July 30, 2004
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Chapter 6 – Metamorphosis (cont.)
For the next three months we lived a truly surreal life. Housed in a dorm at Moscow University in a tiny apartment that consisted of two adjoining rooms, we watched the slavic trees turn color and then the snow begin by mid-October. We gave American jazz recordings to Russian students who were wildly hungry for music from the outside world where they could not yet travel. We felt the tension toward Americans as the Cuban crisis evolved. We went to the Bolshoi opera and saw Khrushchev and his wife in their special seats. We ate hearty Russian bread and borscht. And before a month was over, I knew I would leave. So in the first week of December I stepped onto the train again, this time alone, and headed out to Helsinki for the long trip home, leaving behind the boy I had grown up with and whom, it turned out, I would never see again. Terrified and empowered, I rode into the night. It was the first thing I had really ever done independently and I had to break some hearts to do it. (to be continued)
Deep Thought: If you make ships in a bottle, I bet the thing that really makes your heart sink is when you look in and there at the wheel is Captain Termite.
Today I am grateful for: Little cat doors so you don’t have to open the door for them every two minutes
BLOGGING FORWARD TO: bd47 who writes intelligently from the heartland (OK, Indiana) about politics, his family, trees, medicine and other fascinating subjects.
End of Day – 7:59 pm
+ = Watching such an original and moving video about the joys of reading called Stone Reader – will review at a later date.
- = Sick of how every damn TV news program is rightwing. Well, of course, except for Jon Stewart and, interestingly, John McEnroe’s new show (well OK it’s a talk show but it’s political too).
Comments (7)
What an interesting life you’ve lived.
I’m enthralled by the story, but wow, I wanted triple this here. I guess I’m just caught up and want more details, both of this approaching Russian winter and who you were at that moment. (but I can wait for the full book to come out, I guess).
I was in Moscow in 1996. My first comment of the view out of the apartment building was “Chicago, 1920″. I asked when the building was built. I was told 1984.
Lately, I’ve been told that highway travel is a little better now. There aren’t quite so many highway check points. The best roads were rough.
I realize that each of these segments could fill a chapter by itself, but my original intent was a page a year roughly. I figured in the end it would be at least 80 pages (god willing), plenty enough to bore any subsequent family members.
bore? I don’t think so.
ok you asked for it – I’ll add a little stuff when I get home from work.
It’s late on Saturday night, and I’ve just watched Meryl Streep’s Out of Africa, ahh, and so I’m dropping by, from the savanna to the steppes, where I was born and lived as a child, to where you lived and left your first husband, we are spanning the globe… Thenarrator is right, you are giving us a bare outline, and we want more…