September 2011 is over

I can’t believe that it’s actually over, and I’m expecting to wake up at any point in October and somehow wind up back in September.

I went back to work full time and Alexey nearly finished his film. My mother’s been sunning herself on various beaches of the world, so there’s been zero help at home and we’re spending nearly all of the money we have on our nanny, Nina Ivanovna, who’s not above doing the laundry and the dishes, thank Sweet Baby Jesus.

I somehow managed to write up a new version of my play and sent it off to Modern Drama Week in Kiev – though I think I’d be OK with the fact that a play that premiered in Moscow doesn’t get read in Kiev, if they need me to make room for the newest batch of authors, or just don’t like the play, which is set in Moscow, altogether. Kiev is still where all things began – plays, scripts, and this love affair with Alexey.

The result of the love affair has trouble napping during the day when I’m around, so I put him in his basket, stick it on the floor of the bathroom, and let the water run a little bit. Though I try to use the water sparingly, I have nightmares about the water bill. White noise from the fan just doesn’t seem to do the trick.

The play’s Moscow premiere was alright. I would have asked for something better – my husband cut the two scenes with guns, reading through the synopsis for them instead. You just don’t do that with guns. In his opinion, the problem with the reading was the pace. Still, people got up and said incredibly complimentary things, which surprised me. My so-called generation is classed as the one that came “after the fire-breathing Yury Klavdiev” – i.e., comparatively speaking, we are not as exciting or interesting – but I wouldn’t put, say, Marina Krapivina or Olga Strizhak in that category at all, for example. I’ve been surrounded by interesting people, who are doing interesting things. Perhaps I can learn by example.

In spite of all of these exciting things happening – plays, movies, newspapers, friends, Lyovka slowly learning to lift his head, etc., September has been a tiring, demoralizing month. I feel like the entire Moscow Victory Day Parade has flattened me under wheels and boots – and then turned around and flattened me all over again.

What doesn’t help is that I know that things are about to get more complicated from here on out. The movie will need to have a life beyond the Advanced School of Journalism, beyond Moscow. I’ll have to devote October to English subtitles, among other things.

Fatigue is the ultimate relationship-destroyer. Long before there’s stuff being tossed out of apartment windows, there is fatigue, the gray watchman at the foot of the bed.

Although I’ve fallen into a rhythm – work, baby, work, baby, with occasional flashes of husband-time – it’s not enough, because there is no Natalia-time. Getting to pleasure-read on the metro on the way to and from work does not count. I refuse to believe that it counts. The banya counts, on the other hand – I need more banya in my life.

Then there’s the jealousy of Alexey’s friends and colleagues. If we’re late to some event, I can count on being pulled aside for a little chat about “clipping his wings” and so on – as if my goddamn home life is these people’s business. The fact that we have an infant at home fails to register. Alexey tries to be everywhere at once, and it results in disaster for both of us.

The thing that unites us is the fact that Lyovka has begun to develop a personality. He grins when you come to get him out of his crib, he tries to grab his little green dog rattle. It’s very hard in the beginning, when they’re so small that they kind of don’t register you half the time. Now that Lyovka is constantly chatting away in baby language, communication is being established. Alexey speaks to him in Russian, I do it in English. The nosy neighbors are amazed.

I’m writing about nudism at the moment. Autumn is a third of the way done. Alexey’s off on tour to Poland in just a few days. The trees in Novogireyevo are raining red and yellow. I don’t know what’s going to happen next – I just know that September is over.

Random style note from the Moscow metro

Elderly woman gets in at Teatralnaya, on the green line. Hair in an elaborate, bouffant hairdo, covered with a black and white polka dot scarf. Loose zebra-print walking coat. Skinny blue jeans. Black patent leather ballet flats.

What I like about this relatively mild period in autumn is that such gorgeousness isn’t hidden under bulky winter coats. Although something tells me this woman has something lovely to bust out for when the temperature drops below zero.

What I also like about sights such as these is that it’s an example of someone who’s past retirement age – but still going strong. If I had a good camera handy, I would have asked to take her picture, and submitted it to Advanced Style. They need someone to represent from Moscow.

Dagestani terrorists and their live-in girlfriends

WARNING. Do NOT click on this link if you don’t want to be subjected to the sight of a dead woman’s body.

The Russian press is referring to the woman in the picture as Sabina Musayeva – the “common law wife” of terrorist leader Soltan Sayid Soltanov.

You don’t really see pictures like this in the American media, do you? In recalling 9/11, I remember how we were spared the worst of it on our own TV channels, for example. The gruesomeness was not dealt with head-on. It is considered exploitative and sensationalist and disrespectful, to show the real effects of terror and the war on terror.

In the second picture, Musayeva’s hijab has been removed, and her gun is gone. You can see that she was shot in the head. Not really sure what’s going on here. Of course, plenty of people will start yelling about how, “Evil special forces guys from Russia put the gun in the poor woman’s hand after the fact! She was merely an innocent victim!” I don’t know – some people will automatically brand everything that Russian special forces do in the region as treacherous and barbaric. I’m willing to bet that the pictures are real, and that Musayeva went down fighting – her brother, Aslan Musayev, accidentally blew himself up a while back, while experimenting with explosives. I don’t get what these people are fighting for  (please don’t say “Freeeeeeduuuuuum!”, Mel Gibson) – and never have. I’m just oddly glad that the Russian media shows the reality of the conflict. It’s ugly, really ugly. And it may not be over for a long time.

I don’t feel any sympathy for people who order terror attacks. I don’t really care about “what influenced their motives” or else “the geopolitical factors” that are surely “at play.” My view on it is simplistic – terrorists are nihilists, and the atmosphere of nihilism is infectious. We’re all living in it. Every time I ride the Moscow metro at rush hour, I dwell on this basic fact.

Another still from “Katya, Vitya, Dima”

Graduation in a rural village, Voronezh region, Russia

This is one of those movies that has seriously reminded me of my age. Not necessarily in a bad way.

I suppose it’s natural for Alexey to shoot a film that’s mostly about kids – now that we have our own kid. And I’m glad I’ve been involved in this project from the start. Being his wife, it was inevitable, but some people don’t realize just *to what extent* I’ve had to be involved: whether it’s giving editing suggestions at 4 a.m. when I’m pumping breast milk, or sacrificing the family budget when we suddenly need a new computer monitor.

In our household this month, we’re dealing with a little baby boy, a hysterical director trying to finish a documentary he single-handedly shot and edited, and a cranky new mother who’s just gone back to work and who’s just had to deal with her new play premiering at the Lyubimovka festival. You can imagine what it’s been like. Or don’t, actually – if you don’t want the nightmares to haunt you.

I’m proud of us for not having gone completely insane, though. The other day, with the nanny spending the night at our place, Alexey and I sat in a kitchen of a hostel on Moscow’s busy Garden Ring, listening to the legendary playwright and screenwriter Slava Durnenkov desribe the equally legendary Hagia Sophia like only Slava Durnenkov can. A part of me wanted desperately to be home with Lev, but another part recognized the fact that I needed my walkies. I wound up ejecting Dima Bogoslavsky from the bedroom so that I could pump. Bogoslavsky is probably the biggest success of this year’s Lyubimovka – his play will soon premiere at the Mayakovsky Theater. Now that Mindaugas Karabauskis is in charge of that place, living playwrights can actually, you know, have their premiere there and stuff.

Speaking of the Mayakovsky – thanks to the nanny, again, we actually went to the Mayak restaurant next door after a night of readings at the festival. I like the Mayak – I just don’t like it on the weekends. On the weekends, some of the guests try extra hard to remind everyone that they’re freewheeling artist-types, and bang on the piano extra hard as well. It was good to sort of have a social life again, though, wreathed in smoke or otherwise.

The reading of my own new play, “The lives of living people,” went fine. Not great – but fine, considering the pressure on Alexey to edit the movie and hold rehearsals, and considering the fact that I was re-writing the new draft in the heat of the summer, with an enormous belly weighing me down. The best part was realizing that the main heroine, as interpreted by glamorous Alexandra Rebenok, is kinda a bad person.

That night on the Garden Ring, Slava asked us – “Who financed the film project? Who are the other crew members?” We had to explain that there was no funding, it was just Alexey and me, and our money. We had to explain that there was no crew. I haven’t realized before how fantastical that might seem from the outside – that this movie got done, and that it looks the way it does, and that it happens to tell a pretty profound story straight from the margins of Russian society.

I suppose we’re allowed to feel tired.

I’m happy like a new mother is happy

When the theater festival in town gives her opportunities and excuses to drink wine with disreputable men who happen to be her friends, fret about some critics’ need for “catharsis” and kiss the disreputable man who happens to be her husband in the back of a cab at night.

Other towns have other festivals, but Lyubimovka is ours. 🙂