Natalia A.

Sixteen people to not hang out with in 2016

Happy New Year!

I’ve been accused of being “too negative” around the blogosphere lately. “Cheer up, Natalia,” a bunch of you are saying. “Stop using indelicate words and hating on people quite as much.” I’m sure most of you have a point. But since none of you will read me if I’m going to go all zen and peace-love-and-incense-sticks on you this year (admit it. It’s true), here’s a definitive list of people you should resolve to avoid in 2016 (and all subsequent years too). Continue reading “Sixteen people to not hang out with in 2016”

I am not your monkey: on motherhood, art, and presumptuous bullshit

The other day it happened again.

I was talking to a friend about the eternal issue of having kids/not having kids, when the friend said something like,

“I guess I just care too much about art and changing society for the better. Who has time for that when they have a child?”

**beat**

“I mean, I guess you do, Natalia. Well, sort of, right? I assume you’d be able to do so much more with your life if you weren’t a mother.”

**beat**

“I mean, there’s no harm in admitting it. Right? You don’t have to admit it publicly. You can admit it to me. Yes?”
Continue reading “I am not your monkey: on motherhood, art, and presumptuous bullshit”

If you like my poetry and stories, please consider donating

Dear subscribers, regular readers, and anyone who happens to be wandering by, I need your help. This blog features a lot of random updates, but there are also two sections that involve a lot of work: the so-called Fairy Stories (I chose that category name to piss J.R.R. Tolkien off in the afterlife, but it has stuck) and Poetry (in recent years, as I began to publish my own poetry on this site).

There are also some personal essays that deserve your attention. Specifically: on Kate Atkinson, on my Ukrainian Jack of Hearts, on how my life went all wrong (or right?), on Kiev and some of the men I’ve met there, and this photo essay on my family in 1970s Crimea. Oh, and this not-at-all personal essay on why Russians are into anal porn in a big way, heh heh (admit it, you’ve always wanted to know).

An editor myself, I believe in the power of editors. I rarely have time to have anyone else proof or critique what I publish on this site. I always think that while some of it can be compelling, it is also very raw.

Still, over the years, I’ve noticed that many of you have enjoyed my writing, and found it interesting and/or entertaining.

Some of you have occasionally donated to this site over the years. I’m sheepish about donations, but it’s time to admit it – they are very helpful. And in one instance, a donation tided me over through some fairly dark times.

Today, I need your help for two reasons.

1) Financial: I get a fair bit of freelance work, but have not been steadily employed for a while, and the freelance economy is brutal. It is like “Gladiator,” minus a hot Russell Crowe. Due to various complicating factors, I have really struggled these last few months.

2) Psychological: I won’t bore you with a litany of professional setbacks. Let’s just say I have discovered what feels worse than being ignored: It’s having people be enthusiastic about you and your work, and then abruptly decide that they’re no longer enthusiastic. It’s part and parcel of being a writer, but when it happens repeatedly, it erodes your confidence. It’s like having a man tell you he loves you before being all “LOL JK.”

The ensuing sadness is a vicious cycle. You doubt yourself more, so you work less, and you doubt yourself some more, and so you work even less, etc. For years, I’ve been my family’s dependable breadwinner, but in these last few months, I’m just…not. I am paralyzed by doubt. I can’t even read a good book now without telling myself, “Why, here’s a person who can write – AS OPPOSED TO YOU, YOU DUMB COW.”

If you donated, it would not only help me stay afloat, it would also show me that my writing means something to you. It would be a big deal for me at this point in time. The amount is entirely up to you. Thank you. Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. Love to you and yours.

(P.S. The featured image on this post is taken from Fellini’s excellent “Nights of Cabiria.” Please watch it if you haven’t. But not if you’re horribly sad)

On the work of Kate Atkinson

When I was fourteen, I bought a copy of “Human Croquet” after reading about it in a magazine for girls (unexpected choice by the editor, I’ve come to realize). I had the original receipt for a while and jotted down the exact time, down to the minute, and place where the book was purchased.

I came back to that inscription in my senior year at Duke, when I was writing my (let’s face it, terrible) honors thesis on “Human Croquet.”

“Acquired at 7:33 p.m., May 17, 1998, Barnes & Noble, Arboretum, Charlotte, NC.”

There wasn’t much I understood at twenty, but I did understand why I wrote down the contents of the receipt. I was recording a life-changing moment. I met Michael Cunningham once when he came to give a talk at Duke, and he jovially discussed having his life upended by Virginia Woolf, and I was grateful for that, because it meant I wasn’t weird. Kate Atkinson just happened to split my particular atom.

Her work has changed over the years, gone both wide and deep, but some familiar themes have circled back this year: the handsome RAF pilot, the complete disaster of men and women, the cruel and lovely ambivalence of nature, the question of death and stepping sideways out of time, the tedium of children and how there’s nothing more important, Englishness (and how observing it changes it), the strange way men separate passion and love (like unspooling threads), the importance of getting on with it even when you’d rather lie down and melt back into the landscape again, lying down and melting into the landscape at a later date (though perhaps having helped someone in a way, so as to not have your existence be entirely without point), the fact that we are all so fragile as to almost be fiction. Continue reading “On the work of Kate Atkinson”

In Paris they ask the right questions

In Paris they ask the right questions:
“Cognac, armagnac, or calvados?”
And, “Why are your eyes so blue?”
“Do you know how to get back home?”
“Is it finally time to kiss you?”

If the black hole in the center of the galaxy
Is stoppering up a drainage pipe
That leads into another universe –
In other words, if Stephen Hawking is right –
In that place I’ve become your wife.

In that place where I’m your wife
I stand on Ponte Alexandre III, the river runs from me,
And I don’t try to hold it back.
I didn’t turn into a poet
I’m too happy for that.

In that place where I am me
Paris waits,
But both the wise and stupid men who called me here
Have been dead a long time since –
And marble angels press their fingers
Against their marble lips.

Some of us will hide our frowns
Behind the sturdy fences of gray beards.
Some of us will turn from fallen women
Into women with fallen breasts.
We will maybe sell some books,
And hug each other by each other’s graves.

Around the corner
Something says, “The horror”
And we wish to turn back
As we fall forward.

But still the dead queens on the walls
Insist the only time is now
And still the stars cluster like clots
Inside the arteries that pump
And twist through darkness’s hard heart
And still you never finish the sentence
That begins with “dans tes yeux…”
And I can’t tell pain from the pleasure
Which is why I would have loved to –
Paris, you know that I’d still love to –
Burn my tongue on you.

I wrote this a long time ago and then thought, “Well, everyone writes at least one stupid poem about Paris. This is embarrassing and it’s not going up.” Because of recent events, I dusted off the poem and realized that it’s actually strangely appropriate. Paris, ILY. Vive la France.