Only Sort of Inspiring (Or Is It?)

I don't feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am. The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning. If you knew when you began a book what you would say at the end, do you think that you would have the courage to write it? What is true for writing and for a love relationship is true also for life. The game is worthwhile insofar as we don't know what will be the end.

(Michel Foucault interview in Technologies of the Self)

For all of us trying to write, these words are cold comfort, no? Nonetheless, are they not also secretly exciting?


So, I've decided to stay on and try to write here while I can.

I heard a story recently by the expatriated Canadian Mavis Gallant called "When We Were Nearly Young." In it, a girl goes to Madrid thinking that "if I set myself against a background into which I could not possibly merge, that some outline would present itself." It doesn't work. (Or does it?)

I'm waiting for an outline, too. Not so much of myself, but of the way I want to write about the things that I am writing about. It's coming, slowly, and I'm scared that if I leave and go through all the steps of playing house again, I'll lose momentum and the things that are exciting now will slip my mind.


Here are some boring things that I've been doing to get excited about another Moscow year:
1) ordering books and shoes for MomGote to bring in June
2) reconstituting dried chickpeas for making hummus
3) begging you guys to visit (!)


4) reciting Saroyan: It'll hit you you in July.