A lukewarm, ambivalent, equivocal relationship, with no definitions, too many unspoken words and too much uncertainty. At its best it is comfortable and comforting in its familiarity, at its worst it's got no reference points or indications that it could potentially grow beyond what it is and become something more definite, or rather, definable - that is objectively. And if I were to describe myself in this relationship I would be nice, agreeable, undemanding, yet at the same time slightly neurotic and sporadically emotional (at least at moments when i don't try to restrain myself), whereas he's calm, rational, level-headed in a non-flippant way, nice by his nature rather than by circumstances. This pretty much sums it all up, and yet to elaborate a little more (although I am not sure why I continue this pointless exercise), I'd give it credit for being civilized to the extent that there are no sharp disagreements or unnecessary arguments, let alone fights, and that our differences are reconciled in a quiet, compromising and complimentary way. It's a polite relationship. Respectful. Considerate towards each others' immediate needs and discomforts. And yet it still is what it is - a lukewarm, ambivalent, unequivocal relationship...

...and the question is, what do I do now, that I am finally able to objectively see it for all it is.

One day it will all be a distant memory, Nika, yet I can tell you now, with the supreme confidence of someone who's gone ahead in time to know, that you'll look back on this life and be so flush with love and admiration for yourself, your journey, and who it made you, that you'll wonder, as I do now, how it could possibly have escaped you then.

Maybe this will help.

Your greater-self,
The Universe

Theorem: Every natural number is INTERESTING.

Proof (by contradiction): Suppose there exist some numbers that are not interesting. Then by the well-ordering principle, there has to be a least such number.  But that would be INTERESTING. Contradiction!

Therefore, every natural number is interesting. ■

Consider a simple two dimensional choice dilemma

Suppose you have two choices, option A and option B, A ≠ B. The constraints are such that you cannot choose both. Each one of these options is equally appealing, yet choosing each will lead to a drastically different outcome. Each outcome, in its turn, is just as appealing as the other, i.e. you know that you can be happy with either outcome. An economist, then, would say that you are indifferent towards either one of these choices, since each choice gives you the same utility (fancy word for satisfaction). Except that in real life you’re not “indifferent” in the true meaning of the word, because (i) you can’t compare these choices, since outcomes are so different that we’re talking apples and oranges at this point; (ii) when you choose A, you will never know what it’s like to have chosen B and vice versa. Therefore by choosing A you have eliminated the possibility that you could ever have B (and vice versa). That does not leave a lot of room for indifference now, does it?

Q: How would you make your choice?

Nine millions bicycles

Every time I see Sevada, no matter how long it’s been and how much catching up it involves, our conversations always end up with discussion of music - about how we can no longer bring ourselves to listen to Zeppelin; about the immortality of the Stones and the fact that Mick Jagger might just as well be the sexiest man alive; about the merits and demerits of the new U2 album; about our lack of interest in “sad bastard” music and how instead of falling for the next generic alternative band number one hundred and eleventy six, we are now slowly switching towards the mellow, more ear pleasing tunes of the newly found and (relatively) less famous and nonetheless favorite artists of ours… These type of discussions inevitably lead to grand music swaps of sorts, although long gone are the days when we’d trade Sonic Youth for Pearl Jam (! Sonic Youth, by the way, sucks. I don’t know what business I had listening to it in the first place).

Sevada seems to be into chick music these days. I am not a particularly big fan of chick music – too loaded, too emotionally charged for me. But then, sometimes there is just that one song that is so perfect in its simplicity and so harmoniously melodic that I can’t stop listening to it over and over and over again…

More on Katie Melua here.

Oh the wonderful world of possibilities

Sometimes I wish I could get a contractor job with the State Department and move to Armenia on some kind of a foreign policy “mission”, taking the boy along with me, and he would teach history to the embassy brats and do whatever else historians do when they are in a country full of history, and we would live the good life of pretentious expats and scout out neighboring Georgia, Turkey and Russia on long weekends…


At other times I want to just say “Fuck it” and apply to the Math PhD program here at VCU and stay in Richmond forever (or at least for the foreseeable future) without having to move or think about anything else but being happy and content… But then they tell me stuff like “You could do better than VCU. You should try to do better than VCU,” and that makes me want to smack people in the head because the fact that a VCU professor would tell me to go to a “better” school appears to me somewhat disturbing…


I know that between these two options there is a world of other, infinitely many possibilities. I also seem to have a much better idea than I did before about where I’d like to be in the next five/ten years. And yet, even though the shortest distance between point A and point B is always a straight line, that’s not how things usually work out for me, as far as choices are concerned… And this is just a tiny glimpse of the kind of an ongoing debate I have been having with myself that I am sure will be reappearing here on a more or less regular basis.


I do find it rather ironic that of all subjects in the world I chose the one that deals with decisions and choices while being the worst type of person whenever decision making is concerned. I wonder whether I need to really see someone about this…

A gentle reminder (to myself) about the importance of staying humble

Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the Universe.

Kurt Vonnegut

In about an hour I will be heading to class and life, as I have grown to know it during the past couple of months, will never be the same. Here's to the end of my summer indolence and to finally starting to have a thing or two accomplished. Frankly, it was starting to get a bit ridiculous around here.

On birthdays and things...

There’s a part in my favorite childhood book where Smidge and Karlson are trying to split a peach. They need a knife to cut the peach in half and before Smidge can fetch it from the kitchen, Karlson quickly finishes the peach and hands him what he calls the best part of the fruit– the big and sticky pit.

‘I always want you to have the best bit,’ he says. ‘If you plant this pit, you’ll get a whole peach tree stuffed full of peaches. You’ve got to admit I’m the world’s kindest Karlson, not making a fuss even though I only got one miserable little peach… A whole big peach tree! Think of that! At your fiftieth birthday party you’ll be able to give every last guest a peach for dessert, won’t that be nice?’

This has long become one of the favorite skits of my family. Recently, as my brother handed me the sticky pit of the peach that we were enjoying one afternoon, I caught myself thinking about how lovely it would be to have a peach tree on one's fiftieth birthday. “Let’s try to figure out when we’re going to celebrate our fiftieth birthdays,” I said, without putting much thought to what I was saying. “What an idiot you are,” said my brother before I realized what a retarded thing I had just said. “We’ll celebrate them tomorrow, how about that?” he continued, bursting into laughter. This is the part where those of my readers who think that I have even an ounce of intelligence are kindly asked to reassess their prior beliefs…

***

I was born on a cold Thursday, ten days after John Lennon was shot (you do the math). Nothing particularly significant about the day, except that it was the day when my grandfather got his license suspended when trying to rush my mother to the hospital. A day before my birth doctors had reassured my mother that I wouldn’t be due until a week after New Year’s. And were they all wrong! It is also worthy to note that I was supposed (expected) to be a boy. In fact, they were so sure about it that nobody entertained the fact that there’s a fifty percent chance of it NOT happening and when I came out of the womb without a penis, everybody assumed that it (the penis) got lost in the dark and murky corners of the birth canal. And since nobody had bothered to come up with a suitable name for a girl, for the first couple of months everybody called me Bob (or so they say). Eventually my mother named me Shushanika after her grandmother who wasn’t really her grandmother in biological sense, but that’s an entirely different story altogether.

I was never particularly fond of my birthday. And the older I grew, the more apathetic I became about the whole thing. It’s in an awkward time of year – cold and crappy. It’s a week before Christmas when the last thing one needs is to worry about celebrating a birthday. As long as I have been in school, my birthday has been during the most inappropriate time of the semester – right amidst the finals. Add to that the fact that I’m not usually big on birthday planning and you got the most boring birthday one could possible have year in year out. I am not sure whether it’s the lack of planning that makes me feel so apathetic on the day of my birthday or the other way around, but the long short of it is that I HATE THE TIME OF YEAR THAT I WAS BORN. I don’t think I could be more emphatic about it.

To correct what I perceive as fundamental injustice of birthday deprivation, I have decided to celebrate my birthday any day I want and while I’m at it, why not have not one, but SEVERAL birthdays throughout the year? “Great!” thinks the boy “now I have that many more occasions to completely fuck this up,” as he tries to convince me that there’s nothing wrong with the day I was born and that I can’t just randomly have a birthday whenever the hell I want. So for those of you who have a problem with the term “birthday”, you can call these days “Nika Days”, “Nika Appreciation Days” or whatever have you, as long as there are red balloons involved.

So today is one of those days when I let myself and others around me “appreciate” the fact that I, indeed, exist. This is actually the main idea behind the whole thing – celebration of being rather than becoming. After all, what’s the point of it all if I can’t indulge in occasional frivolity like this? And if you’re looking for a way to show your own appreciation, feel free to have a cupcake or two in my honor, today or any other day you want.

To Whom It May Concern: It's Hot and Humid. A Quiet Richmond Afternoon

And since I can't seem to concentrate enough to produce any useful content of my own, below is a list of links that may catch your attention for the time being:

• I just returned from a trip to Colonial Williamsburg. I can't believe I have lived in Virginia for as long as I have and never visited Williamsburg until now. Some of the pictures have been posted on Flickr account that I have been neglecting for way too long.

• Letter From Tbilisi - it's good to know that someone was finally able to see that Georgia's last year's shenanigans were not only a hot-headed military and strategic mistake, but would also have long-lasting political and economic repercussions on the future of the country. Lets hope that not every Georgetown educated imbecile is in charge of a country. On the second thought - the world might have been an entirely different place now had it not often been the case.

• The financial crisis finally arrives in Armenia, looks around and says: "Has someone already been here before me?"

• On a brighter note - it's good to know that somewhere on the East Coast they make good coffee worthy of such praise. The "drizzle" at Starbucks is utterly undrinkable these days.

• Speaking of coffee - this is how real Armenian coffee is made (Armenian, and not Turkish, I said). And while we're at it, let me give you my own recipe for an absolutely divine version of the drink. Get bulk coffee and grind it at your local grocery store choosing the finest grind (either Turkish or Espresso). I suggest you chose lighter to medium roasts, since the coffee will turn out rather rich and thick. You can also experiment with mixing different blends, including flavored ones (I normally use one third French Vanilla, two thirds Columbia ). Put two teaspoons of the finely ground coffee in an 8oz cup and pour boiled water into the cup, like you would if you were making instant coffee. Let it sit for two-three minutes - the water is too hot for immediate consumption anyway and it lets coffee grounds fully soak in water and settle on the bottom of the cup. Add sugar (and cream) to taste. Once the coffee grounds are fully settled, enjoy (stop drinking though when there's about an inch of coffee left in the cup, otherwise you'd be drinking the grounds). I have noticed that filtering, percolating and even French pressing gives coffee an unpleasant acidic and burnt taste, whereas this beverage turns out amazingly smooth and velvety. A word of warning though - this coffee is very strong, so don't go too crazy with it (a cup of coffee is known to have enough caffeine to kill a horse as you may know it).

• Twelve Weeks to Better Photos by Two Peas in a Bucket - a guide to digital photography that I find very useful as I am trying to figure out a thing or two about my new favorite toy. Time permitting, I am planning to post weekly updates of my digital experiments.

• How to care for Phalaenopsis, more commonly known as orchids found at any grocery store.

• What if loggers ran the world? What can I say - I'm a sucker for commercials in general and this one in particular.

• I really really love this post of Alphabet History.

• It's August and Everything after and although this year I don't have anything new to add to what I already said last year, I am staying true to the tradition and bringing my summers back.

I'm back in Richmond. Things are good. School starts in a week and I can hardly contain my excitement. I have a world of things that I need to take care of during this week:

• Readjust to a normal sleep schedule.
  
• Clean - the former tenant didn't really bother with it before moving out and I've been finding all kinds of dust and dirt in different corners of the apartment. Even though I am not the cleanest person in the world, things like that are really starting to bother me.
• Return the camera that I bought before my trip to Best Buy. This may be the sexiest little thing ever made, but the quality of the pictures (and the frustration that goes along with it) doesn't quite cut it. I think I am ready to leave the point and shoot behind and although I'm still not ready to commit to full blown SLRs, there is something better in between that I can settle for with my hard earned money (and no, I know nothing about photography - I just like taking pictures, good pictures, that is).
• Replenish my supply of quad ruled graph notebooks and gel pens (doing math without these two staples is next to impossible).
  
• Bring King Ludovik (the goldfish) home.
• Straighten a couple of bureaucratic messes that happened while I was gone.
  
• Have a birthday - just because birthdays always sounds like a good idea in general.

I still can't believe how fast this summer went by. It feels like it was only a week ago that I had turned in my last take home exam in Econometrics and was finally able to unwind. I had hardly slept the week before that - now the insanity is going to start all over again.

This semester is going to be harder than the previous ones. I am taking Analysis (otherwise known as Intro to Real Analysis); a graduate course in Ordinary Differential Equations; Panel and Non-Linear Methods in Econometrics and Advanced Macroeconomic Theory. Nerd heaven, in short. I hope I do not pass out from anxiety in the process.

An Open Letter to Yerevan Women

Sometimes I wish that the Fug Girls would move to Yerevan, because the city seems to be in desperate need of a style critic or two. Even if Yerevan isn’t quite the current target demographic of our dear girls, I can assure you that there’s plenty to rant about (just sit in one of the countless downtown sidewalk cafés for half an hour and blogging material is guaranteed for more than a month). But since the occurrence of such an event is highly unlikely and given the grave state of the affairs when it comes to fashion/style related issues of this town, I feel compelled to say what I'm going to say in a vain hope that perhaps someone will finally take notice and spread the word around.

Dear Yerevan women,

I think it’s high time we had a little chat. I wish things hadn’t gotten to this point, but alas. During my last visit to our lovely city I was happy to notice how beautiful, well-dressed and put together so many of you are. I think respect needs to be paid where it's due. And yet, the state of the affairs is such that at least two out of the three of you at any given point give me more than one reason for a “WFT?”, “Did the mirrors in your house stop working today?” and “I can’t believe you spent all this effort to make yourself look like a … hooker.”

It’s kind of sad, you know – sad, because I know that that’s not an accurate reflection of who you really are and because it makes this city feel like a place where fashion has gone awry. Of course I am no fashion critic and shouldn’t be in a position of giving style advice, but there are things that simply can’t go unnoticed. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? It’s the tight, ill-fitting, two-sizes-too-small pants; the see-through, lacey tops (I believe they are intended to be warn as lingerie); the fishnet leggings (really!); the stripper platform shoes; the pancake makeup and the headache inducing bizarre color combinations. Seriously, ladies, do you think that’s an appropriate outfit to leave the house in, let alone wear it to the office? Someone needs to tell you that skank is not the latest fashion trend; that the-less-the-better choice of makeup does a much better job enhancing you natural beauty (and you are, indeed, naturally very very pretty) and while I applaud your bravery to embrace bright colors, try not to look like an eye test in the meantime. You think you can handle this? Cause there is yet another long conversation to be held about venue and age appropriateness of your outfits, you know. Of course I do not expect all of you to turn into a Jackie O overnight (that may not be everyone’s cup of tea, anyway), but there’s got a be a thing or two that one can change in what seems to be the grand circus of Yerevan fashion scene. I have to admit though that that’s exactly what makes people watching in this town such a fun exercise. Bonus point if the Fat Bastard is around.

With best regards,

Your estranged compatriot

My brother listens to Elvis Presley in the morning before heading to work. I can’t think of a better way of staring the day…

***
My stay in Yerevan this time around has been very quiet and rather uneventful. Aside from family oriented stuff, my little vacation has been somewhat lacking (for the better of it) as compared with the previous years in the sense that, thank god, no weird shit happened during this trip. I consider it an upgrade. Blame the fact that at this day and age I do not think that bar hopping is going to give me anything that I haven’t seen or done before, blame the fact that I am way too old (and jaded), but these days I rather spend my evening drinking tea in a small company than take Peace Corps on a field trip to a local strip joint. So I apologize for the lack of juicy and eventful accounts on my trip. After all, the primary purpose of my visit was to spend time with my family and during the past three weeks I have been doing just that. It was important for me to spend as much time as I possibly could with the two people who I love more than anything in the world, instead of spending a night after another in some sketchy establishments, talking to strangers…

***

Even though I spent most of my time at home, I was able to notice a few of the changes that had taken place in Yerevan. In the past these changes were hostile and discordant; this time around they were no longer sharp and drastic - it appeared to me that life here has acquired some kind of regularity. People appeared quieter, more relaxed, each busy with their own lives, whereas I remember feeling in the past as if everyone, myself included, was living in some kind of silent hysteria – there was a kind of tension in the air, everyone was in a state of perpetual expectation... I found this new sense of ordinariness, this quality of regularity of life in Yerevan comforting and reassuring, even though I knew that I was no longer a part of it…

***

I will be leaving Yerevan in a few hours. Leaving this time around is going to be harder than ever, mainly because the older I become, the more connected I feel with my immediate family, yet the further I grow geographically. I have also come to realize that my life as I know it – school, work, the person who I love – it’s all in the States, yet a big and an equally important part – my family - is here in Armenia, miles and miles away. What makes it even harder is knowing that my brother will be leaving in a month as well, to start graduate school in Europe and my little family will be scattered all over the world. As an older sister, I am, of course, worried. But I am even more worried about my mother. And I will miss them both, very dearly.

Leaving Yerevan has never been easy, but this time around it is even harder…

It's been a week since I came to Yerevan

and during this time I have:

• Eaten my weight in tomatoes and apricots.

• Practically given up drinking carbonated beverages.

• Run out of the five packs of Marlboro Ultra Light Menthol that I brought with me and am not experimenting with brands available here, which is usually a hit or miss type of exercise. Menthol anything, let alone Ultra Light, is nowhere to be found in these whereabouts, so it’s usually Winston One, Kent or Davidoff White depending on the mood - the latter when I am feeling particularly fancy and pretentious.

• Somehow lost my favorite blue sapphire ring that my mother had given me on my 21^st birthday. I think the ring was lost sometime during the trip. Although it wasn’t an expensive ring per se, I had gotten really attached to it. All my efforts to find a suitable replacement at local gold markets proved to be fruitless, so I am now working on making a sketch of the old one so that a goldsmith can make a new one that comes as close as the one that I lost.

• Realized that running four miles in Richmond, where elevation is 50m above the sea level translates to 2.5 miles here before my muscles get all cramped up in 1200+ meter altitude. I am improving – very slowly, in hopes that this mock “altitude training” will give me that extra push that I need when I go back to Richmond. My endurance past the 4^th mile is practically non-existent.

• Spent insane amounts of time talking to my mother (our conversations can switch from petty gossip to the genetic significance of meiosis within a blink of an eye).

• Went to a small show at a local club to realize that the rock scene is no longer what it once used to be - perhaps for the better of it.
  

• Realized that despite the recent abundance of pub-like establishments, nothing will ever come close to replace Cheers.

• Discovered that the nightlife of this town has long lost its appeal that it once used to have on me.

Where I allow myself a couple of unpopular and politically incorrect utterances

A while ago, during that crazy year that I spent in Yerevan, a friend and I were having a conversation about feminism and women’s liberation in Armenia, during which I allowed myself a statement that might be perceived as arrogant, ignorant, unpopular and perhaps politically incorrect.

“Armenian women don’t want to be liberated. Those who do, have already done so, quietly and without the fuss.”

“So you’re not going to be a part of women’s march of burning bras and all?”

“No, of course not.”

On March 8 of this year (the International Women’s Day) The Women’s Resource Center of Armenia and a bunch of other NGO’s organized an event, or rather, a burial rite of the infamous “red apple” – a traditional and symbolic representation of women’s loss of virginity to their husbands. The Armenian tradition prohibits pre-marital sex (many societies do). The red apple symbolizes the blood that comes after a woman’s hymen breaks when she has her first intercourse with her husband. The tradition is that the morning after the event, the mother of the groom collects the sheets that are stained with that blood and hangs it outside her house for everyone to see that their bride is indeed a decent and honest woman. The groom’s family then sends a red apple to the bride’s family as a way of saying thank you for giving them a decent and honest woman. The participants of the burial rite claimed that this practice is demeaning to women and is a violation of their human rights.

Whether this tradition is barbaric, demeaning or whatever, you be the judge. The truth is, this particular event did not and never will put an end to this practice. I will go as far as say that perhaps there is even a need for this tradition to exist – a point that should be elaborated a bit. The tradition does exist. Many families choose to adhere to it – out of respect or even some sort of necessity. And yet, there are many women (and men) who have made a choice not to follow it out of their own personal beliefs and out of a same sort of necessity. But the latter do and have done so without the aforementioned fuss – it’s a personal choice, after all, that shouldn’t be turned into a spectacle. Giving it a feminist twist, projecting one’s own opinion on the tradition itself (even if it’s coming from a civil society organization) is no less arrogant than the statement that I had made a few years ago (I still choose to stand by it, for a matter of fact). Calling it demeaning, shameful, etc. to an extent where a bunch of artsy folk have to organize a burial rite is nothing but giving all women of this country a collective mentality of a victim. Armenian women are much better than that.

* Picture courtesy of Queering Yerevan

I love professors who post their syllabi early

Syllabus for Math 532, Section 001, Fall 2009

• Review of basic linear algebra and constant-coefficient differential equations
• Eigenvalues, eigenvectors and diagonalization
• Jordan canonical forms for non-diagonalizable matrices
• Powers and exponentials of matrices
• Systems of linear, homogeneous ordinary differential equations (ODEs) with constant coefficients
• Linear planar systems of ODEs
• The phase plane: Saddles, nodes, spirals, sources, sinks, etc...
• Stable, unstable and center subspaces

————– FIRST EXAM ————–

• Inhomogeneous systems
• Systems of nonlinear ODEs
• New issues: Existence, uniqueness, and maximal intervals of existence
• Stability of equilibria
• Linearization about hyperbolic equilibrium points, the Hartman-Grobman Theorem
• Stable and unstable manifolds, Stable Manifold Theorem
• Lyapunov functions and non-hyperbolic equilibria

————– SECOND EXAM ————–

• Periodic orbits and the Poincar´e-Bendixon Theorem
• Homoclinic and heteroclinic orbits
• Bifurcation theory: saddle-node, transcritical, pitchfork and Hopf
• Introduction to delay differential equations

I have been swooning over this all day. Needless to say, I can hardly contain my overflowing excitement! I fucking can't wait for this class to begin!!!!

***

"Women of this city seem to have gotten taller and prettier," he said, then after a pause, "or maybe it's a sign that I have grown old..."

Women may be taller and prettier than before, but you and I, my friend, are definitely getting old. And it's all downhill from here on.

The white elephants of Soviet architecture

aka Nor Nork 7th massiv.

There used to be a time when my day would start at ten in the evening and would not end until the crack of dawn... There used to be a time when even after having been up all night, I would spend my days walking the streets of Yerevan - the streets that I could not seem to get enough of. There used to be a time when Yerevan felt like a home in its most immediate sense - it's parks, its streets, the little stores and alleys, even the dust- they were all part of a home and I moved freely and with ease knowing that no matter where my day started or where it would end (and my days were known to start and end in the most ridiculously improbable places), I was still safe, at home, as if I was merely in an old room of the familiar childhood home....

My old room has long become my brother's office. It's been almost four days since I've come here and I am yet to venture out into the city. And last year I wrote:

It feels strange to be back here. I feel strange and out of place. I am filled with nostaligia and longing for the old and familiar. I feel the kind of pain that one feels when encountering a loss. I feel like I lost something important and dear. I no longer know my city and I feel strangely out of place.

This time around I know that it's no longer the change of the city, the longing for the old and familiar that's keeping me indoors. I know I have changed - and this change becomes more vivid here, in Yerevan...

Yerevan

Author: Unknown (to me - if you happen to know the name of the photographer, please, please let me know)
Source: here

Things that have been making me smile lately

• My mother. The thought of seeing her. The thought of spending entire mornings with her talking about "ideas", just like in the old days. Watching her cook. The meals that she will cook for me. Oh, the heavens.

• My brother. The thought of the jokes and wisecracks that we'll be throwing back and forth at each other.

• Sevada! I'll be seeing Sevada - the scruffy blue-eyed architect and one of the greatest people in the world.
  

• Blueberries! I bought a big thing of blueberries and for the past two days I have been eating them by handfuls.
  

• Garnier Nutritioniste daily regenerating serum - it does miracles to my skin...

• Running into a woman on my way home as she is walking out of the hair salon from across the street. As she sees me looking at her she breaks into a big smile. "Ah, doesn't it always feel nice to get a new haircut?"

• Watching a couple in the coffee shop. It's late in the morning yet they look like they just got out of bed. Their happy and content faces tell me that not that long ago they were having sex. The peek into their most private life, this air of contentedness around them - for some reason or another it is making me very very happy.

• This song. I don't know what it is about Russian pop music that makes me so happy, but it does. It does...

• The boy. He makes me smile. He makes me smile every day! I am, indeed, a very lucky girl. The luckiest...
  

On Indolence

I woke up early, before seven, without any agenda for the day. The boy was headed to play a round of golf, so after I saw him off, I had the house entirely to myself. I went to make coffee and I sat on the deck, smoking cigarettes, thinking about what I was going to do with my day.

There seems to be this growing sense of discontent among the ‘neurotic, occasionally weltschmerz, intellectual women.’ (T.S.T, I hope you don’t mind my frequent borrowing of this phrase that you coined. I don’t think I would be able to come up with anything else that would describe our lot so accurately and be so inclusive in doing so.) What seems to bother us is how little we do these days with our free time, despite the fact that we see ourselves as ambitious, driven, hard working, etc... Restless indolence – a reoccurring theme, or rather a state that I am way too familiar with. I alternate between periods of intense intellectual work and productivity and periods of complete slothfulness. The latter occurs when my day is no longer structured around classes, assignments, deadlines… The much anticipated break suddenly becomes an unbearable nightmare of sorts, because even if I make plans to do this or that, I know that I inevitably end up not doing a single thing at all… The frustration, the growing dissatisfaction is the worst, since instead of enjoying all the free time for what it is, I keep scolding myself for being such a sloth, for clearly I could be doing something with this time, I should be doing something with this time, I must do something, anything… so on and so forth.

I called my mother to complain. “But it’s normal,” she said, “we all do that. You’re not lazy or irresponsible. You just don’t feel driven at this point and it is not something that you can force upon yourself. When the time comes, you’ll get everything done and I know that you’ll do it well. The only question is whether you make yourself feel miserable in the meantime or simply let yourself be…”

Oh words of wisdom… why is it that I find so little comfort in you…

***
But really, when I come to think about it, I realize how right she is. I can’t force drive and inspiration upon myself. Some people can. There are also those who would read this and laugh – inspiration is not even something that they would question. How I envy them, the kind of folks who know what they need/want to do and do it, slowly, methodically, regardless whether there are pressing deadlines or not. And then I though – urgency, urgency, but of course!

***
On Saturday I had spent my morning and most of the afternoon writing On Women Blogging. It wasn’t easy writing it in the sense that it required the kind of effort and concentration that I normally devote to my math take home exams. It wasn’t easy at all, but really, nobody was asking, let alone expecting me to do it. And yet, I did it anyway. Because I felt that there is this sense of urgency – it was important that I wrote it then and not at some indefinite point in the future. The funny thing is that had I thought about it leisurely, like I think about many things that I want to do, had I put in on some kind of to-do list, I would have hardly gotten around doing it – not within an afternoon, at least. But I did it, anyways… With half the effort and the same time I could have read and summarized four articles for my research project. With even less the effort I would have processed four bankruptcy cases. But the reason that I chose to write the blog piece instead of working on the articles is because I felt the urgency about doing the former, whereas there was no such pressure in doing the latter. Not at this point, at least.

In about a month these damn articles will become a pressing urgency. The anxiety, or rather the itch to sit down and work on the research project will become tangible a little before that. I will spend my days doing little to nothing else but that. I will squeeze in two months’ work in two weeks. I will finish the project – I will finish it well.

My mother is right – the way I spend this time now, the way I choose to feel about this time, or rather, myself, is entirely up to me. I can make myself feel miserable or simply let it be. And since I cannot whip up inspiration out of thin air anyway, I might just as well enjoy it without feeling defeatist about it.

***
I went upstairs, to what I call my hiding room and sat there for a long long time, playing music and looking out of the window. I didn’t do anything else. I didn’t come down until the boy was back.

When I look back months from now at this past summer, one of the things that I will remember is just that – I will see myself sitting by the window, lost in thought yet thinking about nothing in particular. I will see myself in this big, bright, still somewhat empty apartment, moving from room to room without that sense of urgency to do anything else. I will feel nostalgic. I will miss it – being alone in the big apartment, with nothing pressing on my mind and an entire day ahead of me to be spent on doing absolutely nothing. I will miss it because I know that the minute school starts, I will no longer have the luxury of doing just that. I will no longer be noticing these little things about this place that delight me now. I will start going through everyday motions on some kind of autopilot – nothing else will exist beyond that – I will be solving problems, playing with formulas and building models in my head. I will become the person that will once again fit the description of driven, ambitious, hard working. Today there is no need to be that.

***
I spent the rest of the day doing miscellaneous household chores. I cleaned the kitchen. I packed my clothes. Later I cooked dinner…

On Women Blogging (II)

As I mentioned earlier, this blog isn’t particularly intimate. Yet it has symbolic representations of far too many intimate moments scattered here and there, but cloaked in puzzles, riddles and clichés of all sorts to an extent that an outside, uninvolved reader won’t really know what it is that I was writing about when I was writing it.

The habit, or rather, the act of concealing the true emotion, the true source of frustration by something like “Jesus is the fat lady,” “Just leave…” or “A woman alone in a downtown apartment” is perhaps a pathological phenomenon of hiding true emotions, of the fear of speaking one’s own mind to others, especially to those who are close. Pathological because I believe it to be one of the biggest pre-requisites of all my issues and of course, the damn eating disorder.

For example: I spent a great deal of time today rereading the entries of Life In Slow Motion – an alternate blog that I had dedicated to the early stages of a relationship that at the time was full of all kinds of uncertainties and ambivalence. This particular post especially spoke to me. It is nothing but culmination of the great deal of frustration that I was feeling at that time. But instead of coming clean and asking straight out “Where is this relationship going? What is going to happen to us?” I simply sat down and wrote “A lukewarm, ambivalent, equivocal relationship, with no definitions, too many unspoken words, etc.” Instead of asking from that person for definitions and certainty, I simply named the relationship as “polite, familiar, comforting…”As if by writing it that way, by “pinning it down” and “naming” it, I would somehow come to terms with the fact that the relationship was lacking in certain aspects that were important to me. For I couldn’t just straight come out and ask that kind of question, could I? I could not be that girl, could I? I couldn’t possibly put myself in that kind of vulnerable situation, etc… And this is just one of the many examples.

***

Sometime in 2007 this blog shifted gears and became a lighter, more upbeat affair. Partly because I was happier, partly because at the point it was more important to me to make lists of things that were making me happy than write about things that were bothering me. I was reading the Encyclopedia of Everyday Life – perhaps a shallow, somewhat superficial book to many, but at that point of my life I saw some great existential meaning in that – in everydayness (to an extent I still do – I think that’s what I owe my sanity to). So in that light, at that particular point I would rather write about strawberries than the size of my ass. The former was much less problematic, of course. So the loaded, emotionally charged yet carefully cloaked entries disappeared. Perhaps a sign of a healthier mind…

***
There are several reasons why my writing lacks the kind of intimacy that Ptitsa speaks about. First of all, there’s culture. Where I am from there are things that people don’t ever talk about – a kind of Twin Peaks of sorts, actually. Sex, sexuality, one’s questioning of it, all those issues that come with it – these things are a taboo, of course. Then there are other things: Petty gossip aside, women don’t really express the kind of feelings that real women feel – they retreat to their kitchens and start washing the dishes, in silence. One doesn’t talk about one’s own flaws – personal fears and insecurities are usually hidden behind the harsh criticism of everybody else’s flaws, or else compensated by other materialistic means. For example, it’s rare to hear someone say “I was a loving, caring, understanding parent… ” or “I may have done something wrong as a parent…” Instead: “I saw my kids through school, I bought them a car, a house, jewelry, etc…” And even though both me and my family have always felt alien to this culture, some of it, or at least the habit of keeping my mouth shut for the fear of breaking those unspoken taboos, sticking out like a sore thumb, attracting unnecessary attention to myself – I cannot say that these sort of things haven’t affected me at all.

Second, there’s upbringing. I’m not entirely sure whether it’s the fact that my family belonged to the Soviet intelligentsia or there was some other sense of “elitism” surrounding me since early childhood, but somehow this has been engraved in my head that unless what I did or thought had some aesthetic value or some higher meaning, it wasn’t worth talking about at all. At school we were taught to write beautifully constructed, lofty sentences. We spoke about “ideas” – everyday existence, everyday thoughts and experiences were trivial. Even my music teacher would often interrupt her class to let me know that I was playing the piano like a бaзаpнaя бaбa (a woman trading in a marketplace- the lowest derogatory comment one could ever expect to receive from intelligentsia). There was hardly any meaning, let alone aesthetic value in my everyday Soviet/post Soviet experiences (or so I thought). The greatest part of my life I considered my thoughts, my deepest intimate fears, etc. trivial. Hell, at moments of utmost despair I would read physics and cosmology just to make myself feel trivial – a therapeutic means of distracting myself from what was bothering me. For what was bothering me, I thought, was something that only бaзаpнaя бaбa would allow herself to express openly, without giving it some aesthetic and refined form –airbrushing it, in short.

So I guess my writing is airbrushed. Because instead of writing “I hate getting my period – I hate it, hate it, hate it!” I would write this. And instead of writing “I ate a pint of ice-cream” I would say “I feel like a bottomless pit…”. Instead of saying “My pants don’t fit anymore – I’ve gotten fat” I would write “I feel heavy and shapeless. I feel like my body is failing me…” I would rather die than say “I’m fat.” Hell, even now I rather write ”I had an affair” than “I’m fat,” even if there are a whole lot of people who would frown at me in moral disagreement for the former statement and a whole lot more people who would relate to the latter. But I’d rather write about the former, because the former usually has a reason or a meaning behind it, whereas the latter is just that – an exasperation of a бaзаpнaя бaбa. Actually, when I read those kind of expressions elsewhere – be it on someone else’s blog or a book, for that matter, I don’t think of it as бaзаpнaя бaбa at all. I admire it, actually, because I know that whoever wrote it had mastered up the courage, the audacity of saying it as is – something that I don’t often allow myself to do.

And lastly – “Literature is analysis after the event…” Even though I never thought of my writing as literature, I always treated it as such. Both in terms of form and content. The form had to be aesthetically pleasing, of course. And content – it had to be in retrospect – sifted and filtered through first. Small details tend to disappear in retrospect. When looking back, one tries to describe the bigger picture. Everyday details, the ordinary fears get swallowed by a sweeping “… but I was unhappy then…” because in retrospect writing “I was unhappy” seems much more accurate, or rather, appropriate then “I hated myself, I hated my marriage, I never felt good enough, strong enough, pretty enough, etc…” Because in retrospect I can see that it wasn’t the fact that I didn’t feel good enough, smart enough or pretty enough that ended my marriage. It was something much bigger, much more fundamental than that. Writing that I was unhappy would simply put an end to those other, trivial details.

Then there is the whole issue of fiction – or writing about one’s own experiences as if one were writing a work of fiction. Consider an entry from way back (1999 I guess?). “I went to see Dina. She is a wreck. I think the source of her problem is... Etc.”. The whole entry then turns into some kind of a story about her. A short story. The actual event behind the entry is: I went to see a friend. We had an unpleasant talk that ended up in an argument. I found it very disturbing. Yet I chose to omit the details of the argument and my own discomfort and instead wrote about what I thought the source of her problems were in form of a story.

There really is that moment in the process of writing, at least for me, when, as Ms. Lessing says, I cease being me. In order to write about something, anything, I have to first separate myself from what it is that I’m writing about – I don’t know how to do it in any other way. In the process something personal and intimate is lost. I end up with the story that doesn’t directly communicate its main idea, but you can feel the undertones. My whole idea of writing – that is, if I were a writer, is to create those undertones.
All I care are these undertones – my reader can do with them whatever she pleases.

***

My writing does lack intimacy. I tried to explain the possible reasons for it – I am not sure how successfully. Maybe I didn’t address the key issue at all and instead gave something that was not asked from me or worse - hid myself even more. But this is the only way I know how to write and all I can ask my readers is to fill in the blanks that I leave out, intentionally or not. I am human, just like everyone else. My feelings, worries, my experiences, my flaws and shortcomings – they are all common – something we all share. Some do a better job at directly expressing them, others, like me, choose to speak of them covertly or bottle them up entirely. Both are altogether human. Thank you for filling the blanks for me.

On Women Blogging (I)

This is a response to something Ptitsa wrote. I love the fact that for the second time, perhaps unintentionally, she’s gotten a kind of reaction out of me that requires a much deeper insight that I have been having on things lately. A kind of insight that even my shrink couldn’t get out of me (maybe that’s why I stopped seeing her, after all). You know, the funny thing is that I wrote “I love her for the fact...” and had to go back and rephrase it for the fear of sounding inappropriate, since I do not know her… or rather, my knowledge of her is in the form of second degree subjectivity (and yes, I just made that one up – I don’t think there’s a term “second degree subjectivity” although I’ll be as elusive as some of my math textbooks and assume that the meaning of this term of mine is somewhat obvious and self-explanatory). And yet, the riddle she has left me with is not of a kind that can be figured out by consulting the aforementioned textbooks and working it through the steps of some known algorithm (I wish there were a lot more things in life that could be solved through algorithms).

She writes:

I've been thinking about what we do and do not say to each other. I have no agenda with my blog. It's just a release. It's a way to talk when I haven't got an interlocutor. Thus, I'm as candid and stupid as I feel the need to be; what I censor is what could get me in trouble and what I haven't got the time, courage, or ambition to try to write out. But I'm wondering about a different class of revelations. We write about dissatisfaction with our lives and our bodies. But we really don't give enough details. […] Yet I feel that my voyeurism is not motivated by competition or Schadenfreude; rather, the lack of detail in so many of our posts is a barrier to real intimacy.

For the past week I’ve been thinking about writing and my own writing in particular, both in terms of form and content. In fact, I’ve done little else during this week and yet, for some reason, despite the face that I left a world of other things that needed to be done neglected; I don’t consider this time wasted at all. Because the fact that I started writing again is an indicative of sorts that I am not quite ready to give it up yet, even though I have no expectations or any delusions that what I (may) write has any value whatsoever.

When I started this blog back in 2004, I did not know where I was going with this (not that I have a clue now either). I was very unhappy then and yet my posts of that time reflect only a tiny fraction of how desperate I was. Since then, my life has undergone a number of drastic changes, which although documented in some shape or form, lack many details as far as this particular blog is concerned. I was married, but I hardly wrote about what it was like. I left my husband but I never really went at lengths in explaining the true reasons of my leaving. I went back home and spent a year there in recovery and “self-discovery” and yet nothing in this blog truly describes what that year was like. I had an affair with a married man – an event that was never mentioned anywhere in here yet the details of which were carefully documented in a private journal. I spent months in what I call “sober debauchery”; I had a long, difficult, painful and ugly process of recovering from a decade-long eating disorder; I moved to Richmond; I started a new relationship, etc…

And yet, this blog doesn’t really reflect any of that, let alone daily details of my personal life, the long history of my constant dissatisfaction with myself, the different worries, frustrations and whatnots – in short, my writing here is not really intimate, so to speak. My own personal journals - and I have long stopped writing in a journal altogether, aren't any better at all. And yet, when I go over those earlier posts, when I read those short paragraphs, those little snippets that look kind of like Polaroid shots that actually did find a place in this blog, I remember, very distinctly, what it was like then, what I, Nika, was like. I don’t feel the kind of dissatisfaction that Anna does when she reads over her journal entries. What I was recording then, what I was looking for was a documentation of emotional and at times mental states with some kind of symbols, like a photograph or song lyrics, that would be there, like punctuation marks, to remind me what it felt like and not what it actually was.

If I were a writer (and I am not), I would be one of those difficult ones who would expect too much from their reader. Actually, the biggest criticism that I have received to one of the very few stories that I wrote and actually gave to an uninvolved party to read was just that – I expect my reader to do too much work – most of it, actually, I leave too many blanks, omit too many details. Despite the fact that I do see a certain kind of appeal in it and in the past have sought out that sort writing, this lack of detail, lack of intimacy isn’t entirely a matter of literary style.

The riddle I am facing here is a much more complex – maybe I would even go as far as describing it as psychological, linguistic and even philosophical to an extent. I know that I’m not adequately equipped to give any kind of professional explanation to the issue of how we see ourselves and how, as a result of this, we express and portray ourselves through our writing; and one thing I hate more than anything is self-righteous dilettantism. So I will leave the intellectual pursuits aside. I could, however, at least try to look into myself and seek out answers from within, especially since, as I mentioned in the beginning, I’ve been preoccupied with my own writing for this whole week. But I should make it an entirely new post, for this one is getting too long, plus the boy is awake – I have to go and tend to him.

One more...

Since this may somehow have some relevance in the near future...


The trouble with [the] story is that it is written in terms of analysis of laws of dissolution fo the relationship between Paul and Ella. I don't see any other way to write it. As soon as one has lived through something, it falls into a pattern. and the pattern of an affair, even one that has lasted five years [...] is seen in terms of what ends it. This is why all this is untrue. Because while living through something one doesn't think like that at all.

[...]

Literature is analysis after the event.

[...]

To show a woman loving a man one should show her cooking a meal for him or opening a bottle of wine for the meal, while she waits for his ring at the door. Or waking in the morning before he does to see his face change from the calm of sleep into a smile of welcome. Yes. To be repeated a thousand times. But that isn't literature. Probably better as a film. Yes, the physical quality of life, that's living, and not hte analysis afterwards, or the moments of discrod or premonition. A shot in a fim: Ella slowly peeling an orange, handing Paul yellow segments of the fruit, which he takes, one after another, thoughtfully, frowning: he is thinking of something else.

On Doris Lessing

I have talked about her before. I’ve quoted and re-quoted her throughout this blog. I was delighted when she won the prize. She is one of the greatest writers of our time.

A couple of days ago, during a comment-conversation with Ptitsa, I brought her up again. She asked me to elaborate. I made a clumsy attempt, as much as posting a comment would allow. And yet I know that even in a million years, no matter how hard I try, I won’t be able to truthfully describe everything that her writing stands for. Partly because I’m no literary critic, partly because in “describing” something, one inevitably ends up caught in the process of “naming” – making whatever it is recognizable, familiar, safe. Ms. Lessing wasn’t quite fond of that and her writing is anything but “safe.”

No writer has influenced me as she did. No woman (except for my mother, perhaps) has taught me as much as she has. To me, she is the quintessential Mother Sugar (one of her own characters) – the witch-doctor, that voice of wisdom, painfully and blatantly honest and yet comforting at the same time. “My dear Anna, it is possible after all that in order to keep ourselves sane we will have to learn to rely on those blades of grass springing in a million years?”

So as promised, I am posting a few of my favorite passages from The Golden Notebook to let you be the judge.

Because I was permanently confused, dissatisfied, unhappy, tormented by inadequacy, driven by wanting towards every kind of impossible future […]. I don’t think I really saw people then, except as appendages to my needs. It’s only now, looking back, that I understand, but at the time I lived in a brilliantly lit haze, shifting and flickering according to my changing desires. Of course, that is only a description of being young.

…

I read this over today, for the first time since I wrote it. It’s full of nostalgia, every word loaded with it, although at the time I wrote it I thought I was being “objective.” Nostalgia for what? I don’t know. Because I’d rather die than have to live through any of that again. And the “Anna” of that time is like an enemy, or like an old friend one has known too well and doesn’t want to see.

…
Sometimes, when I, Anna, look back, I want to laugh out loud. It is the appalled, envious laughter of knowledge at innocence. I would be incapable now of such trust. I, Anna, would never begin an affair with Paul. Or Michael. Or rather, I would begin an affair, just that, knowing exactly what would happen; I would begin a deliberately barren, limited relationship…

…
I put myself back into the state of mind I was in when I sent to Mother Sugar. I can’t feel, I said. […] When I left her I said: You’ve taught me to cry, thank you for nothing, you’ve given me back feeling, and it’s too painful.

In a world as terrible as this, limit emotion. How odd I didn’t see it before.

And against this instructive retreat into no-feeling, as a protection against pain, Mother Sugar – I remember saying to her in exasperation: “If I said to you that the H bomb has fallen and obliterated half of Europe, you’d click your tongue, tck, tck, and then, if I was weeping and wailing, you’d invite me, with an admonitory frown or a gesture, to remember, or take into account some emotion I was willfully excluding. What emotion? Why, joy, of course. Consider, my child, you’d say, or imply, the creative aspect of destruction! Consider the creative implications of the power locked in the atom! Allow your mind to rest on those first blades of tentative green grass that will poke into the light out of the lava in a million years time!” She smiled, of course. […] She said: “My dear Anna, it is possible after all that in order to keep ourselves sane we will have to learn to rely on those blades of grass springing in a million years?”

[…]
It is possible that in order to keep love, feeling, tenderness alive, it will be necessary to feel these emotions ambiguously, even for what is false and debased, or for what is still an idea, a shadow in the willed imagination only… or if what we feel is pain, then we must feel it, acknowledging that the alternative is death. Better anything that the shrewd, the calculated, the non-committal, the refusal of giving for fear of the consequences…

…

I see Ella, walking slowly about a big empty room, thinking, waiting. I, Anna, see Ella. Who is, of course, Anna. But that is the point, for she is not. The moment I, Anna, write: Ella rings up Julia to announce, etc., then Ella floats away from me and becomes someone else. I don’t understand what happens at the moment Ella separates herself from me and becomes Ella. No one does. It’s enough to call her Ella, instead of Anna. Why did I choose the name Ella? Once I met a girl at a party called Ella. […] She was small, think dark – the same physical type as myself. […] People were drinking heavily. The host came over to fill our glasses. She put out her hand – a thin, white delicate hand, at just that moment when he put an inch of liquor in her glass, to cover it. She gave a cool nod: “That’s enough.” […] She picked up the glass with just an inch of red wine in it, and said: “That’s the exact amount I need for the right degree of intoxication.” I laughed. But no, she was serious. She drank the inch of red wine, and then remarked: “Yes, that’s right.“ Assessing how the alcohol was affecting her – she gave another small, cool nod. “Yes, that was just right.”

Well, I would never do that. That’s not Anna at all.

….

I came upstairs from the scene between Tommy and Molly and instantly began to turn it into a short story. It struck me that my doing this – turning everything into fiction – must be an evasion. […] Why do I never write down, simply, what happens? Why don’t I keep a diary? Obviously, my changing everything into fiction is simply a means of concealing something from myself. […] I shall keep a diary.

Upon rereading her notebooks:

…I didn’t recognize myself. Matching what I had written with what I remembered it all seemed false. And this – the untruthfulness of what I had written was because of something I had not thought of before – my sterility. The deepening note of criticism, of defensiveness, of dislike…

It was then I decided to use the blue notebook… as nothing but a record of facts. Every evening I sat on the music-stool and wrote down my day and it was as if I, Anna, were nailing Anna to the page. Every day I shaped Anna, said: Today I got up at seven, cooked breakfast for Janet, sent her to school, etc., etc., and it felt as if I had saved that day from chaos. Yet now I read those entries and feel nothing…

[…]

I expected a terse record of fact to present some sort of pattern when I read it over, but this sort of record is as false as the account of what happened on 15th September, 1954, which I read now embarrassed because of its emotionalism and because of its assumption that if I wrote “at nine-thirty I went to the lavatory to shit and at two to pee and at four I sweated,” this would be more real than if I simply wrote what I thought. And yet I still don’t understand why. Because although in life things like going to the lavatory or changing a tampon when one has one’s period are dealt with on an almost unconscious level, I can recall every detail of a day two years ago because I remember that Molly had blood on her skirt and I had to warn her to go upstairs and change before her son came in.

…
I think many people have a sense of shape, of unfolding , in their lives. This sense makes it possible for them to say: Yes, this new person is important to me: he, or she, is beginning of something I must live through. Or: This emotion, which I have not felt before, is not the alien I believed it to be. It will not be part of me and I must deal with it.

It is easy now, looking back over my life, to say: that Anna, in that time, was such and such a person. And then, five years later, she was such and such. A year, two years, five years of a certain kind of being can be rolled up and tucked away, or “named” – yes, during that time I was like that. Well now I am in the middle of such a period, and when it is over I shall glance back at it casually and say: yes, that’s what I was. I was a woman terribly vulnerable, critical, using femaleness as a sort of standard or yardstick to measure and discard men without even being conscious of it. (But I am conscious of it. And being conscious of it means I shall leave it all behind me and become – but what?)

Your dose of math nonsense of the day.

• A system of linear equations has either one, infinitely many or no solution(s).

• The link between rank and linear independence is one of the most amazing aspects of linear algebra. The rank shows how many linearly independent column/row vectors a matrix has.

• Two vectors are linearly independent iff they do not lie on the same line.

• All real numbers are linearly dependent – they can be expressed as linear combination of each other; scalar multiples of each other and/or multiples of one (the latter being the case of primes).

• Imaginary numbers are of general form α + βi where i is the square root of negative one. Imaginary numbers come in conjugate pairs.

Some woes on my upcoming trip...

In about a week I’ll be going to Armenia – Yerevan to be more exact. And as it happens before every trip, I can already feel that gut-wrenching feeling of anxiety that I experience every time I am about to visit my own homeland.

My previous trips there were either returning home after a temporary stay the length of which was always predetermined; business, if you one can consider a research fellowship as such; or an escape of sorts and what one might call an act of self-liberation. This time the sole purpose of my trip is to see my family who I only see every year or every other year, depending on how lucky I am.

I am, of course, excited. My mother and my brother are the dearest, my most favorite people in the world. Words cannot describe how much I miss them when I am away. Words cannot describe how happy I am to be seeing them again.

And yet, despite the excitement, despite the long anticipation, the gut-wrenching feeling prevails. From what I experienced last time, going back to Armenia no longer feels like going back home. I guess there really is no such a thing as going back home - how true is that sad cliché...

Going back to Armenia has always been a difficult task – it’s an emotionally charged and rather taxing experience. It’s as if one’s entering a completely different world that has an extra dimension – something so subtle and elusive that it can hardly be described. And yet, it is because I have been away for such a long time, because of my familiarity and simultaneous alienation from my own culture that I become aware of that extra dimension. And that is making me afraid.

The source of my fear and discomfort is the fact that the minute I set foot on that land, the minute I immerse myself in that society, I will, immediately and inevitably be judged on every step I make. I will be judged – not because of who I am and what I’ve done, not because of being unconventional in the traditional Armenian sense, but because that’s what seems to be the default state of my people, that’s what gives the place that extra dimension, the feeling that there is always, always, someone’s eyes on one’s back, the feeling of being watched, talked about, disapproved of…

Is she successful enough? Is she well-dressed enough? How much money does she have? And more importantly, how much money does she spend? Did she gain weight? Did she lose weight? Oh, she doesn’t have kids! Why doesn’t she have kids by now? What ever happened to that husband of hers? Divorced? Oh, she shouldn’t have married that American in the first place. Her mother should have never let her. Poor girl, she’s damaged goods now. She’s still a student? She’s almost thirty for god’s sake! Good lord! Eh, her mother should have never let her go to America. Oh, but still, she looks like she’s lost weight. I wonder what diet she’s on. They usually come back from there all blown up like balloons…

I am well aware that social scrutiny of this sort exists probably exists everywhere, including the States. Especially in Richmond. And yet, the social fabric here has been lose enough and I have been trivially unimportant enough to be able to escape the scrutiny that my own close-knit society subjects me though its magnifying glass…

I remember, most of my adult years of living in Yerevan were spent in resentment and constant effort to defy just that. The resentment was what gave me form, the tension and resistance was what contained that form - in a way that tension defined me. I remember how it felt when I relocated to the States – the absence of tension. Suddenly not having that familiar weight, the familiar tension felt as if there was no gravity. It felt as if I was scattered all over the place… It was as if I had to learn, all over again, who the hell I was – or rather, it felt as if I had to redefine and build myself from scratch, this time, without including the resentment into the equation…

The fact that I feel like a stranger in my own home can be understood. The changes that may have taken place in Yerevan, the city that I once knew like the back of my hand, however alien and potentially frustrating, are not the cause of my unease. The absence of one Fat Bastard in any given drinking or declothing establishment, however disappointing and heartbreaking, may be overcome… What’s giving me the pains is that every time I’m back, it feels like I have to constantly and ferociously justify myself, the core of my existence and everything that I stand for. Even if I have long stopped doing that everywhere else, it is still making me nauseous…