http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=220

Ana gave this to me.

She said, "Annie you are you going to LOVE this episode. Not because you wish to be male, but because it is legitimately fascinating."

She is right.

My mother found a den of baby rabbits next to our house yesterday.

"I went on line to learn what to do.  Apparently mommy bunnies only feed the babies twice a day and stay away the rest of the time so they don't draw attention to them.  The mommy will come back if the nest as been disturbed or even moved a couple of feet.  I did the right thing by putting the nest back together as best I could.  I'll check on them later, maybe take a picture.
The challenge is keeping Clancy [our dog] away for the next 3 weeks or so.
Then, all summer I'll complain when they eat all the plants.
 Such is life,  Mom"

This made me smile.

Long ago I heard someone ask a question that haunts me in bursts.  Are we born with mortality instinct?  We must be.  We must know somewhere from birth that eventually the self we know will cease.  This must be, because we lack a moment of realization.  If each of us had learned of mortality from an outside source, wouldn't each of us remember that moment?  How deeply troubling and traumatic the moment a child realizes he will not continue indefinitely.  That he is finite in an infinite world that will continue without him.  Yes, maybe the day our pet rabbit dies, we learn the names of the eventual demise we each face.  But we must have known all along, for we are not surprised at the ending, but simply at the timing.

But how can we know of our end?  The death of someone we know - especially someone close to us - is shocking.  A survivor lives with a heightened awareness of life, at least for a time.  Suddenly, death turns from our subconscious into the world outside, and those worlds were never meant to mix.  The only constant that pulls the fantasy of the deepest, most retched and most honest part of ourselves into the light is the realization that death exists out here, too.

Do my mother’s bunnies, three inches long, eyes unopened, as close to innocence as we are likely to touch - do they know, somewhere deep and beyond the comprehension of those also doomed, that they will never make it out alive?  That their squeaks (as my dear friend Sharko says) are the only impact upon the universe that they shall make?  Do they know the nothingness that awaits them?

One of the most brilliant playwrights to ever write plays is named Tom Stoppard.  No one should understand words the way this man does.  He wrote a scene in a play called Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.  Two men, R & G, face a troupe of Players out of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.  The player make their living exploiting the entertaining exploration of death.  I believe it is Rosencrantz who stands up and explains the true, unknowable nature of death.  It is not a portal, it is not valiant, it is not romantic, he shouts. You make something from nothing with your stories of glory and love!  Death is not these things. It is a void, a nothing.  An end, and only an end.  You are not gone, for you have no where you go.  You disappear, you cease, you DIE!  And he stabs himself, collapsing dead on the ground.

After a stunned silence, the Players burst into applause.  How marvelous! they say.  What talent you have, Rosencrantz!  And, just as surprised to find himself in existence as the audience, Rosencrantz slowly pulls himself to his feet.

We may be born with a knowledge of death, but Stoppard speaks hard truth.  It is unknowable.  And just as man seeks desperately to understand the nature of God, he seeks more desperately to make friends with the vacancy that he will eventually become.  We write great stories, and discuss it in every form of communications we have.  My senior year poetry teacher claimed all poetry was about sex, and sex was merely a way to hold our end off as long as possible by creating copies of ourselves that would hopefully outlive us.   The search for immortality is universal, instinct.  And we are shocked when we face death, because we are reminded that all of our efforts are futile.  And we cannot function in the knowledge of the futility of our most dire passion.

Every person, every nation, every culture has a thousand proverbs about how to live the most.  The advice agrees and disagrees, based on your values and what you would like out of life.  But to live as fully as possible -  upon this everyone agrees.  Yet no one does.  Most moments are left unremarkable.  I have struggled deeply with my inability to live as so many wise and intelligent people have told me.  I was unable even to gather the courage to speak Russian for the first five months of my time here in Ukraine.  But what I believe I will walk away from my time here knowing most is that I will never do anything for which I am not ready.  I was not ready to speak Russian when I arrived here.  I was too young, I was too scared, I was worried over many other things.  I am ready now.  I speak now.  And that is all I can do.

My mother’s bunnies will grow.  Their eyes will open.  They will probably eat her plants.  I will go home, I will grow more.  And hopefully, when I am ready, I will begin to really live every second.  I’m on my way there.  I’m more efficient, I’m more disciplined, and I know where I lack.  But despite my deepest fears, I (at the moment, at least), do not believe I have failed.

 I found an LJ community that I actually really like.  It was featured yesterday.  Rather than a New Year's Resolution, I have 1001 days to complete 101 goals I have set for myself.  That means I will finish this list on October 2nd, 2011.

 

( 101 )

 

 I just signed up for Twitter.  It's yet another way of stalking people.

I am going to create a second twitter account.  I am going to even create a whole new gmail account and link it to my standard one, I think.  And I'm going to create a character.  Entirely fictional.  And that character is going to have a Twitter.  I'll have to create the character, and a plot (or the beginnings of one?)

I'm going to go home and do this.  And maybe even make some resolutions?  I'm good at writing contracts with myself that I don't keep.  Just look at my journal.

 First kiss in 2009: Andrey

I want to write about 2009 - what I want from it.  But I cannot think of what I want anymore.  At least not day by day.

New favorite Russian phrase.  Шаг за шагом.  Step by step.

 I use too many words.

What about heat comforts us so?  A hot shower can cure almost anything that's wrong with me.  And although I prefer the cold, the best part of a cold day is feeling warmer again.  The warmth is better when you understand so nearly what cold is.

I like that rain has no rhythm.  As people, even if we try (especially if we try), there is always some rhythm that we find.  We think, act, feel in predictable patterns - our minds cannot function any other way.  Hence stereotypes, addiction, abusive relationships, the path we always take the to work - always - no matter what other paths exist.  Our minds put everything they have - all our marbles - into finding the patterns around us.  

But the real world is not a pattern, just like the movement perceived by our eyes is not continuous.  It is just like the films I make.  What we see is a series of individual still shots strung together rapidly, to create an illusion.  The movement in the world is continuous, but to see it, we must change it.  Our minds copy our eyes, and change the world in order to comprehend it.  WE hear patterns in the rain, but none exist in reality.  The rain is random, truly.  It is basic, it is pure, it cannot be corrupted, controlled or altered because there are no elements to provide handles to these changes. The rain is - simply - water droplets falling from the sky in no particular pattern, with no particular purpose.  It is too simple for us to understand, and it is better so.

Throughout my life, on every Christmas eve, my family would all crawl onto my parents bed.  We'd spend minutes trying to find positions we could hold in comfort.  And finally, after we talked and laughed and squirmed and relaxed, my father would begin to read "Ahmal and the Night Visitors" aloud.  I always felt a little embarrassed by it, but it was a pleasure that has never been matched by anything (that is a lie - it is matched by the memories of my father playing guitar to my sister and I when I was younger). The power of reading aloud always brought me heightened emotions.  A well written story will turn from words to magic in your head as you read.  The better the writing, the more that the author has helped you to turn the story into magic as you read.  But to be read too makes any story overwhelmingly magical.  The reader changes the words to magic - image, emotion, humanity (raw or beautified, or both) - and by the time that the sound reaches your ears, there is nothing left for you but to be taken on a journey.  It's alive already.  Because of this reanimation, the whole thing is extremely intimate for a listener who really listens.  This is why I was always embarrassed to be sharing this with my family.  Especially with my father.  When you spend so much time so close with people, you stop telling them things.  Because there is no physical distance, there must be mental for your safety and comfort.  This is what happened with my family, and it is why now that I'm in Ukraine, my parents and I speak about difficult and dangerous things much more often and with much more honesty.  In Ukraine, I stopped lying to them.  The instant I returned home, I started again. Listening to a story being read aloud, and allowing the situation to exist, letting it be terrifying and intimate and magical and real, is beyond words I know.

All of this is the reason I believe "The Little Prince" should be read for the first time through the conduit of another person's voice.  A head in a lap, eyes closed, the voice of someone you trust telling you simple, rain-truths.

My father has stopped reading "Ahmal and the Night Visitors" on Christmas eve.  I believe because he thinks we grew up, and because he never liked the practice.  He never got to experience the magic, because he was reading, not listening.  Maybe if we tried to read again, the magic would be gone.  

I've spent too much time these past two weeks watching magic leave my life.  It is time to stop it.  Guerrilla warfare begins.

 Today I visited school.

The general theme thus far of visiting home has been a feeling of omniscience.  With everyone in the middle of exams, and hearing back from the first round of colleges (the ones that hurt the most, I think.  ED results.), I realize how differently I view life now.  The artificial world that DA creates is shattered.  Graduation spread the edges of my consciousness.  And I'm so grateful for the new edges of my view.   It just makes it strange to visit campus.  It looks smaller.  It looks harmless.

I used to spend every waking second thinking about something DA related.  The world is so much larger than it used to be.  What will be the next step?  How much larger will I find the world the next time my eyes are opened?  Can they go farther?  I hope so.

I've been unbelievably creative here.  My newest - completed and edited.  Critique!

( YETI )
( DUCKS )

Last night, through a weird twist of Thai fate, I used Sine's computer to get online (Sine = trainee from Thailand who ROCKETH)  First time in three or four weeks.  Felt good to get the fix again.

While online, my old friend Jay Morris contacted me.  We talked briefly because I had to leave, but reading his words was incredible.  Jay is a lingustics major at Duke (a senior) and he has always been one of my favorite writers.  The kid is brilliant, and has been my writing guru since freshman year.

It was semi-orgasmic to talk to him.  His daily speech is similar to poetry, and he has the strangest sense of humor I've ever met.  I love it, and after two months of Russian-English, it was this brief, relaxing paradise of language.

He sent me his most recent short stories as a guilty indulgence for when I'm feeling selfish.  Just printed them and even the titles make me giggle in bliss. "How the Tigress got Full Legal Custody", "Lamb Vindaloo", and "A Brief Eulogy on the Recent Death of Jay Morris"

I actually wrote something.  I will edit and post, hopefully soon.  It is good to be in the habit again.  *knock on wood*

I have finished two books since my arrival.  I owe you reviews, and based off of A Softer World philosophy, I owe myself two nights of dancing.

( Email from Max )

I also realized recently that verbs are important when it comes to language.

Blond jokes, lightbulb jokes, and jokes about George Bush are universal.

I also find myself disgusted at the mindset of America - again.  My Obama joy did not last long.  I marvel that we could elect Obama by over 14 million votes and allow Prop 8.

My Center told me that they would give Ben and I free internet, and they installed the internet cord, but didn't install the modem...so...it basically just hangs next to the hall door and taunts me.

Just so everyone knows, I will be arriving home on Dec 12th at 9:00 pm, and will be leaving at 11:30 am on December 26th.  So I'll be home the day after my birthday.

I know this is a bitching post, but I did not mean it to be.  I actually quite happy.  I am about to go edit and then tonight I will write.  And tomorrow, I teach.  All very very good.

Apparently, my mother just tried to look at all 178 pictures of my sister than exist on facebook.  Katie is quoted as telling her "...no".  She played Disney Scene-It to celebrate her 16th.  And Pelham gave her muffins that weren't mixed, so one bite would be normal and one bite would be totally made of flour.  Freakin' hilarious.

If you sit on concrete here, you will freeze your overies and never be able to have children.

I'm thinking about taking the random footage I've started to accumulate here and making a documentary out of it.  I would need interviews (several over time, and with basically everyone), as well as records of my russian progress, and personal diary-like entries.  I could do it, but I don't know if I want to.  I want to - I just don't know if I could.

Today, I taught yet another group of people that the word "nigger" could get you killed.

After asking a class to write outlines of novels, a group of girls outlined a romance novel entitled, "Lonely and Pregnant".

One of the eight year-olds in my youngest class told me that I am beautiful. She told me over and over again, trying to say it correctly.

And I spent the whole day nervously waiting for a call from my mother updating me on the election.

I am also paranoid.

And there are at least six people in America I wish that I could hug right now.

This morning, I was reading "Shutter Island" when Ben knocked on my door.   In my sweats and uncombed hair , I opened the door.  I no longer open any door in my sweats and unkept hair to ANY ONE but Ben, because the social rules of Ukraine dictate it so.  I opened up, and saw him standing in his open doorway.  He was wearing his sweats and had upkept hair.  And was holding out my new copy of Zoolander to me.  My mother bought me a copy and sent it, so that I could export GOOD comedy to Ukraine.  He had been up all night drinking.  I had been up all night drinking.  We stood there together, looking at a relfection of our own personalities.  And we started laughing. 

Two of a kind.

I know what cultural difference is now.  It is the opposite of what I thought. People are not all the same.  People are all different, all over.  And for the first time, discovering, embracing, and loving the differences between us seems like a much more brave and unifying action than discovering superficial similarity.  I want to be with people who are nothing like me.

I knew nothing about Ukraine before I came, and nothing could be better.  Ukraine is Ukraine through my eyes, slowly diving deeper and deeper into a pool of the unknown, open to all of its features - different, similar, bad, good, terrifying, overwhelming, beautiful, love, hate, fear, rage, apathy.  I am drowned in a place totally different, totally unknown, and each morning breath out my last breath and breath in the unknown and let the weight of it in my lungs suffocate me and sink me to the pit of its honest self.  It fills my mind to the point that it becomes blank and only my body records any sensation, developing scars, crushed and stretched.   This is, undeniably, exactly what I wanted.  I want it even more, now.

I suck at updating.  I need to do that more.

Beer makes me pee A LOT.  All. The. Time.

Russian overwhelms me.  I am obsessed with learning it.

I wish I had a camera so that I can take pictures.  But tonight I am going to be given a tour of the city, and I will bring Wesley.

I am very poor.  I love it.  I cook food every day.  Today I made pancakes.  They turned out to be crepes.

I am not nearly as outgoing and physically touchy over here.  Which makes me sad, because I feel like I'm not being myself.

We're in a period of time called "Women's Autumn".  After these next two days, it will be COLD.  And there will be NO STOPPING IT.

Music keeps the lonely away.

I wrote this entry two days ago, and have been unable to post it due to internet problems.  Since then, I have gone to my first big party.  There will be another post about that soon.

I've been in my own apartment, my first apartment, for a week.  I've been alone in my apartment, my first apartment, for four days and three nights.

My mother left yesterday.  She flew out of the Dnipro airport.  After what I considered to be the life-fulfilling, rugged and adventurous trip of an overnight six-hour train ride from Kiev, she returned on a plane.  She cried.  I cried.  Never question that I am loved.

Having her around to help me move in was absolutely necessary.  There are  a thousand things that demand top-priority when you are moving far away, too many to list or contemplate.  With her extra head, the essencials were in place quickly and smoothly.  She was a social butterfly as well, interacting as extrovertedly as I had mentally prepared myself to be in the face of a city of a million non-english speakers.

I could not have done this without unbelievable family support.  The tips and tricks of parents really can't be beat.  And you need those brains put together to figure out the daily problems you face as you prepare to move to a new country.  My dad just called my cell through skype.  It was the first time we've talked since the tearful goodbye in the airport almost a week ago.  Maybe this is the time when everything changes, but I realy hope not.

I live on the second floor of my building, above a barbershop.  My hallmates are Ben, the Peace Corps volunteer from Chicago and Laura, the Spaniard.  We are cared for by Galina, the 9 to 5 landlord who insists that we only use HER supplies.  the hall is being repaired and refinished and each day she scurries behind  the workmen, cleaning the up the mess while they work one step ahead of her to make a new one. When Laura became violently sick after her boyfriend of eleven years broke up with her a month into her time in Ukraine, Galina made her soup.  I have around 800 sq ft of space, including an office/bedroom, bathroom and gas-powered kitchen.  All are filled with eccentrically mismatched 80's prints, and all seem to be the exact amount of space that I need. It's also covered in a fine layer of sawdust from the construction that artfully conceals the REAL amount of grim left over from the 80's. It is, however, located either a short walk or five minute tram ride away from every luxury and necessity.  Two minute walk from work, groceries, wifi, bank, restaurant.  Ten minutes (and one grivna, 1/5 of a dollar) tram ride to the City Center and everything civilzation has ever created.

My hallmates all work for the language centers of the National Mining University and we all work under the sole titles of "native speakers".  We are a brotherhood of foreigners, sharing tips and knowledge of Russian.  I am by far the youngest - 18 to their 25 and 27, but am an equal members in the adventure.

When I waited for Ukraine, I worried above all that I would be trapt in my apartment with no friends and nowhere to go.  I created a rigid "social life" regime in the States to prevent this reality.  I did not, however, ever conceive of the exuberant host nature of AIESEC Dnipro, my host organization.  I have somewhere between three and seven "buddies", people responsible for adjusting me to Dnipro, my job, my life, myself. At least every hour I am contact by some member, asking me to a party or informing me they would like to take me shopping or malk me to my job or accompany me to the riverbank or give me advice.  Each wishes to pay my fare and discuss how I like Dnipro, and why I chose Ukraine. They are an insta-social life, super comfort.  Each feels personally responsible for my safety and I love them already.  There also seems to be a never ending stream of them, but the ones I believe will be regular figures are Sveta, Jane, Julia, Yadim, Zenya, Sakshi, Ann, Denis.

I will mostly end up working at three locations for three employers: The Ukrainian-American Language Center at National Mining University, the Lighthouse Language School, and the English Club Television. One job is not secured and the other I hate, so I will discuss the American Language Center.  I work as a teacher I share classes with other teachers.  Currently I have six classes, two of which I begin this week, and I DO NOT share with anyone.  Half are around 10-12 years old and the other half are teenagers and above.  My job is to talk.  Just talk to the students and make them talk back.  That's it.  I plan to lead a discussion on some topic every week, since every class meets once, and cater the discussion to the english level of the students.  I also plan to add games and debates.  Edit:  the class I taught today on cross-cultural humor turned out to be too hard for the students.  So this week's topic may be post-poned.

The once-weekly classes have left me with a living wage (ish - I do need the other two jobs for extra cash) and lots of time.  Especially in the morning.  I will be spending my mornings emailing and writing and LEARNING RUSSIAN and just being productive, I think.  I've organized my week so that I go shopping and do laundry and pay for my phone regularly.

In terms of money, I've been great about it too.  Edit: I have not, I totally splurged after I wrote this.  But my mom was also paying for everything.  After working out budget, I will be able to live on $350 a month.  It's hard not to splurge when everything is so cheap in dollars, but so expensive in grivnas.

Edit.  I have unreliable internet.  Please use skype to call my cell phone.  The number is on facebook.  Anytime, day or night.  Unless I'm teaching, I will answer.

I'm gone.

I love you all.  I really do.