I don’t love this song any less now that I’m knocked up

In fact, I kinda love it more.

And I’m totally smug. Totally.

Though this doesn’t stop me from making all sorts of jokes about how damn lucky this kid is right now, with it being -22 in Moscow, and him or her all snug in my womb. I mean, it’s so cold that your face hurts every time you go outside, but is that a problem for this kid? Hell no, it is not. Does he or she need to worry about purchasing a warmer pair of gloves or not being able to stand around and wait for the bus without his or her ass freezing off? Hell no, he or she does not.

He or she also has someone else eating for him or her, which is convenient and fascinating, really, because I can’t be five minutes late with my latest meal without feeling as though I am about to diiiiiiiiiiiiie. I’m forced to seek food like a rampaging zombie, interrupting meetings with “I’m sorry, I have to eat,” and reappearing after a few minutes with reheated lasagna in tow.

If anything, this kid ought to be smug as well, if not smugger.

The visible heart

I went swimming across the universe once. In late summer on the Black Sea, plankton lights up in the water as you enter it – sending alarm messages in case you’re a possible predator. I used to be terrified of the sea at night, but I had begun to change by then, which is why I was able to terrify the plankton instead.

Turning away from the shore, I swam towards a hint of horizon, with stars above me and stars below, nothing between me and the water and air. Every single movement of my body produced light, while the sky above moved as well, lighting up with meteorites. The night before, a meteor fell into the water just a hundred feet away  – we had been convinced it was a rocket from shore at first, but I was on the (mostly empty) shore at that late hour, and I knew for a fact it couldn’t have been a rocket.

“How is that even possible?” We asked each other as we sat and stared out across the dark water.

“Maybe it’s a sign,” I finally said.Continue reading “The visible heart”

Isn’t it terrible – needing people?

Especially when you are not used to needing anyone? You need your family while growing up, but if you’re privileged enough to not dwell on it too much – then you don’t dwell on it too much. So you go on, policing your borders even when you fall in love, until something in your life changes so irrevocably, that you are forced to look in the mirror and, upon seeing the person in there, the only thing you’re able to articulate is – “I don’t want to do this alone.”

At five a.m. today, I was crouched on the asphalt by my building, throwing up. I had valiantly kept it down while getting more and more carsick in the taxi on the way home – but my body was no longer going to be obedient. It had its own scores to settle with me. I was terribly worried that someone might happen along and think that I drank too much – and then thoughtlessly decided to puke in the courtyard. O the stain on my pristine reputation! I heaved and blubbered between heaves. The Man hovered nearby, pointing out that I shouldn’t cry, because “this happens to almost everyone” and “is very normal.”

“Well it doesn’t FEEL normal!” I managed to say somewhere between heaves. “It doesn’t feel normal at all!”

What it felt was like this – I’m small. I’m helpless. My talents, my career, my past, my future – they somehow don’t matter at all in the face of this helplessness. I walk into rooms, people listen to me talk – and this doesn’t matter. I write articles, people have tried to threaten me over some of them, I write plays, people tear them apart or praise them – and this doesn’t matter either. I know how to shoot a gun, I know how to shoot an arrow, I know how to punch and duck a punch (though I haven’t had practice as of late) – none of it freaking matters.

I realize now that I have always needed not to need. It’s been a philosophy and a religion of mine. Now that it’s suddenly useless, I’m not entirely sure what to replace it with. Magic? Alchemy?

Moscow this time of year reminds me of Jonathan Strange’s London. It’s a restless and beautiful kind of place that seems comfortably perched on the brink of a visible or invisible disaster. I wander around it in total confusion.

Urban fantasy is awesome – I just never expected to live it (even though, I have to say, it’s helpful when you get stuck on a certain plot point in your own writing. So, um. Been counting my blessings and all that.)