Love letters, part three

“You’re beautiful.” A friend of mine recently told me that the men in her life say that to apologize for something they’ve done, or are about to do. “You’re beautiful” = “I’m sorry I’m going to have sex with you, because I’ve been told that it’s dirty and wrong. I’m sorry I’m going to destroy all that is pure and holy about you. You look just like an angel is supposed to look, and I am going to bring you down to earth and ravage you while re-living a hellfire & brimstone sermon inside out . And possibly not even call you later.”Continue reading “Love letters, part three”

I am working furiously

Hope you come see the fruits of my labours once I am ready to rest on my laurels for a bit.

Until then,

Here’s Chekhov, whose short stories are better than his plays:

chekhov

Very few people know, by the way, that Chekhov had beautiful hands. Why isn’t there at least one dinky paper with this title presented at a single Chekhov conference? “Chekhov Had Beautiful Hands.” I guarantee that people will read such a paper. Even some plebeians otherwise referred to as non-academics will read… Or, then again, is that the problem all along?!

Sunday Snowday Intermission

In November, Kyiv often looks like it does today:

snowyard

For whatever reason snow usually goes away in December, but until then even old buildings look spruced up in white.

Enjoying the cold is more fun when there’s someone warm (and proferring a mug of hot chocolate) to come back to at home, but I’ve been praying to end this strange limbo by the end of the month. Wish me luck, OK?:

snownat

The Goat In Love

One woman’s husband was a cheater. He did it with the traveling gypsy, the miller’s daughter, the green-eyed spinster down the street, the shepherdess, the milkmaid with a dark braid, the woman that swept the church floor, the wife of the officer, and the son of the shoemaker. The man’s wife both knew and didn’t know about these things. A part of her knew, another one didn’t. Sometimes the former ruled the heart, sometimes the latter.

The man loved his wife. But another part of him became frustrated with her for not being able to contain within her the multitudes of life’s details he had found so interesting: the flecks of individual red hairs in the dark braid of the milkmaid, or the way the son of the shoemaker had a soft-spot for all beggars and petty criminals and wouldn’t admit it. And one part ruled sometimes, but the other part ruled more often.

He didn’t think of it as unfaithfulness. He was only living his life.

But the cheating husband once ran across the wrong kind of woman. She was and wasn’t beautiful, and, even more curiously, she didn’t seem at all interested in him – which made him desire her intensely. The woman was a traveler, passing through, or so she claimed. He had to beg her to do it, and even though she relented, she said, cryptically, that if he didn’t pleasure her exactly the way she wanted, he would come to regret it. He didn’t pay attention to her words, busy as he was undoing his trousers.

He tried with all of his might, but the woman had a strange, insatiable appetite. He had never met such a woman before, and soon found himself completely exhausted. Shortly thereafter, he found himself a goat. The woman wasn’t joking when she had challenged him.

The Goat

The man had only himself to blame for his troubles, and so he didn’t even protest all that much when he found himself being rounded up by irate goatherds that very same night.

“This one looks like it might be old Limpy,” one said.

“But he doesn’t limp!” The other replied.

“Nobody’s perfect,” the first goatherd winked, and the man’s fate was sealed.Continue reading “The Goat In Love”