, so happy.

St Petersburg is a strange novel. Biely makes it seem so nightmarish, with these incredible colors. Professor L. tells me that Russia has a special relationship with the city, that it is full of ghosts and built on bones. The forceful hand of Tsar Peter dragging his country out of the darkness, building a gate to the West laid out in straight lines. What I wouldn't give to live in such a place, where you can feel the history going back century upon century. I should drag out my massive book on Russian art and culture from the past thousand years... Between Heaven and Hell I think it's called, but I don't remember the author.

When I came back from France, my first thought was "God! Everything is so new and plastic!"

the ground beneath my wings

As soon as work is over, I'm going to go get some groceries. I want to buy groceries.

This weekend should be good. If I declare it in advance, it has to be right? I have much to do. I need to find some Christmas gifts for my family. They are too difficult to shop for, I think I will give them all books.

I want that gigantic Leni Riefenstahl calendar I saw, it's just gorgeous. Lots of stuff from the 30s, and some of her newer work done in Africa. That whole 1930's cult of the body, facist aesthetic is so attractive.

Almost done with St Petersburg now, and I've got to hunt up something else to read. I have The Blind Owl, this queer little book by Sadegh Hedayat. He was an aristocrat from Iran, who apparently helped bring Iranian literature in the world scene.

"Through a series of intricately woven events that revolve around the same set of mental images- an old man with a spine chilling laugh, four cadaverous black horses with rasping coughs, a hidden urn of poison wine- the narrator is compelled to record his obsession with a beautiful woman even as it drives him further into madness."
-from the back of The Blind Owl

I have to read slower so I won't run out of books so fast. I have a stack of stuff to read by the bed. A book about Crowley, some collections of Decadent writings, an Umberto Eco novel, and other things. Got to break out of the habit of reading only Slavic literature for a little while.

Turn the music up, turn it up, so loud on these headphones which are so clear, that I don't feel like I'm at the office, like I'm running under the empty sky, moving, moving so fast, the light in my hands, down over me, take to the sky and the ground beneath my wings has the shadows of sunlight, so close to touching freedom....

out of range

Soon I will be leaving, soon I will be locking the doors and running away from here. Soon soon soon and never soon enough.

Spoke to P. this afternoon online. He was considering making candle holders for the people he lives with as a Christmas gift. I suggested getting candles too. I miss him being around. We've never been apart for so long. Our lives continue, just in different places... it's hard.

I'm making a conscious effort not to drop so many articles and pronouns from my speech. There are no articles in Russian, and you don't say a lot of them in Czech, so... it starts to affect my English. Silly me. My head is full of languages, and I won't get a real chance to use them for another couple of days.

Weekend time. I dreaded this at first when P. left, but I've gotten used to it. I go out to Metro and see some friends, do a lot of the things I never realized I could go out and do if I wanted. Like stay up all night playing mah-jongg if I wanted, or going out during the week, just lots of little things. I can hang out and watch X-Files at someone's house and not feel guilty about it. Which I'm going to do this weekend, and I'm so looking forward to it...

Writing here still feels a little weird, but I think if I use this, it will make me concentrate more on what I'm putting down. I have a tendency not to write things down because they seem too obvious. It's been too long since I seriously worked on my writing. Now that I'm halfway through college I need to start doing that again. Writing was the only thing I lived for a time ago.

The reason I seem so happy is because I am, she said.

I need to make a grocery list before I forget.