***

I need to blog. After yet another long drawn silence, I finally feel capable of writing something coherent. The past few weeks or so have been long, full, eventful. During this time I have been in all major regions of the country, including Kvemo-Khartli, Kakhtei, Imereti and Adjaria. Besides Tbilisi I have visited Marnauli, Rustavi, Khashuri, Borjomi, Tsnori, Akhmeta, Dedoplistskaro, Telavi, Gurjaani, Samtredia, Zestaphoni, Kutaisi, Kobuleti and Batumi. Everything has been happening too fast, one experience after another, some good, and some bad. I usually need time to digest the events, sit on them for a day or too, but since our locations and sceneries have been alternating so quickly, I have had neither the time nor the ability to even reflect upon these experiences, let alone share them.

I am in Batumi now, right at the Black Sea. It is the third largest city in Georgia and a major sea resort town. The bulk of our work in this country is finished and I am one final report away from being free for a few days, before I start on my next assignment. In less than 48 hours I will be taking a 7 hour train ride back to Tbilisi (alone), then two more hours further east to Telavi. The rest of my team will be going up north, to hike the mountains of Svaneti (which, by the way is a Unseco Heritage site). Having neither the energy, nor the enthusiasm to go to a place accessible only by horses, I decided to rest in a marvelous guest house in Telavi run by a lovely Ukrainian lady, where we stayed during our work in Kakheti region. In about a week I will be taking yet another long ride, this time across the border, to Yerevan.

Despite all the good and the bad that has happened while in this country, being in Georgia has felt quite odd and unsettling. Georgia makes me miss Armenia more than anything else. Everything looks so familiar, so known, yet not mine, foreign. There is a legend about an Armenian king who was put in a jail cell that had a ground half made of Persian and half of Armenian soil. When the king walked on Persian half, he looked weak, insignificant, defeated. When he walked on Armenian half, he stood straight, holding his head up high, undefeatable and strong. I feel the same way on Georgian soil. Or maybe it’s the proximity to home, to the Armenian soil that makes me miss it more…

I truly hope that at some point during my remaining days in this country I will be able to rest and relax and write something that would at least partltly refect everything that I have experienced in Georgia.

Some random ramblings on my Georgia trip

Tbilisi has been cold and rainy. The weather reminds me of Waltham, the city makes me wish I was in Yerevan. Of all the places I’ve been to, Tbilisi is neither the prettiest, nor the friendliest, and likewise, I neither like it, nor excessively dislike it. Some things are new and impressive – others oddly familiar, and yet despite the similarities that I find in every corner of this place, I do realize that I am merely a stranger here passing by…

Georgians look a lot like Armenians at first glance, except that I don’t understand a word that they’re saying. When I look close enough though, I notice subtle differences between the two in bone structure and facial features - narrower eyes, thinner and longer eyebrows… Although my looks do allow me to sort of blend in, I am often being subjected to catty head to toe glances in the metro, mostly by women, as if they disapprove of the way I dress, or my overall lack of excessive makeup. Compared to women in Tbilisi, Yerevantsis seem to be better dressed (i.e. skankier) – next to dominating blacks, browns and grays that seem to be the preferred colors of choice in this city, Yerevan women look like an eye test in their outfits that happen to have every single color of the rainbow (from what I remember from a few summers ago).

The past couple of weeks of my stay here have brought up everything that I seemed to have forgotten about this part of the world.

Dust - dust and smog everywhere. While living in the overly polluted and dusty city of Yerevan was an inseparable part of my reality for as long as I remember myself, it is the first time that I come to realize that the lack of properly paved roads and absence of grass must have something to do with it.

Smells –of filth, garbage, stinky cheese, rotting fruit and vegetables, cheap vodka, urine, excessive sweat and unwashed bodies… And it is not even hot yet. How could I have forgotten? This is what motherland smells like…

Drivers - remember a while back when I was complaining about drivers in Boston? That’s because I had completely forgotten how bad drivers are where I grew up. The suicidal maniacs of Georgia are ten times worse. Imagine four cars trying to squeeze into a two lane road all at the same time, illegal u-turns and complete absence of any traffic rules, and you got Tbilisi. On top of that, the concept of seatbelt is non-existent, folks here probably never use their blinkers and honking and excessive cussing seem to be what moves the traffic along. The other night, during the cab ride home, another vehicle almost ran into us, as it made an abrupt turn while not having any lights on. “** tboyu mat&” yelled out our driver loudly in Russian (I won’t translate this one), while hitting the breaks and the horn at the same time. The car was only a couple of inches away. How there aren’t any accidents around here is beyond me – a single vehicle behaving like this on an American road would cause multiple calamities in a heartbeat. And you wonder why I never had a desire to drive?

Coffee – Turkish coffee -black, thick, sweet (in Armenia we call it Armenian coffee, of course). I can’t open my mouth to talk to anyone without being offered coffee first. “No, really” I say “all I want is a glass of tap water.” They look at me funny, then bring me a cup of coffee anyway. Although my coffee consumption had drastically decreased in the last two years of living in the States, I quietly sip six or seven cups of this rich drink of gods a day and wait for the moment when someone will offer to tell me my fortune on coffee grounds.

Food in general – although this subject deserves its own separate post, I thought I’d say a few words here, now that I am thinking of it. As sad as it sounds, I am not a big fan of Georgian food (fat bastard, stop rolling your eyes). Now that I come to think of it, I am not a big fan of Armenian food either. Too heavy, too greasy, too doughy and too repetitive to my taste. As much as I like khorovats/shashlik (gigantic shish kababs) or khinkali (Georgian spicy meat dumplings), I can only eat so much of it on regular basis. My post eating disorder palate has been downgraded to lighter, more unsophisticated foods. I’m a deli girl. On any given day, give me a ham and cheese sandwich and I will love you until the rest of your life. Two weeks spent in the Caucasus makes me crave nothing more or less but a Quizno’s sub. Go figure.

Kolbasa – more precisely, varenaya kolbasa or in other words – bologny. On days when we are not being fed the twelve course Georgian fair by our hosts until we can hardly move, I usually end up having a tomato and cucumber salad with red basil and olive oil, with a piece of bread and kolbasa. It tastes like my childhood and I mentally transfer to my grandparents house, where I, as a little girl, sit at the kitchen table, stirring my tea and watching my grandpa slice the kolbasa and bread for supper. Nothing makes me miss childhood more than the bland, comforting taste of kolbasa.

There is a whole lot more that I could write about the past two weeks or so, but time at this point is one luxury that I do not have much of. So bear with me, and I will try to deliver.

P.S. One thing that I’m trying to figure out though is what in the world the US Army is doing in a remote bazaar in Rustavi.

Interlude

I apologize if this post is too overbearing in a sense that it contains something much more personal than what I have been revealing lately. However, I feel especially compelled to write it, since last time I was leaving for this part of the world, I was singing quite a different song – a song of freedom that one gains from one’s own solitude, as one chooses to leave a predictable life of false comfort in return for nothing but turmoil and chaos. This one is almost a complete opposite, showing just how profoundly I have changed in the last two and half years…and as unexpected as this change may have appeared to me at first glance, it was, after all, quite simple and predictable…

Leaving for Georgia was heartbreaking. I cried at Dulles airport. If I were not so tired, I would have cried on the plane to London. I cried when I arrived at Heathrow, cried and slept intermittingly during the flight to Tbilisi. The boy and I had spent the day of my departure together, wandering the streets of D.C., laughing, joking, playing, being silly. Despite my overall excitement over the upcoming trip, I knew that a big part of me wished that I had not undertaken such a lengthy assignment, that I had rather chosen to do my research in Armenia only – and that is merely so that I could see my family.

Eleven weeks suddenly felt like not only separation of space and time, but that of a world of difference that would never be reconciled by merely conveying stories or showing photographs. As if by not being able to share these experiences in real time with a loved one would make them seem less valid, less important or remarkable. Of course, I could consider these experiences as something only of my own – mine and no one else’s, but neither the nature of this trip, nor the “privateness” of these experiences seemed normal or natural any more…

Once all I wished was nothing more than the unshared “privateness” of an experience – any experience. Unshared, untainted moments that were mine alone in their entirety. I remember how I longed for these moments when I was married; I remember how much I wish that I was free, unattached, alone, without having to be a part of someone else’s life, without having to contribute to someone else’s happiness… I remember the painful longing out of which Perfect Vacuum came out. I remember how burdensome was the idea of being attached to someone, which made me write Another Life. Looking back at myself at those particular moments of past I still find myself capable of relating to these emotions quite vividly- but this time only in the past, without being able to bring them into my present.

I no longer want to be alone. And I am attached, more strongly and securely than I ever thought I would be able to get attached to another human being. It no longer hurts; it is no longer a burden.

It’s quite simple, actually. Wishing that I had another life, however twisted and far-fetched explanations that I used to rely on in the past was nothing more but the fact that I was unhappy with the one I had then. Another Life was merely a distraction, an escape to another reality; Perfect Vacuum was nothing but the desire to be alone during a destructive and unhealthy relationship. I no longer need another life, because I am way too in love with the one that I’ve got. I no longer want to be alone, because I see that being with someone is more rewarding than all the solitude in the world would ever hold… I am happy with a kind of happiness that is beyond being happy on one’s own – that is, being able to be happy from within, while being able to share it with someone else. And I find it truly remarkable. I do not think it could get any better. I do not think that I could have ever asked for more.

What hurts now is long separations. What is distressing is having to spend this summer alone. Despite the fact that throughout the last ten months or so we lived in two different cities, miles and miles away, we never spent more than three weeks without seeing one another. This summer will be the longest we have been apart. Of course I do know that I’m neither the first one, nor the last one, nor it has been my only time to go through such kind of temporary separations. Even if I have, in the past, weathered long-distances for much more than some two and half months, I can no longer take it like I used to before. And yet, however trivial all of this sounds, it is still hard, sad and heartbreaking, yet comforting at the same time to know that I have so much to go back to in Richmond. And that makes me that much more impatient.

Welcome Team Georgia

Last time I tried to blog (and failed miserably) I was in Washington D.C., going through five-day training for my summer fellowship. I am in Tbilisi now – having arrived less than 30 hours ago, jetlagged, tired and still somewhat lost. I am not sure how regularly I will be able to post in the next few weeks or so, but I’m hoping that I will be able to find time (and internet connection) to share some of the highlights of my experiences.

P.S. Since I do not have a picture that would be a good representation of Georgia (or Tbilisi) I am posting the view that I see from my window. More later.