catch my breath

During the last week of Lent Mrs S graced Bay Area with a visit from Sweden. On May 1^st the boyfriend and I took her to our favorite beach for this year’s first dipping of toes.

In the midst of an early heat wave The Golden Gate Bridge seemed to remind us all of how lucky we are to be here and to live this life.

The last week of Lent came just in time…

In preparation for Easter I bought new heels in a color that’s never appealed to me before: nude. There’s a first for everything!

Excuse me as I look tired outside the Serbian Orthodox Church in San Francisco on Easter Sunday: I attended three services during the preceding three days…

Plenty of things obviously happened between Easter and this shot a week later – at Victoria’s Secret where I finally got myself a pink hoodie [sometimes the silliest goals are the easiest to attain] – but that information is only available on instagram.

May 14^th marked the boyfriend’s 33^rd birthday. We celebrated by bringing grapes and a bottle of rosé to a secluded beach in northern Marin County.

Everything was super romantic.

The boyfriend tried to take sexy beach shoots of me playing in the waves and I pretended I was Marilyn Monroe expecting discovery in a different century.

In the evening we cleaned up nicely; yes, that’s me wearing ‘the little black dress’ in a fine dining restaurant right on the water front.

In the midst of drinking wine on beaches and celebrating holidays in church I decided to finally get a driver license. My theory test for a learner’s permit is this upcoming Wednesday. Good for me that I finished reading this already yesterday!

Since it’ll only be a Swede teaching Russian in the office over the summer – the spring semester of 2013 is officially over – I thought a new meme was necessary.

“A Farewell to Lara”

She would always start our private study sessions with a lesson in grammar and end with a lesson in life...

“A Farewell to Lara”

a short story by

L. J. Lundblad

May 2013

Most boys part ways with their first love the summer between high school and college. The summer between high school and college I fell in love for the first time. In May I graduated and turned eighteen. In June I began college because my parents thought it was a good idea for me to get a head start on my studies with a summer class. Back then I thought it was a terrible idea for me to pack up my childhood belongings two months earlier and for us to drive hours out west in June. In retrospect it was the best idea my parents have ever had. It was a language class and the teacher’s name was Lara. Lara became my first professor and she was my first love. For eight weeks of an unusually hot summer in southern Oregon Lara greeted me with a smile every day of the week. It was the summer I read Doctor Zhivago for the first time in an English translation. I never thought then I would one day read it in the original but then I did think my Lara was as enigmatic and beautiful as the Lara of Doctor Zhivago. Doctor Zhivago and I had plenty in common when I was eighteen years old: we both wrote poetry and we both wanted to dedicate our lives to the practice of medicine. We also both traveled to the Urals and we both loved Lara there among the cold of the snow and in the heat of the revolution; the snow and the revolution was a historic fact and geographic reality for Doctor Zhivago as was the Urals – for me all three were imaginary and personal yet no less authentic. My Lara had come to Oregon from the University of Perm several years before our paths crossed but it always seemed to me that she opened the door to another time and place every time she stepped into the class room. She brought Russia with her wherever she went. That summer she brought it to me and my life was never to be the same again.

I never did become a medical doctor and I hold Lara responsible for that. Instead she thought I would become a good writer one day. I think she was right about that.

The greatest man I have ever known was not a man but a woman and she was not great in physical stature; when I was eighteen she reached me almost to the shoulder and then I didn’t know I had a few more inches left to grow. It was perhaps the first time I realized you can look up to someone in a figurative sense even though she is looking up at you. Despite her small frame it seemed to me that she contained everything that is wonderful about the world and everything that is magical about knowledge and that there was no end to the things she could teach me. Lara was an abyss of life experience waiting to be shared and circulated and in that sense she was bigger than anyone I have ever met since. Of course she was a pretty young woman as well and as an eighteen year old boy I noticed this before I noticed anything else about her. I never knew her age that summer but I always guessed she was approximately ten years older than me. This made her an old wise lady in my childish eyes and I memorized all her stories without knowing why. Maybe I thought they would one day come in handy. I think I was right about that.

It was not love at first sight. If there was anything at first sight there was desire: sexual desire within the awkward body of a teenage boy still trying to figure out how all the parts function. Probably she had not come mean to me what she did if it had not been for those long summer evenings when the sun set slowly in the west and I sat outside in one of the cafes on campus trying to do my homework. One evening in early July she sat down at the table next to mine with a book and a cup of tea. I was hiding my copy of Doctor Zhivago under a dictionary for when vocabulary practice was over but she saw it and decided she wanted to talk about it. That decision marks the beginning of a journey without an end. “I also read this novel when I was eighteen,” she said and then smiled as if to apologize: “and that was already my third year in college.” I told her I was reading it only after I had finished my homework for the day. Then a sudden rush of bravery came over me and I asked her why she went to college so early. “It’s a long story,” was her answer as she once again smiled at me. “But maybe we have time for long stories this evening?” she asked, took her book and her cup of tea and moved over to my table. “Do you know what you want to be when you grow up?” she continued. I told her I wanted to become a doctor. “I had no idea what I wanted to become when I went to college. Because I was fifteen. Nobody knows what they want to become when they are teenagers, right?” I told her I had known since I was in sixth grade. “I met my first husband when I was in sixth grade,” she laughed. I didn’t say anything. “Do you want to hear a strange story from a real lived life?” she asked. I nodded.

Lara never had a father. Lara lost her mother when she was twelve years old. Due to a lack of relatives who could take care of her she found a new home with foster parents, a middle-aged couple of university professors without children of their own. When she was thirteen her foster mother passed away in cancer. “So it was just me and the old professor left in the family and he devoted every moment of free time he had to make sure I excelled in every subject taught at school,” she said to explain how she came to graduate from high school and be accepted to the university when she was fifteen. “My first degree was in history even though I wanted to study languages but I couldn’t because the old professor was in rhetoric and he thought it might be a conflict of interest,” she continued. She never provided the old professor with a name in her narrative. I did not foresee the twist she had in store for me. Lara married the old professor when she was eighteen. “I was your age and I didn’t know anything about anything. Least of all I knew about marriage. He was forty years older than me,” she said and quickly corrected herself: “He is forty years older than me.” On that summer evening in early July Lara left the story of her life at that enticing moment with a simple conclusion: do not get married too young.

Throughout the summer I pieced together the story of her life during many warm evenings at the same table in the same café. She would always start our private study sessions with a lesson in grammar and end with a lesson in life. Lara painted a vivid picture for me brush stroke by brush stroke of the kind of life I only thought was possible in movies and novels; from a teenage girl who married her foster father and graduated college before turning twenty to a young woman who went as a volunteer to an orphanage in Siberia for six months and ended up staying in the country for six years. “Somewhere along the road we divorced but I don’t remember when exactly that was anymore,” she said. “I was a child who grew up too fast and the old professor was a man who always wanted a daughter but fell in love with her instead. It wasn’t anybody’s fault but our own.” Through her stories Lara came to haunt my thoughts, my feelings, and my fantasies that summer. Lara did not know it then but she became the eternal feminine who pays a visit of respect whenever I write a short story or a novel. The image of the old professor – the nameless man who was only once referred to as my first husband – visits me as well even though I have had to furnish him with an exterior of my own. Her stories contained little depiction. Lara described events and she narrated experiences; she did not sketch people nor provide them with comprehensible biographies. In my mind the old professor looked almost as I imagined myself some fifty years later as a distinguished doctor: a tall man with silver strokes in his black hair, wearing black framed glasses and a dark brown suit with a green bowtie. She was always the same in all my imagined flashbacks of her: a delicate girl with curly brown hair and big green eyes who refused to wear high heels even though it might be a wise choice. “I’m probably too short to wear flats but no man has ever minded it,” I remember her saying and I remember her also adding: “Even though I always was only with tall men. I think I must like it that way.” When I was eighteen I thought this was her subtle way of showing approval of my awkward height and I blushed. Now I think it was just something she said and that it had nothing to do with me. But still it was exciting for me to imagine that also I had something in common with the men in her life. She only mentioned them in passing as if they were unfortunate occasions but I remembered each one of them and the circumstances of their chance encounters with Lara. None of them were given a name.

On the last day of classes we both lingered in the class room as the other students made their way out the door. “Arvid,” she said to me and she rarely addressed me by my name, “I hope you will continue with Russian.” I said that I would. “And even if you don’t I just want you to be happy with your choices. Always make sure that these choices are your own.” For many years to come I regretted that my first love came and went without a first kiss.

Instead of a simple conclusion in the style of Lara I will give you the complicated ending. I did continue with Russian; I studied the language throughout college and I took classes on Russian history and literature until the subject went from being my minor to becoming my major and I graduated not only with honors but also with a stipend to study for a year in Saint Petersburg. While I was in Russia I took the train to the city of Perm. I found neither Doctor Zhivago nor Lara there but the journey itself was worth more than its destination. When I came back I went to Harvard for graduate school and eventually I found myself in the same place where I had once found Lara: I was teaching a summer course on Russian language. A year or two later I attended a conference where I saw a familiar name on the program: Lara was giving a paper in the section before the one I was presenting in. By then I had long ago grown into my tall frame and mastered the growth of facial hair – something I had yet to accomplish when I was eighteen years old and it was summer in southern Oregon. I was no longer the same young boy with too long arms and bony legs and a few black hairs above my upper lip. Lara was still the same when I saw her at the podium: she brought the same smile and the same presence of another time and place with her to the conference. Only this time the place was Oregon and the time was the summer between high school and college. Lara recognized me and nodded. Afterwards she approached me and gave me a hug. Lara had never hugged me before.

My first love did not remain without a kiss. After the reception on the same evening we found ourselves alone outside on one of the balconies. “Arvid, did you know I was so in love with you back then?” she said and took a sip from the glass of red wine she held in her right hand. “It would have been unprofessional of me to tell you,” she continued, “but you were and you remain my favorite student.” I leaned in for a kiss and she raised her face slightly up towards mine. “I always knew, Lara, I always knew,” I said even though I of course had never known anything up until that moment. The following morning was the last day of the conference and she left my hotel room for the airport before I could offer her breakfast. It was perhaps the first time I realized that the outcome of certain choices of your own is worth waiting for.

I haven’t seen Lara since but she still pays me a visit once in a while. For example, while I was writing this.

det drar ihop sig

Last Saturday was Cal Day here at Berkeley: a day when freshly admitted high school students come to visit and all departments try to catch their attention. Even though I was there to represent my own department, I got pulled into the Scandinavian department’s stand for a while. The same day I was offered to teach Swedish for them next year but I had to turn it down since I’m already teaching Russian.

So many things are about to wrap themselves up soon, comrades: the last day of classes of this academic year is next Friday and my father’s will was finalized today in Sweden. I’m not entirely sure yet what the latter will come to mean for me, but I know that the first will mark the end of an entire academic year of teaching Russian language at Berkeley. On Tuesday next week Mrs. S comes to visit me here – well, she doesn’t really come just to visit me [although that’s the way I’ve chosen to look at this situation] but to attend a conference in San Francisco. Nevertheless she’ll be staying with me for a couple of days and there is nothing I could’ve needed more at this moment than a visit from a close friend. It’s been a long year without her here in Berkeley since she left in August last year, and I still regard the year that she was working on the same floor as me as one of the best years I had in graduate school. My second year of graduate school was the toughest in terms of academic dimensions: lots of stress and lots of conflicts and lots of lack of understanding for how difficult it was for me while my father was sick. But my second year of graduate school was the best in terms of private dimensions: I started dating my boyfriend and I always had Mrs. S at my side for companionship and plenty of long, deep conversation every day at work. My third year of graduate school was less homogenous; the first semester was like slowly walking constantly in the shadow of death while the second was like pursuing an unsteady but determinate path toward a graceful ascension from that hell. I didn’t have any close friend by my side during my third year and I have been very sad about that throughout this year. There were a few moments of friendship along the difficult road to recovery but mostly it was the boyfriend who was here to support me at every step. I don’t know what my fourth year holds for me yet – I hope that it will become a year that marks both the end of something old and the beginning of something new. I am hoping to pass my qualifying exams by the end of it and I have begun the demanding process of preparation for this during the past week. The first step is to have a paper of mine admitted as my “publishable paper” and yesterday I had a two hour long meeting with a professor about the paper I hope to submit – God willing – by the end of May. Once it passes, I must start compiling my reading list for the Ph.D. exam; I kind of started working on it last week but I know it must be severely expanded before it can be accepted. But I have until the first week of the fall semester to contemplate its construction and various components. Sometimes I do feel like I should just not do anything at all but simply leave this program and go live happily ever after somewhere else in the world. In many ways this whole idea – graduate school in the Slavic Department of UC Berkeley – was a naïve endeavor to begin with: I had no idea what I was getting myself into three years ago and if I had known I might have chosen a different path for my future. It also never occurred to me then that I would feel misplaced at a prestigious program in a prestigious school; three years later I know very well that coming from a small country [shout out, Sweden!] and having received higher education only at peripheral universities don’t really give you much of an advantage among those who went to, let’s say, Harvard. I could never have studied at Harvard as an undergraduate student [I don’t think I would have been able to go to Berkeley even] because there were simply no such financial funds where I come from. I teach students now who are far more privileged than I ever was, and sometimes I do feel like I’m out of place when standing in front of them. But I made this decision and I’m glad that I had the opportunity to get a taste of what this world is like. I don’t think I would make the claim that this is the “best” of worlds, but I’m happy to have been a part of it. If anything I am living proof that you can go as far as you’d want to go – you are the only limit to yourself – but I would also like to say that it won’t be as easy as it looks once you’re there. If you were many steps behind several years ago, then most likely you’ll still be one step behind when you get to where you want to be. I try to tell the boyfriend sometimes that the university world was not created with folks like us in mind; it was designed as an elite institution and it remains an elite institution to this day. Sometimes they let people like me in and that is all good but I still think that once we’re here they [the original elite of academia] don’t really know what to do with us: we speak another language, wear different clothes, and have another kind of approach to things. But we’re people too and we have our own talents, even though we might not always show them in the appropriate way. One of the reasons as to why I wanted to do this in the first place was because I wanted to prove that girls like me can do it too – get an advanced academic degree – without having to sacrifice who they are or what they stand for. I’m still trying to figure out how to make it all come together in the end but I haven’t given up hope. And hope dies last! [Or hope maybe never dies…]

one thing after the other

The week after I returned from Canada I finally realized a dream I’ve had all semester and taught two classes outside. Life in California does have its perks.

Last weekend Critical Companion and I hosted a scholar from Lithuania via San Diego who came to Berkeley for a conference – we greeted her with a Lenten feast on Friday evening.

After a weekend of being sick – I caught a cold as soon as I bounced back from the exhaustion I suffered in Toronto – I graded students’ compositions in the company of the department mascot on Sunday afternoon. One of my students submitted original Russian poetry as her composition – definitely one of the high points of the semester!

The boyfriend brought me flowers for no reason at all one day.

On Thursday morning April 17 2013, one of our most beloved professors passed away. This is how I found the door to his office today – a memorial site in honor of his memory.

«Шведский писатель Стриндберг, известный женоненавистник, желающий, чтобы женщина была  только  рабыней  и служила прихотям мужчины, а сущности единомышленник гиляков; если б ему

случилось приехать на Сев<ерный> Сахалин, то они долго бы его обнимали».

[Антон Чехов, «Остров Сахалин»]

“The Swedish writer Strindberg, a known misogynist who wants a woman to be only a slave and serve the whims of men, is essentially a sympathizer with the Nikhv people; if he happened to come to North Sakhalin, they would embrace him for a long time.”

[Anton Chekhov, The Island Sakhalin]

It has been a time of physical infirmity and emotional turmoil in Berkeley since I came back from Toronto almost two weeks ago; during the first week I was exhausted and during the following I caught a very persistent cold which is only now beginning to give in to constant medication and my own stubborn will power. So much for the physical infirmity part. As for the emotional turmoil, it began at the end of last week when we were told that one of our professors – an absolutely lovely man, beloved by everyone as both a mentor, a scholar, and a person – would not return to teach the remaining seminars of his class which I am taking this semester. At that point we didn’t know too much about what was going on; we pieced together the narrative over the following days until we found out on Thursday morning that he had passed away. It was one of those days when you don’t want to find yourself among those who are at work earlier than most – I encountered the unfortunate situation twice when I had to be the one to inform my colleagues of the painful event that had just occurred. A memorial service was held in the Russian Orthodox Church in Berkeley on the same day in the afternoon and almost everyone – professors and graduate students alike – attended. It was one of those moments when I feel so grateful for the future profession of my boyfriend: the presence of a future Orthodox priest by my side was both comforting and helpful as I experienced the first Russian memorial service in my life thus far. In January when I left Sweden I decided for some reason that I should bring my black funeral dress with me to California; I bought it in 2007 to wear to my grandmother’s wedding in May and I wore it a second time to my grandfather’s funeral in June the same year. Then I didn’t have any reason to wear it until the memorial service for my father in December last year. I don’t know why I thought I would need it here when I packed it in January but I will wear it to the funeral tomorrow. Maybe I already somehow knew that I had made enough connections with people here that I would soon find myself among the mourning again – I really don’t know. I think I kind of tried to convince myself that I could wear it also to other occasions in the future but why would I wear a black dress I have only worn at funerals to any other kind of event? It doesn’t make any sense but now it is here with me in Berkeley and I guess I didn’t think I would have to take it out this soon. It broke slightly during my father’s funeral and I remember that I thought of fixing it back in February but still thought I had plenty of time to do that some other day. Now I will have to fix it tomorrow before the funeral. Classes have been cancelled [even though there was some very unnecessary in my opinion discussion concerning this initially] and so we will have an entire day of tranquility and unity tomorrow. I think we’ve been needing one of those days for a long time now. I just wished the reason would have been another. I’ve never been to an Orthodox funeral before. I’m not an expert at funerals, and also because of this it feels comforting to know that I am spending my life together with a man who has chosen matters of death and life as his profession. He always knows what to say when I am at a loss for words.

When you live abroad or in a new place – I have noticed – there always comes a borderline eventually which separates two of your statuses as an outsider; before this borderline, you are a visitor, after it has been crossed over you become a resident. After the memorial service in the Russian Orthodox Church on Wednesday afternoon I caught a glimpse of a familiar face in the crowd – the face of a man I used to know at a point in time which now seems very distant to me. And yet I got to know him also here, in Berkeley. It was strange to recognize him among the mourners and yet at the same time it felt almost natural that he should be there and that our eyes should meet if only for a second. When you see someone you have once known at an event commemorating a third person I think it is safe to say that you are no longer a visitor in this space – you have become a resident. After almost three years in Berkeley I can say that this is the place where I live, and if I should leave, that this is the place where I have lived. A lot of life was lived in this space for me. Many stages were passed through here and many people entered and exited my life here. But I also became a different person here – and I remembered this more than ever before on Wednesday afternoon in the church. I had never been there before even though it is located on my way to campus and I pass by it twice every day. On the days when I’m feeling especially pious I will cross myself as I pass. I think the conclusion that I would like to make here is that I could feel pious on a more regular basis but everything must come naturally. Nothing should ever be forced – no actions, thoughts, or feelings. If I have learned anything since I converted to Orthodoxy six months ago it is this: let everything come naturally. Now Lent is coming naturally to me but it took a few weeks before I realized how many temptations the first Great Lent holds for a recent convert. At first I was of course upset by all the temptations – and they still continue to come as we approach May 5^th – and disappointed by my own reactions. Then I decided to take a step back and let my own Lenten mode be formed naturally and without any kind of force. Everything starts from within, comrades.

Oh Canada!

On Thursday April 4^th I flew from San Francisco to Toronto to join the boyfriend [who arrived three days before me] for a three day conference there. Since we were staying with friends in Waterloo we had to drive almost two hours every morning to arrive in time for our panel at 8.30 am… This is a picture of what Canadian rush-hour looks like.

After the first day of conferencing – when I gave my paper on Shalamov and Solzhenitsyn – we went on a small tour of the city to check out the sites. Even though I was seriously jetlagged and tired after less than three hours of sleep I managed to smile.

After the second day of conferencing – when none of us gave a paper – our friends drove us to Niagara Falls on the Canadian-American border. We were so close to the “home country” that we could catch AT&T with our phones…

 I haven’t been to such a touristy spot as Niagara Falls since I was in Las Vegas!

The natural monument was breathtakingly beautiful and – of course – seriously romantic.

After the third day of conferencing – when the boyfriend gave his paper on Seminar No. 37 and religious conversion – we had a flight to catch back to the United States. In the airport we enjoyed a glass of white Canadian wine which was basically the only Canadian “food product” we had there since we’re observing Lent.

Oh Canada indeed, comrades. Except for that one night I spent in a hotel by the airport in Toronto in August last year – due to a late flight from Europe – this was my first visit to Canada. Even though the trip was a short one – I arrived around midnight on Thursday and we left on Sunday evening – we still managed to get a comprehensive impression of what Canada is like. It is a clean, beautiful and European-like country [at least the region we were visiting] which seems to have suffered a lot less from the economic crisis than California. We saw a lot of the country [more than initially planned] since we were staying in Waterloo with friends for the two first nights. The whole trip I was, however, so tired and almost exhausted: we had to get up at 6 in the morning and drive to Toronto for about two hours without having breakfast to make it to our panel which started at 8.30 three days in a row. The last night we stayed in the apartment of another friend of the boyfriend just outside Toronto and could sleep for an extra hour. Every day we first had the conference which was surprisingly interesting and extremely well-organized; prior to attending I went over the abstracts for our panel and was intimidated by the impressive scholars and distinguished professors in whose presence also I was giving a paper. I suspected that I would be somewhat of a troll in this panel – and I joked about it with my students on Thursday – but everything went much better than expected. My paper was well-received on Friday and everyone seemed to agree with my view that Shalamov’s dramatic works require further exploration and the boyfriend’s paper caused an intense discussion after he delivered it on Sunday. Of course we were still a Slavic scholar and theologian at a conference about comparative literature, but we did our best with what we brought – and were greeted with open arms. We spent some time walking around the campus of University of Toronto and seriously considered the option of one day working here as professors in our respective fields. Who knows? Maybe one day we’ll move to Canada? Right now we’re keeping our future open for whatever will come and trying to make connections where we can. If I have learned one thing about academia thus far then that is to make as many connections as possible and make sure that as many other scholars as possible have seen or heard your name or your work. I know I’m still a few years away from going on the job market but already now I understand that is it better if people who might want to hire me to work in their department will be able to remember that “oh that’s right I heard her paper at ACLA in Toronto in April 2013 and she’s pretty good at what she does” when they see my application. Other than attending the conference we had several social engagements while we were in Canada: on Friday we had a dinner in Kitchener, on Saturday we went to Niagara Falls, then attended another dinner in Toronto in the evening [by then I was so tired but still tried to make nice], and on Sunday I accompanied the boyfriend to his meeting with a scholar. Then we flew back to the United States and it was perhaps one of the longest and most uncomfortable flights in my life thus far – first an hour to Newark and then six hours from there to San Francisco. This morning when I woke up I didn’t even want to think about the long week looming over me and to prevent myself from falling asleep during Russian class I decided to take my students outside. It was good to be back in California – where it’s warm and the sun shines and one can teach Russian grammar outside on campus if one wants to. It was really cold in Canada! Now I’m looking forward to catching up on my sleep and eventually reworking my conference paper into an awesome research paper to perhaps be published at some point in the future. But first of all – let’s get some more sleep…

a point called inspiration

Today was such a warm day here in Berkeley – it almost felt like summer – so in the afternoon the boyfriend and I decided to go for a hike at Inspiration Point.

It was surrounded by the kind of beautiful nature which calls for a photo shoot. So we tried… even though I look like I’m smelling my armpit in this one.

Spring break is coming to an end and right now I feel as if I could really use another week of rest – if only to bounce back from this one-week vacation. With spring having arrived finally in full force here in northern California, I decided that the design of my blog needed to keep up with the brighter change of seasons. Spring break has not really been as restful or peaceful for me as I had hoped for; for two days I suffered severe stomach aches [the vegan diet is testing my patience and bodily resources and yet I have no cravings for neither meat nor dairy products] and once they abandoned me I became afflicted with a migraine which lasted all of today [and is still holding me in its grip as I write this]. Monday was, however, a somewhat peaceful day for me. On Tuesday I woke up to a mail from the lawyer in Sweden dealing with the settlement of my father’s estate. For the first time I got to read through the official documents and both to my surprise and to my sadness they contained considerably different information about the state of affairs than my father’s second wife had provided me with thus far. After having spent some time discussing the matter with my sister on skype, I did what I could do at the moment and wrote my official rejection of the will made collectively by my father and his second wife in October 2011. I sent the document with my signature to Sweden but I haven’t heard anything from either the lawyer or my father’s second wife since. During the following couple of days I had plenty of time to consider different approaches to reality: initially I wanted to take revenge on my father’s second wife and fight the division of the estate until there is no estate left to divide, but after having contemplated how this option effects my emotional and spiritual state of being I realized that it is not worth it. Of course I am disappointed – mainly in myself – after having believed for months that everything my father’s second wife told me was true but now understanding that the truth is something else. A part of me would still like to fight this battle until we’ve arrived at an absolute zero and nobody gets nothing, but in the end I think the best decision I can make is to sign the papers as they are now and allow my father’s second wife to take possession of the house on the island in which I spent all of my summers while growing up. At least in that way something of my father and the past I share with him will still remain. Is it fair, though? Of course it is far from fair, but it is the best option for my own peace of mind and soul. I guess that right now I just regret that things turned out the way they did and that I and my siblings were not invited into the process until it was too late and at a point when to redo anything would only diminish my father’s remaining possessions and leave the four of us to negotiate an actual family feud. I never saw this coming, though, and therefore I feel naïve. Naïve because I believed what one part of the will told me and because I did not make an effort to double-check the facts myself until it was too late. While one part of me wants to fight this one to the bitter end, another part of me wants to surrender and move on with my life. The latter part is on the verge of winning, especially considering the emotional stress the former part has put me through during this week. I guess I never thought that I would one day find myself in a situation where everything connected with my father no longer had any connection to me. And that everyone involved would have such differing opinions about what to do. It is unfortunate but not to make things worse is what is better for me, comrades. At the end of each day.

a break in the spring

The first week of Lent we were good Orthodox and went to church three times. Here I’m smiling in the car – stuck in traffic on the Bay Bridge – on our way to an evening service on Thursday.

On Thursday we visited the Russian Cathedral in San Francisco for the first time in several months. It was a beautiful service – who knew two hours could pass that fast!

After the morning service in the Serbian church in San Francisco on Saturday the boyfriend and I took our Brother in Christ for a true feast of a vegan brunch at Herbivore.

On Sunday – once again after the liturgy in San Francisco – the boyfriend and I joined Dining with Dostoevsky, her Balkan man and their lovely dog for oysters by the sea.

It was my first time ever eating oysters and even though I’m not too impressed with their taste I was, however, very impressed by the delicious accompanying dishes prepared by Dining with Dostoevsky.

After having our oysters with plenty of red wine we decided to hit the beach.

Even though the sun was shining it was rather cold in the wind. At least for me!

The upcoming week is Spring Break here at Berkeley and I’m very much looking forward to an entire week of not having to teach every day. Teaching does take a lot of time and energy and especially since I decided during last week to experiment a bit and find out if my students know how to decline their nouns and conjugate their verbs – the results are rather devastating: I think more than half of them exposed their ignorance despite all the resources I’ve been trying to provide them with. Oh well. You live and you learn, I guess. So after spring break is over I think it is time to make this experiment a mandatory assignment for my students every second day – maybe during the last month of the semester they will master some of the basic skills they should have been on top of during the first month… The boyfriend and I don’t really have any spectacular plans for the upcoming break because the week after we’re flying to Toronto to do a conference together. So working on our respective papers is our only grandiose plan for the next week. I was so ready for a break to come at this point – the last week was especially rough as I finished a version of my paper on Shalamov and theater and sent it to be read by other people. I also decided to write an abstract of the paper for a conference here in Berkeley in the middle of April – if I’m unlucky I will have to present it also there. If I get lucky there’s a chance they’ll let me off the hook, which would be nice considering that I’m already scheduled to present this paper at two different conferences, first in Toronto in April and then in Prague in September. Right now I cannot wait to enjoy a whole week of sleeping in and doing work in my own pace and hopefully also getting some things at home in order. Yesterday I cleaned out my closet – I am strongly in favor of cleaning out one’s closet at least once a year – so a trip to Goodwill is also in the cards for me. The first week of Lent as for food restrictions – we’re basically going vegan for seven weeks – was difficult for my stomach which doesn’t take an absence of cheese easily. But I am sticking with it and already yesterday I started to feel like it was no big deal at all. Especially not after picking up so much delicious vegan food from Trader Joe’s and trying to cook some of it. There’s a good chance that I’ll become healthier after Lent is over – and perhaps even healthier already after a few weeks. As long as I don’t start craving a chai latte from Starbucks badly… But at the end of Lent Mrs S is coming back to California and she’ll be here both for Orthodox Easter and my first post-Lent chai latte. So things are bound to become brighter and brighter, comrades.

the Lenten mode

On Friday March 8 I began celebrating International Women’s Day by buying pink roses for all the girls in my Russian class.

When I arrived at work that morning I found my desk decorated by several gifts from the boyfriend… he really outdid himself this year!

On March 8 I also conducted a midterm survey among my students and I received many good comments but this one is my favorite.

Last Sunday – March 10 – I gave a talk in my department entitled “Staging the Gulag” at Kruzhok for our prospective graduate students.

This Sunday after church the boyfriend and I had our last indulgent coffee hour at Starbucks before Holy Lent begins tomorrow. No more chai latte until Easter for me…

We spent this lovely sunny Sunday afternoon together in San Francisco. First we visited Immigrant Point [as seen above] and then Point Fort.

The past three weeks have been spent in preparation for Holy Lent which begins tomorrow – Easter in the Orthodox calendar this year won’t happen until early May. In many ways I have felt myself swamped by a lot of work lately and stressed by the amount of stuff that needs to get done on a daily basis and even more stressed by the fact that I can’t seem to manage to do it all. There is always something that inevitably falls between the chairs these days it seems. I’m trying to become more effective and with more hours of the day when I’m not napping I appear to be helping the situation. When I’m not teaching or taking classes I am trying to work on my paper for the conference in Toronto in May. Also in Friday – when I found out that the final deadline to send a paper proposal was this Saturday – I suddenly decided to go to the Shalamov conference in Prague in September. Yes, it will be a long journey to make and yes, I know that I will be teaching again in the fall but I think that in the end it will be worth it. The last time I went to a Shalamov conference – in June 2011 in Moscow – I made several really good connections and broadened my professional network extensively. Hopefully I will be able to do something similar in Prague in September. Besides, it will be Prague! Alas, without the boyfriend by my side – and that is of course a very sad circumstance… Prague is the most romantic city in the world, but maybe my mother will join me there from Sweden for a couple of days. I guess we’ll see.

This past week I found out that my father’s will and thus also his estate has finally been settled by the lawyers in Sweden. Since I have waited for this moment since his death in October I can finally draw a last breath of consolation. At least that part of this journey is over now. I will not suddenly become rich once I receive my inheritance but at least there is a small sum of money that I will get sooner or later. Then we’ll see what will happen with all the things that aren’t money which my father left in his house. Right now I am continuing with the second step on the journey after my father’s death: I am searching for my biological grandmother. My father was adopted and since he spoke very little about his biological parents I realize that it will be difficult to find her. But today I found a lead which can – if it works – lead me to my biological uncle and he of course knows how to contact his mother. I don’t have any other grandparents who are still with us at this point and that is why I want to find my grandmother. I would like to let her know that her son passed away last year and I would also like to invite her to my wedding. Being the second generation after a person who was adopted – and who didn’t want to speak about it – is kind of like patching together a displaced puzzle. Right now all I have are leads to the puzzle pieces I need to recreate my own genealogy but at least this is a start.

“How the Other Half No Longer Lives”

Above is a picture [which my dear mother took] of my latest article in Göteborgs-Posten published as Linnéa J Lundblad on Saturday March 9 2013. Contrary to the impression given by this blog, this is not my first causerie this year – I published one on January 22 [or so it seems to me] but since my scan-girl-on-duty, Annie, left both newspapers and scanners behind after she moved into her new apartment in early February she could not scan that one for me. The text pictured above is not my finest work for two reasons: 1) my editor gave me its publication date before I even knew I would write it, and 2) I wrote it during some 90 minutes this past Tuesday evening in a frenzied effort to have something to submit. Hopefully by the date for my next causerie – set already now to early April – I will have had a little more time to think about what I’m writing… The past two weeks have been crazy because I’ve been struggling to get a paper ready for a presentation in my department tomorrow. When I started – two weeks ago – I didn’t have nothing. Tonight I have 20 pages. I think that’s what they call “progress”, comrades!

nothing changes the past like the present

On Monday – a public holiday here in the US called Presidents Day – I spent a few hours at work during which I printed out this note from the internets and put it up next to my office door. It’s been a lifelong dream to have ironic commentary in my place of work.

On Tuesday evening I made spontaneous lasagna for the boyfriend and Critical Companion. Our kitchen table hasn’t been the same since those candles appeared…

On Friday evening I documented the despair of a lonely university teacher grading – only minutes before the boyfriend picked me up for a party in San Mateo.

On Sunday after church the boyfriend and I went shopping in Emeryville: other than a skirt from H&M and a cardigan from Old Navy, I invested in some new bold eye shadows from Sephora. I cannot imagine my American life without Sephora!

The past week was a short – only four days of work – but intense one in the life and times of me. On Wednesday I finally finished the paper for one of my incomplete grades from the spring semester of 2012 – when life was more difficult – and what materialized was a work of literary investigation which might have created more new questions than it answered. In the paper called “‘A Chronicler of One’s Own Soul’: Tracing the Limits of Varlam Shalamov’s ‘New Prose’ in his Antinovel Vishera” I once again returned to one of his more difficult prosaic works with which I’ve been struggling since 2010 but this time I attempted to analyze Shalamov’s antinovel from the perspective of his own aesthetic theory of ‘new prose’ [his way of breaking with the complex tradition of the dead Russian novel] and I think the result this time became a little more promising. I find writers’ personal conceptualization of their own writing to be a fascinating thing. While exploring Shalamov’s theory in depth, I stumbled upon the realization that everything I have ever written myself thus far in life goes explicitly against all of Shalamov’s implicit discussions of his own prose. I’m not against imaging or inventing anything when it comes to producing literary narratives; if the final word has yet to be pronounced I am more than capable of fabricating such a last statement through my own imagination. As a matter of fact it appears that my artistic method consists in occupying an element from reality [or from ‘lived experience’ if that better floats the reader’s boat] and then elaborating further on it until I’ve reached a point beyond it, a place that is essentially inter- or metatextual [as opposed to extratextual (which is where we find ‘lived experience’]. I don’t think Shalamov would’ve approved of my aesthetics; probably he would’ve interpreted my narrative strategies as ‘violence’ toward my material. I could also choose his method as my own but I think the prospect of creating incomplete or incoherent narratives holds me back from attempting to simulate his theory of prose through the practice of my own prose. I don’t think I’ve written anything yet this year. That is a sad fact to contemplate for someone who once took pride in calling herself a writer. The reasons are multifaceted, of course, but most of all I contribute this sad fact to unfortunate extratextual circumstances. Writing is premised on having – or making – time to think at length and undisturbed. So far during this year I’ve had so much else on my plate – teaching, studying, researching, administrating, enjoying a thriving private life, etc. – that writing for fun and for myself always seems to end up last on my list of priorities. Hopefully this will change. But I’ve also noticed that writing originates from a place of dissatisfaction; misunderstand me correctly now, but it appears to me that the writing of fiction happens when one is struggling to express something one has experienced but has no way of articulating without resorting to the fateful practice of literary narratives. But before one gets to the stage of articulation – i.e. writing – there must be some kind of internal intellectual processing which transcends the immediacy of personal or lived experience and thus acquires a dimension of ethical, philosophical, or artistic importance. One can of course write without anything of the above, but in my own individual case I have noticed that I cannot. I do not wish to write without having a bigger picture of significance in mind; something which makes writing an act impossible not to carry out and the writing itself almost an occasion for inner, spiritual, investigation. There are many things in my life right now that I could write about: my father died, I converted to Orthodox Christianity, and I’ve realized that two years ago I was so innocent and naïve about everything in life that it blows my mind today. So why don’t I write about that? I think the problem is that I’m still within the process of experience when it comes to these things. I tried to write about my six years in Russia only to realize that I cannot write about that time before I come to a comprehensible conclusion about myself then. The more you live, the more certain periods of your life – even though they took up even years in actual time – become so compressed that one sentence could be enough to represent them. Now that I have concluded that I was innocent and naïve two years ago, I almost want to generalize and state that I was innocent and naïve throughout those six years I spent in Russia. My initial vision to narrate the intellectual development of one young Swedish blonde in the Russian province thus has become nothing but a negative conclusion: I arrived naïve and innocent and six years later I left slightly less naïve and innocent but still pretty much the same. The Russian stories I would have wanted to tell at an earlier point – when I was first entertaining this grandiose vision – now seem to make little sense to me. But I attribute that realization to my present state of mind. Nothing can change the past like the present. The present state of mind dictates everything when it comes to representations of the past. Maybe when I overcome this period of fragmented disillusion may I allow myself to go back and explore that which once was. Now all my past struggles seem inferior to that which I survived after them because my greatest internal battle wasn’t the voluntary experience of becoming an adult but the involuntary experience of becoming an adult – I lost my father way too early in life and until I can come to terms with what that means nothing else can ever have meaning. In the past as well as in the present – or in the future for that matter.