Notes from Oros (and Other Empires)

We decided to take a trip to the small town where I's dad was born, the elaborated crossroads known as Nineveh, Indiana. Thanks to a spot-on birthday gift from my parents, we had one of those fancy Indiana Gazetteers that has almost every little deer trail mapped (though not always named) for your backroads pleasure. So we headed through the scruffy hills and trailer-dotted valleys of Eastern Brown County, counting somewhere around 5 Confederate flags (one even on a flag pole!). After negotiating some gravel and some surprisingly broad potholes, we rolled into Nineveh. There was a Subway, a nail salon, an lovely but crumbling brick store and a handfull of old houses. The memory I. pulled up about his dad's boyhood there was an incident involving a lawn mower, a hornet's nest, and a literal jump in the lake.

From there, we drove through Edinburgh, a railroad town of some size with a nice downtown, a little block or two of old, three-storey brick storefronts and some neighborhoods of sprawling Victorian mansions. Hungry, we headed back toward Bloomington, only to stop in Morgantown.

Now, Morgantown is following the same strategy as many small Midwestern towns near larger centers of population. Let's call it the Cutsie Strategy: tea houses, lace curtains, painted brick, lots of "Olde" things, a few rough-hew fences harkening back to some anonymous settlers. Don't get me wrong; this is a hell of a lot better than letting things take what seems to be their natural course and fall into disuse. Morgantown, in its chintzy splendor, compared highly favorably to another tiny town we drove through in the area, where the old stone and brick downtown boasted only two noteable businesses: "God's Locker Room" (your guess is as good as mine) and "Miss Betty's Dinner Theater," which had a large pile of white garbage bags stacked next to its entrance.

But back to Morgantown. We went into the only restaurant that was not a bar or a tea room. It was in an old storefront, with little wooden tables and very small glasses of ice water. Our fellow diners reminded me of my childhood, not of how the people I knew would look now, but how they looked back then. White perms, gimme caps, eyeliner, a strange talcumy sweetness, acid washed denim. I. ordered a fish sandwich with fries, and I went for the grilled cheese with a side order of green beans (total bill: $9).

When the plump, older waitress put my food in front of me, I had a distinct memory of why I used to hate many vegetables as a child. The beans were a dark greenish-grey, swimming limply in their own canning juice accompanied by a few errant kidney beans. But the grilled cheese! It was a revelation, I tell you. I bit into the browned and gently greesy bread, right where the dill pickle slices had lain -- a moment of visual interest on a sterile white plate. I felt a wave of physical, visceral memory sweep over me, and, something like Proust, I was transported into the sensation of childhood. It was all so real, not just images or narratives.

I. and I cleaned our plates out of habit. The food, after all, wasn't bad; it was mediocre, that secret Midwestern specialty that has been too often overlooked as a source of identity. The heartland, like the human heart, is not particularly good or bad. In most cases, it simply does its best with what it has.

Yes, things are fine. I always have my reservations when starting a new job, but this place (see rockpaperscissors.biz) is pretty cool. Good clients, interesting music, nice coworkers.

Thank God.

And, as the marquee of a local theater wished us this festive season past, "Have a Safe and Happy Holidays!"

Got to love ol' Bton.

I'm sitting at the moment in a coffee house in downtown Bloomington, THE coffee house where everyone tumbles in eventially, especially on a post-holiday drinking recovery morning. It's still early, and only the 30 or 40-somethings or the mad and lonesome are here. But already, I've overheard some kernels of Hoosier wisdom in reference to a recent film. The conversants were curious why a hippy, granola-ish character had to be from Berkeley. "I mean, come on!" a thin man in a stocking cap exclaimed. "Why couldn't he be from Kokomo?"

By the way, that's Kokomo, Indiana.

I won't attempt to answer this question. But it's something I've been thinking about recently. What is so elusive about the so-called "Fly-over Zone"? Coastal dwellers seem to have difficulty seeing anything out here, except some snarling tractor operators and corn-chewing honkytonkers or whatever.

The days since Christmas have been hard. Nothing on the job front seemed to be coming through, and I hate being on employment tenterhooks. Thankfully, I've since found out that I've got a job, and a pretty interesting one. Ian has also gotten work and is having his first day at the progressive, non-profit daycare center as I write, one of the few daycare centers in our fair land that pays a living wage. So, with our combined incomes, we should be able to qualify for a mortgage and realize our obsession with real estate very, very soon.

Now that that stress has passed, I feel liberated and delighted that we're finally headed in exactly the direction we wanted. It feels like so much is pending -- our music, our garden, our intimacy -- and on hold until we get a place. And I'm going to let you Cali and NYC folks in on the secret of the Midwest: cheap housing. You can have a guy working at a socialist radical daycare center and a gal working as a world music publicist and getting her PhD AND these two bohos can still afford a home and live well!

Right next door to the hippy from Kokomo.

We walked across the wind-swept parking lot to the well-lit Buy-Low. The automatic doors swung us out of the night and into a strange mixed-up version of my childhood. The store was spacious yet silent, and the people there seemed untouched by time. The same platinum blond, fringed and feathered woman scowled distractedly next to a tired plaid-and-moustache man. Their kids had wandered ahead of the cart, investigating the breakfast options. An overweight woman looked at the poultry in surprise. We were visibly different than the folks around us, wearing the bright bohemian markers of class that signalled that we were from up the road. This didn't inspire hostility in the people we passed. There was no real curiousity, either, just the dull awareness of difference and transience. We weren't from there, and that made us no one's responsibility.
The whole place, though glowing with sales, value meals and season's greetings, was oddly low key. I didn't want to talk or laugh too loudly, out of a kind of respect for the overall stillness of that sleepy Saturday night crowd.
When we paid and left, Ian stuck a buck into the little slot in the red Salvation Army kettle near the exit. The bell ringer had his back to us, but he turned around to thank us in a hush, an old man with a sad, round nose and a tweed hat.
Something about the emptiness and slowness of the place struck a chord in me, but not the twang of nostalgia or the lush strings of romanticism. Just an odd feeling of the past echoing through the solid matter of the present, a rumble of the banal yet bizarre life we're returned to here in the Midwest. This melancholy peace.

When Ian and I first got here about six weeks ago, we noticed that everyone, I mean everyone, intoned the same response to the information that we were new to town: "Oh, well, you'll just LOOOOVE Portland." It was as if everyone in the rose city was a victim of mass hypnosis. And I don't mean to imply that they were wrong. Many people do indeed love Portland, and they have every right to.
Those are the people with money or at least a job and some buddies here.
I shouldn't grouse too much. I do have a job of sorts (freelance translating) and my dear Ian found a job, albeit an irritating one, right away. But it's strange: I've been out there, looking for some temp work to help us recover our move-blasted savings and work toward buying a house, but there's none to be found. My odd experience overseas, along with my bizarre graduate degree, seems to really turn people off. I mean, when someone turns you down for a $10 temp filing gig, you have to start wondering. Or when a temp agency just refuses outright to even speak to you after seeing your resume. I try not to take it personally, but geez, people. Just because I speak Russian and study Mongolia doesn't mean I can't be a receptionist while Sandy is out on maternity leave.
So, here we are, surrounded by a bobbing panaply of hipness that we can't afford and that frankly doesn't really interest either of us, working at jobs that barely pay the rent and don't satisfy at all. We don't meet anyone and we don't go anywhere, except to the forest or the shore on weekends, which is nice. We're happy, but it just seems strange to live in a city you barely participate in. We could be anywhere in the U.S. that has decent grocery stores and NPR.
The one thing not really fitting into a place teaches you is what you really and truly need.
I think I need to finish my degree and get a mortgage that won't enslave us both for decades. And I need to go some place really, really square without all this fancypants bullshit where dogs are pets, not lifestyle choices.

So, my life has changed completely.
After a couple months of dating my coworker, we broke up very amicably. Thus ended my expat adventure.
Suddenly, my old friend Ian decided to come and visit in Moscow. It seemed like a horrible, wonderful idea: some guy whom I had had the hots for when I was married but hadn't seen in 4 years or so could come to an alienating, foreign city and live in my one-room apartment with me for several months. What could be more fabulous?
But like many absolutely hairbrained ideas of mine, this one worked out splendidly.
Ian is not a simple man, but he is an aspiring family man. This is perfect: One of the biggest stumbling blocks for the past couple of years has been that most guys I chose to spend time with had little inclination or were blocked by other things (like being married) from pursuing such a direction with me.
Ian is also a musician of no small accomplishment. He spends most of his hot summer days in the apartment playing trombone for hours on end.
Our neighbors love us.
Now, I've finally decided to go back stateside. This time, instead of hustle-bustle New York or dead-calm Indiana, we're opting for Portland, Oregon, with its notoriously laid-back yet cosmopolitanish vibe. Plans are to reproduce, purchase real estate and form a musical project/recording studio. I've resolved to FINALLY write that goddamn book about ol' Buryatia and have landed a couple translation gigs, one of which is related to the Kalmyks' deportation from their homeland to the frigid wilds of Siberia by Stalin. A cheery topic indeed.
Leaving Moscow is hard. It's like a friend whom you've come to love and understand, but who lives a twisted life that is somewhat hellbent for chaos. You feel some relief and release from the burden of sharing its space, but you long for its wild and unexpected ways.

One of the most amazing things about living in Russia is learning how the seasons matter. Even in a hyperurban environment like Moscow, when spring springs, you are bowled over. In the space of a week, the polar wind softens abruptly, the snow melts into nasty, filthy pools, the sun gains surprising strength. Everyone whips off their burden of wool and leather and tosses their hats on the shelf. Lovers kiss on the street, people laugh out loud, and little babies appear, pushed over the now exposed asphalt in heavy-duty buggies.
Everything, in short, changes.
In my life, too, everything seems to have changed. Suddenly, I'm happy and I have more than enough reasons to rejoice. Hell, I even have some to spare.
The guy, you know, the one I was all nervous about. Well, he's a gem. There's no tension at work, and the weekends have become so pleasant that I can't believe it. My work, though sometimes tough, is fascinating, and I work with great and eccentric people. I have enough money, I'm healthy, my creative urge has returned with the slush...
How odd, to be so content in a country on the verge of... what? No one seems to know. But knowing Russia, many rightfully fear the worst.

Maybe I've been in Russia too long.
But life starts to really sink in, at least for me, here and unlike in the States, you start to face life and death head-on.
I was trying to write last night. I have this idea to write a book about my travels, and I got to the section where I traveled with an amazing older friend of mine who passed away about a month ago. I couldn't stop crying, because he knew so much and yet wrote down so little. Much of his knowledge is simply gone. Forever. And I just can't believe it.
And while I love my job, I am fettered by it; I can't just pick up and go through his papers and archives and make heads or tails of my own feelings. I have to go and edit the ideas of other people, who will never know or care about his world.
I keep longing for Buriatia, despite all its ridiculous twists and turns. I have to go back there, and soon.

The oddest feeling came to me as I was walking home in the record-high Moscow snow drifts from work. My fingertips were frozen, and I felt a mild despair. Though this sounds like a contradiction in terms, that's about as close to this mysterious feeling as I can get.
You see, I've been seeing a guy lately. This is a good thing, and he's a good guy. I can easily write that, because it's the truth.
But I'm terrified, in a way I've never noticed before. I've always just blamed what is essentially my own super-WASPy discomfort in getting close to people on my object of affection.
I found myself walking home through white, slick courtyards, wondering why I was suddenly filled with the urge to dis a perfectly good guy and tell him to leave me the fuck alone. Even though I truly want just the opposite: to be close and intimate with this person, to really share my live, yadda yadda.
And dragging my ice-cold legs past the hospital, I knew: I'm fucking gunshy. Which explains my misery these past two years, not that that's much comfort.
Ach! I'll see him again on Friday, and the issues will certainly shift...
Until then, I'll sit here, drink wine, and weep like an artdeco whore.

Tonight, I took a cab home from a visit to my friends, A and S. As usual, A went out with me and put me in a gypsy cab. The guy seemed nice enough, a bit talkative, and took me home the long way, which always makes me a bit nervous (where is this guy taking me, anyway?). He asked me if I worked in finance. This offhand question became very funny in about fifteen minutes.

You see, I seem to have forgotten my wallet stuffed with money at work on my desk.

So we get to my building and I start digging through my backpack, which is stuffed with smelly gym clothes and plastic bags and empty tupperware. But no wallet.

Uh, I say. Wait here... I'll be right back.
No rush, he says.

I do rush, however, and start looking through the house. Sure, I've got plenty of money in various currencies, but all in big bills. So I whip out my flour tin where I toss all my lose rubles and run outside.

He's waiting outside, enjoying the clear night and unseasonably warm air. I count out ruble by ruble and he patiently waits while I dig deeper and deeper into my cannister.

Have a happy Old New Year's, he says after I finally gather enough coin to pay my fare.

You, too, I call. And you thought I worked in finance!

What would you think if some guy was walking you to his place after a night of extensive drinking?
Yes, that’s what I in my misguided horniness thought, too.
L continues to interview me as we meander through the strangely warm, wet night. We talk about politics and I realize that while L is far more conservative than I, he is still very liberal by US standards. His place is in the fancy part of town, through a silent courtyard and up a curving flight of stairs. His apartment is beautiful for a bachelor’s pad and very clean. I’m impressed and ask him about his furniture. He dismissively says, oh the antiques are from my family. His family as it turns out is wealthy, and his off-hand remark and nonchalant tone somehow convey this and that they have been well-off for some time. Hence the polish on both him and his place.
Oh, he says. I forgot about my laundry. He starts pulling wet shirts out of the washer, and I volunteer to help him hang them up in the bathroom. So, there we are at four in the morning, slightly tipsy and hanging up dress shirts.
You have a lot of clothes, I comment.
Really? is the extent of his reply.
After the wash, we sit down on his sofa and he puts on some music and lights a candle. I have my legs over his and I think I started to give him a kiss. He tolerates this for a moment and then says, would you like some cocoa.
Cocoa? I’m thinking. What is going on here?
I’m not sure if I have any milk or not…
Uh, I had better have it without milk. I can’t eat a lot of dairy.
Okay, he smiles and heads off into the kitchen. I wish, friends, you could see my face in this moment. I am confused but very intrigued and actually strangely flattered. I am puzzled and relaxed and yet nervous that I have somehow made L uncomfortable. He comes back with two huge mugs of cocoa and we sit there drinking it. We talk more (we seem to always be talking). Eventually, the conversation turns to sleeping arrangements and I, feeling which way the wind is blowing, volunteer to sleep on the couch. He laughs and calls me noble, and suddenly lifts me up in his arms despite my protests that I am very heavy and plops me down on his bed. Whoa, I think, maybe I don’t know what this dude wants.
He puts on his pajamas.
That blew me away and I started to giggle. So, do you always bring girls home and give them cocoa?
No, he said matter-of-factly, this is the first time.
I later found out that this is not completely the truth. Apparently, one of the other stories L’s friends tell about him is how he brought a girl back to his place and started reading to her from a book about the Finnish Winter War. But perhaps there was no cocoa involved. And I guess Finnish history in Finnish would be lost on me.
Anyway, I ask him for some pajamas, too, and he hands me a t-shirt long enough to be a mini-dress. We somehow manage to fool around a bit, but everything is restrained and still. Then we fall asleep. Oh well, I think, maybe tomorrow I’ll just jump his bones…
Not surprisingly, I woke up disoriented and aching to be touched and to touch him. I run my palm over his chest and feel something very familiar, a feeling from some half-remembered dream. He is smiling in his sleep.
We walk around the Helsinki harbor, which is really beautiful even in slushy weather. He asks, if you lived in Helsinki, you wouldn’t come here for a stroll on Sunday mornings, would you? I answer, yes, I would; I love to walk and I love Helsinki harbor. He nods, filing yet another piece of data away for what he would later call my profile. I’m being audited.
He is always fielding SMSes as we talk.
We go into a café right on the water and have coffee and the Finnish equivalent of a jelly donut. They are coated in sugar and we get it all over our hands and faces. L is unfazed. You have sugar in your eyebrow, I note.
It’s very fashionable, he answers.

Basically, for about twelve hours, I found myself in a Beckett play, albeit a very pleasant one. I still don’t know what to make of this L, nor do I know what to do with my feelings of attraction. I am still puzzling over the game that we played, which was far more amusing than a one-night stand. He was never anything but kind to me, but I can’t help but think that after he dropped me off at my friends', he got out of earshot and cracked up. I can recalculate and juggle the facts, but nothing clear emerges. He commented, right before we said goodbye, that my views of sexuality were more liberal than his and he hoped he had not disappointed me. And yet… and yet… cocoa? The Winter War?
It will be good to get back to work and not have so much time to think about this problem. I feel like a stupid teenager, staring at my shoes, thinking, gee, does he like me?
If this is how 2005 is starting out--gay guy jumps my bones, while straight dude serves me hot beverages-- then I am very very afraid. Another completely wierd year...

The shock of Finland after Moscow’s violent and mad New Year’s felt like a cold hand gliding over the skin. The large, still taxi slid in darkness past remote and lonely lights, slowly multiplying and joining into a net of glistening streets. At first the jumble is disorienting, but then becomes familiar and orientation emerges from the silent clutter. We pull in front of my friend’s place in the working class quarter of Kallio and he pokes his head out the window and tosses down a key to the front gate. Soon, I am sitting across from him, smoking the duty-free cigarettes I brought with me and sucking down screwdrivers in hopes of catching up with him. He is already (or still) drunk, you see. Outside, a streetlight strung between the stern buildings bobs quietly. After hours of conversation, we do an interpretive dance to Kate Bush, singing at the top of our lungs, and somehow end up making out on the wooden floor. There would not be anything that odd about it, if he weren’t totally and openly gay.
Fortunately, we’re good enough and old enough friends to talk about it openly the next morning.
I spend the next day hungover, wandering around the Sunday-quiet center of Helsinki until it’s time to meet my other good friend, Liz, an amazing American woman I know from Bloomington. People are calmly wandering down the spotless streets, past the glowing shop windows, and the air smells like salt. Clouds stream off the Baltic, swift as mountain rivers, and dampen the light, subduing any color except red. While I’m waiting under the Stockman clock, another acquaintance wanders by with her boyfriend. Helsinki is a very small place.
Liz and I wander around, talking up a storm, and end up at a little bistro on the fancier side of town. We’re sitting eating lunch and drinking wine, blabbing on and on (much has changed for both of us since we saw each other last). Suddenly, I notice a tall, dark-haired and distinctive guy walk in and look around. I realize I’m on the verge of staring at him when Liz turns and says, hey! L!
I have already heard about L, one of Liz’s single friends. He is famous among his friends for being unpredictable and a bit odd, despite his rather mundane professional life. The story I was given as proof of this quirkiness involved a party at an ex-girlfriend’s place where L was evidently bored and very drunk. He suddenly got up and attempted to roll up the rug and throw it out the window. On the third try, he succeeded. The young hostess was not amused, aparrently. But I sure as hell was.
The tall, dark guy comes over and sits down at the table next to ours and I try to determine if he is handsome or not. I can’t seem to do the math and am nervous that my calculations show on my face. Liz and I continue our flood of banter. L looks on quietly, finishes his beer, and politely says goodbye.
I hope we didn’t make him uncomfortable, Liz says. The fact is that his presence made me uncomfortable. The bottom line was that I was attracted to him.

Skip ahead several days. Liz, her boyfriend, and I are invited to dinner at their friends’ place. The hostess, a woman my friends find distressingly dull, is fixing elk. Her beau, an old friend of Liz’s, is cracking jokes that get sharper and wilder the more whiskey he gets in him. L shows up an hour late with a flower for Liz and the hostess, who recently had birthdays.
After dinner and dessert, we head to a Kallio bar to sing karaoke. The place is filled with slurring drunk Finns singing sentimental favorites and bad arrangements of old rock songs. We drink and drink, witness a bar brawl (I barely noticed it after Siberia; it was so lame). L starts asking me questions. This is what L does, apparently, with chatty gals. He asks questions. They are polite but all slightly odd, not provocative, but strangely probing. I feel as if I’m at a very unusual job interview, only I have no idea what position I’m actually interviewing for. I ask him questions back, and he replies in the almost deadpan way Finns have. He listens in a similar spirit, evaluating, tucking away information, but not judging. The combination of subdued voice and steady ear makes me speak candidly. After a couple drinks, I realize ah fuck it I’ve got nothing to lose. I might as well be what I am, and let this guy think what he will.
We sing our karaoke songs, drunken men and women reeling around us and shouting incomprehensibly.
The bar closes, and we go back to Liz’s boyfriend’s place to drink the duty-free vodka I brought from Russia. The conversation gets more and more lively and strange and zany and free. The laughter climbs higher and louder. I find myself sitting on the couch next to L, and the questions continue.
He insists that Liz and her boyfriend want to go to sleep, even though they are sitting in the kitchen and discussing the boring girlfriend with their friend. Their animated voices carry into the hallway.
Why don’t you come to my place?
I grab my coat.
We walk through the throngs of people in the center pouring out of the emptying bars. He takes my hand in his gloved hand. He actually looks really sharp: he has a pale grey cashmere coat and a slight limp and a gentle smile.
After a pleasant half hour walk, we get to his place...
[to be continued]

My friend and I threw a 30th b-day party for ourselves at the apartment of a couple of friends. It turned out to be pretty fun, though I have to say that I have realized how much I hate organizing these things. After my first week at work, I was so wiped out that I could barely make it to the party. I had spent most of the afternoon trying to rest so that I didn't feel like fainting from exhaustion, and then running to catch a couple Buryat friends before they took off for Ulan-Ude.

By the time party time rolled around, I was okay, more or less. I hired my buddies Namgar and Zhenya to play, and the Buryat Antiministry of Culture showed up in full force, as did my dear contingent of gay businessmen. We drank, listened to the music, danced...all that. The Antiminstry then dragged me off and I wound up peeling potatoes for a crowd at 2 AM, slightly tipsy but still able to wield a knife.

I missed something amazing back at the party: an unnamed guest got piss drunk and shaved his head in the bathroom. This is not the first time someone at a party at these friends' place has gotten wacky on the sauce, though this was the gentlest and silliest of all the incidents. I think the only harm done was a slightly clogged sink.

I guess the party was a success, by the amount of stuff left at my friends': a pair of kid's shoes, jewelry, a cellphone, and heaps of flowers (my bad).

If only there had been someone to flirt with... but alas! I am surrounded by the gay and the married. At the moment, this depresses me profoundly. Sigh.

I had a very odd evening yesterday that I completely blocked out of my mind until this morning. As I was walking home from work around 9PM, I passed these iron gates that lead to a row of garages. They are on a small side street that is a short cut from the metro station to my place. As I passed the gates, I saw these two guys all in black, dressed in the kind of style typical for private security guards or rightwing weirdos (the street light is bulbless at this spot so it was dark). Right as I passed they came out and walked behind me. Needless to say, I was not about to take any chances, and I think my paranoia was slightly enhanced by my stressed out state. Anyway, I started to walk as fast as I could over the slushy uneven sidewalk. They were behind me all the way home. Creepy encounter one.

Then, as I walk into my building, I am greeted by my landlord (creepy encounter two). My dear friend had been dealing with him in the past for various and sundry reasons, but now it was my turn. He was a small man with a high, breathy voice and as we came in the apartment for what I thought was a quick monetary deal, he started taking off his hat and coat and then as I sat down at the kitchen table to hand over the rent, started to give me something akin to a shitzu massage on my shoulders. If he had been slimier, I would have hit him. As it was, he seemed harmless and I was exhausted and confused and finally, after he gave me all sorts of wierd and unbidden advice (I usually don't take unsolicited recommendations regarding my health, particularly from people who seem vaguely insane), I stood up abruptly and told him I was tense because I was tired and not because I had a bad diet (my diet, btw, is probably one of the heathiest possible diets, for me at any rate). I wanted to recommend he try working for 12 hours and then being followed by two big, scary men in black down a deserted street. I gave him his money and tried to send him on his way before he told me anything about ESP, detox enimas, or his noble ancestors, or before he once again attempted to say some random word in English. I've noticed this fascinating tendency here: Some folks just love to throw in words from English Step one, Lesson one. Dammit, man, I know what the Russian word for "father" is, and there is no need to say "American" in English. Maybe some English speakers find this charming, but it annoys the shit out of me (and it is also confusing when some English word appears in its Russian-altered splendor in the middle of a complex sentence).

I mean, this dude has a wife and kids and I'm alone? What the fuck.

I dread the next rent day. What next, the conversation about aliens? God help me. Or maybe he will learn two or three other words in English. God forbid.

Uh.
Yeah.
Hm.
Basically, after a twelve-hour day of wrestling with other's words, I find I have few of my own left. It is an amazing thing, to learn how to edit a section in a paper. It's also amazing to watch how the news is shaped and what you can do to shape it. I am lucky: I have more leeway with what I can print and support. The debate that sometimes unfolds is truly interesting, and though I have not had a lot of chances yet to feel this, when a piece evokes a response from readers, I'm really psyched.

The newsroom itself is a fascinating place. The personalities are only starting to emerge for me, but the dynamics are already intriguing. There is the guy who knows it all, and whose knowledge is highly annoying to others. There is the patient copy editor. There is the softspoken photographer. There is the slightly bitter but very sharp reporter. There is the mysterious guy who wanders in and out and you can't seem to get what the hell he's doing anyway. There is the cultured and gentle librarian who asks interesting questions about your native language. There are sad eyes, empty eyes, haughty eyes.

It's all so new and so overwhelming at moments that I find myself breathing deeply and consciously to prevent my mind from spinning off into a thousand directions.

For the moment, I feel like I'm falling in love...
See, I told you. No decent words left.

Here in Moscow, there is a fairly large Buriat community, most of whom one Buriat friend of mine refers to derisively as "Buriat bad-asses," the priviledged or children of the priviledged that are making careers for themselves in Moscow. Yet there is also a handful of other people, amazing folks who are of course here to make money or study or take advantage of Moscow's wealth of resources, but who have a very different view of things. Recently, I got together with some of them as a photographer friend arrived out of the blue on his way to Kiev to hang a show of his work. In typical Siberian fashion, I got a call around 3 PM on my cellphone, and a strange deep voice informed me that if I wanted to see Sasha, I had better come over fast. I did, and met the owner of deep voice, who is a delightful director from the Sayans, his lovely wife and their daughter, as well as another old acquaintance from the theater and my friend and Buriat language teacher, Zhargal. We women ended up making dumplings (buuza) in the kitchen, while the men discussed the future of the Buriat nation in the living room. After the buuza steamed, we all gathered around the table and drank shots of vodka, and soon our conversation was warm and friendly. The actor guy took up his horse-head fiddle and started to throatsing, I sang an Appalacian balad, and everyone went out on the snowy balcony to smoke and talk about art.

The director exclaimed, "We are the Buriat Antiministry of Culture!" And truly, when I looked around, everyone was speaking Buriat (which many folks at the real Ministry of Culture don't) and everyone had amazing, innovative, and creative ideas for how to promote their culture. May Russia be riddled with such promising Antiministries!

One of my good friends, when I announced that I had found freedom here, asked me, so what's it like? Is it all that it's cracked up to be?

Ah, dear, it turns out the answer is "no." Sorry, I mean MY answer. The fact of the matter is that I have gotten a job, not exactly an office job, but one that will seriously limit my hard-won freedom. Perhaps there are people out there who flourish in a vacuum, in a state when they can wander at will and do the minimum and still live actually quite well. Alas, I realized after my time in old Ulan-Ude that I do not fit into the above category, that I like to be busy and engaged in affairs outside of my own head.

The job, however, sounds fabulous. I will be editing the Opinion Page at the Moscow Times, the well-respected local English-language paper. I get to go out and meet people, to translate, write, and edit in/to my beloved native tongue, and most importantly I get to work OUTSIDE of my damn home. I think that working at home, unless perhaps you have a little whippersnapper to keep you busy, is less than desirable for someone who enjoys the company of other humans.

So today, after two days of celebrating, shopping, and going out to throatsinging concerts with old friends (who hide their identity behind steppe rodents!), I am living like a rock star. For me, that means drinking some wine, eating some goat cheese, engaging in graphophilia, and telling everyone to go away. I know, wild, aren't I? I start Sunday, so I'm trying to enjoy every last second of my departing freedom. It was nice knowing you, dear Liberty. Now scram.

Okay, I think I have discovered the stupidest crush for an overeducated efete woman rapidly approaching 30. Yes, it has to do with the fancy-ass gym. Okay, I’ll admit: I have a crush on one of the trainers there. Geez, T, what the fuck? Am I really that desperate?

It all started when I got my free intro to the gym equipment at the fly gym. I was all flustered because I was running late, and started to babble semi-incoherently to one of the guys manning the weights, who then calmly explained to me that he could help me. Now, those of you who know me and my past loves know that I was never really one for muscular studs with big brown eyes, until my last flame who was a fascinating combo of manly man and squishy intellectual. But this dude…I tell you! His eyes were so lovely and somehow so tender and frank. We ended up having a very nice conversation, during which to be honest, I didn’t really notice extensively how fucking cute he was. That only came later, when I was sitting in the sauna and listening to two completely annoying Russian housewives talk about some resort near Moscow. The feeling sprouted slowly, almost imperceptibly, and I thought about him once or twice more as I went about my day.

This fact had an interesting consequence: the next time I went to lift weights, I spotted him and wanted to hide. I tried not to look at him, greeted him with off-handed neutrality, but dammit! That fink came up to me and started asking me how I’m doing, where I got that beautiful necklace I wear… For fuck’s sake, man! Go talk to some of the leggy blondes over there. You’re making me feel like a socially challenged fifth grader, a place I would prefer not to return to. How am I supposed to develop my abs with these stupid butterflies in my stomach?

I’m sure this will pass, as that is the nature of the fancy-ass gym: the servants are lovely, and they aim to please. Even in Russia, where service is not necessarily with a smile. Or perhaps this guy is just bored as all get out with these demanding rich fuckers. As a former service industry employee, I sympathize.

Winter seems to have brought out gangs of slightly bedraggled men in the fabulous orange jumpsuits that various repair and construction brigades wear here. The snow fell suddenly, and will stay of course until April or May, and again suddenly the city had to deal with the dreaded icicles, a clear and dangling danger threatening cars from every eave. I saw a couple orange-jumpsuited men, radios, ropes, and hammers hanging dashingly from their leather belts, point up at a roof and exclaim, “Mother fuck! We gotta get those guys!” I don’t know if they were referring to the icy claws waiting to plummet through the windshield of the used Mercedes below, but they seemed like characters out of some heroic Hollywood film…Icicle Men!

Snow always seemed like a holiday in the States growing up. School got cancelled, special clothing got dragged out of distant closet corners, and wonderful rare games could be played, followed by the most amazingly delicious cup of cocoa with those little dried marshmallows. Snow smelled of expectation in my childhood, coming holidays when no one had to work, Mom and Dad felt like cooking something particularly sweet and tasty, and a fire burned for days in the fireplace.

Snow here rapidly becomes invisible, a mere fact of life that needs to be plodded through, wiped off, cursed at. Something like rain, but less annoying. The streets get cleared (or not—Moscow drivers couldn’t care less), the sidewalks are mires of slush, but whatever. Get used to it. This is going to last for at least four more months. Happy holidays.