Ghosts in the Moscow Metro

Moscow Heat Wave

The way the light plays off the cup,
White and heavy, against the grit
Of 33 in a Moscow outdoor cafe,

The trees look green, against
My beter judgement
And the sky: an
Aching indistinct haze

The sun rolls heat
Over sponsored awnings, dust,
Sweat glands and peroxide
And the mashed-up cranberries
Taste of ice

Moscow Metro; Mayakovskaya

From the train window, January

Can't stand the 33 degrees in Moscow.

Oh the fidget! Oh, the hem!

There will be plenty of time

To get healty

Two Pictures of Zurich Forest

Motorola camera washes out the sky and put us on the edge of oblivion - what's beyond those trees I wonder.

Abstract Bottle on my Moscow Balcony

Irish Sunset

aCrlioghag

Beyond their reach

even if you yield

No matter

As the days will come

as they have before

It was all misery now

Hayden White's Metahistory

Hayden White initiates his study in Metahistory with an argument that all historical explanations are rhetorical and poetic by nature. He then formulates methods for classification and analysis and applies these to the “great” 19th Century historians (Michelet, Tocqueville, Ranke, and Burckhardt) and the “great” 19th Century philosophers of history (Nietzsche, Marx, Hegel, and Croce). For White, history as we know it is inherently poetic because each historical account is a story with a beginning that lead to and end (as opposed to a chronicle which begins and ends rather haphazardly), satisfying not just the question ‘what happened?’ but also ‘what is the point?’ To tell his story, then, each historian chooses a mode of emplotment (as indicated by Frye), a mode of argument (a particular apprehension of the historical field, as indicated by Popper), and a mode of ideological implication (as indicated by Mannheim). White then suggests “an elective affinity between the act of prefiguration of the historical field and the explanatory strategies used by historians in a given work.”(427) These relationships are related in the following chart, which show particular forms conducive to various ideologies of historical writing in the 19th century:

[note: the infamous chart will reappear once I can figure out how to change a pdf to a jpg]

Some thinkers consistently use more than one trope. Marx, for example, quite often uses Synecdoche in his analyses. Also, Conservatives and Liberals can both take advantage of the Irony trope as there exist a number of mixed emplotments (Comic Satire, Tragic Satire, Satirical Comedy, etc.), although, “the very notion of a Romantic Satire represents a contradiction in terms”(9). So the historian can, to a certain small degree, use different emplotments and apprehension for his ideological purposes, but these are the relationships best lent to one another. There do exist other possible emplotments, beyond the four already mentioned, such as Apocalyptic, Fascist, and Reactionary. These, however, fundamentally differ from the four mentioned as “they do not regard it as necessary to establish the authority of their cognitive position on either rationalist or scientific ground.”(23) It may be noted that Irony is considered to ‘transcend’ because it is aware of its own function of negation, and therefore seems more sophisticated and with greater perspective than the other tropes (37): “Like philosophy itself, Satire ‘paints its gray on gray’ in the awareness of its own inadequacy as an image of reality.”(10)
White comes to eight primary conclusions in his study(xi):

1. “There can be no ‘proper history’ which is also not philosophy of history.” They can only differ in emphasis.

2. The possible modes of historiography are the possible modes of speculative philosophy of history.

3. These modes are by nature 'poetic’, used to give historical events an ‘explanation’ and a ‘point’. Strict chronicles are neither aesthetically nor ‘historically’ satisfying.

4. There are no grounds on which one is more ‘realistic’. This means that one being held as more ‘truthful’ than the others can only be seen as biases of the related establishment or author.

5. We choose modes among existing contenders in a given historical account.

6. The best grounds for choosing are moralistic (‘we must help the poor’, or ‘history is doomed to repeat itself’) or aesthetic (telling a better story), not epistemological.

7. The scientifization of history can only mean a statement of preference for a particular mode as the epistemological justification has not been proven. This book itself is cast in the mode of Irony.

8. We may say that the dominant apprehensions have a historical progression; at certain times one (or two) mode(s) seems to really ‘tell it like it was,’ as opposed to the flawed and biased histories of the ‘past’. Irony tends to be followed by Romanticism, to return to the conviction of belief and vigor that Irony seems to deny. The Tragedy is logically followed by the Comedy, “for it represents an affirmation of the needs of life and its rights against the Tragic insight that all things existing in time are doomed to destruction.”(117) Comedy is in turn usually followed by Irony, such as late-Enlightenment historians as well as the historians at the end of the 19th Century, during the so-called ‘crisis in historiography.’ These periods of Irony coincide with renewed interest study in the study of the philosophy of history. We at our present time are “locked in the ironic mode.”(431) Contextualist and Formist are now the main candidates for historiographical orthodoxy.

These claims show why a given historian is dependent on the public’s precritical preference for acceptance of his chosen mode. For example, Marx “has no authority in a public which is precritically committed to the prefiguration of the historical field in the mode of Irony, Synecdoche, or Metaphor.”(430) He also provides insight into the reasons why philosophy of history (coinciding with the general prefiguartion in the mode of Irony) is stressed at certain periods rather than others. A further insight is related to the disputes among historians from the French Revolution to the First World War, which White sees as a struggle for supremacy among the contending modes as ‘the most truthful,’ or apprehending history, ‘as it really was.’

Examining such historians (and then historical philosophers) of the 18th Century, each one claiming his own mode to be the most ‘realistic,’ takes up the largest sections of the book, where White applies his formulation of the affinities among modes. Michelet is indicative of the Romantic historians, as he “repudiated all formal systems of explanation and tried to gain an explanatory effect by utilizing the Metaphorical mode to describe the historical filed and the mythos of Romance to represent its process.”(143) Ranke is the Conservative historian, as he uses the trope of Synecdoche to integrate parts into a larger historical whole. “Struggle, strife, and conflict are dissolved in the realization of perfect harmony,”(190) providing a sense of satisfying resolution, reconciliation, and organic completion in the present. Tocqueville’s purpose in history was therapeutic, much like that of the tragic poet, showing human failure as a historical given, for “a chaste historical consciousness would help to exorcise the residual fear of old gods and prepare men to assume responsibility for their own destinies.”(204) Burckhardt viewed historical reality through Satire, as this seemed to him the most sophisticated and the least ideological mode. He “always denied that he had a ‘philosophy of history,’ and he spoke with open contempt of Hegel.”(236) White follows these accounts with analyses of historical philosophers to show how claims of historical realism are arbitrary and how comments such as Burckhardt’s about lacking or repudiating ‘philosopher of history’ are ultimately misguided. It is no mistake, White notes, that most of the great philosophers of history in the 19th Century were also great philosophers of language.

The relevance of White’s work is to be able to examine and classify historians and historical accounts and to better understand and mitigate clashes over historical technique. It is also to add perspective to the debate on ‘historical objectivity’ by showing that there really is no such thing as ‘complete objectivity.’ What is important for White, it seems, is not to be ‘completely realistic,’ but to rather disclose the purpose and aim behind the chosen apprehension of the historical field; that is, to be clear regarding why one chose a modes over the other contenders. Again, the best way for this to be done is moralistic or aesthetic explanation; to lay one’s cards on the table, so to speak. Using White’s formulation and method, one is also able to recognize and analyze the type of story in a given historical account (Comedy, Tragedy, Satire, Romance, or Epic), and this emplotment accounts for the inclusion or exclusion of certain details, as well as why the historian finds some details more ‘important’ than others.

In my presentation, I attempted to show the relevance of these strategies by demonstrating how different accounts of current American politics differ depending on the ideological premises, which determine the way the story of political events will be told, which determines the casting of the dominant rhetorical trope, which determines which details are likely to be included, how they will be viewed, and how they will all be put together.

White, therefore, gives some insight into why given ‘events’ (such as Why America was Attacked on 9/11/2001) can be much more easily discussed among ideologically similar thinkers, for they may have extremely ‘meaningful’ debates on the inclusion or interpretation of details, as they share the same assumptions (they emplot the story along similar lines and then, so the discussion is mainly with this taken as a pre-critical given). Extreme conservatives and extreme liberals will most often becomes frustrated and find difficulty having ‘meaningful’ debates because they attempt to debate the inclusion or interpretation of details, but both based on wholly different assumptions which they take as ‘obvious’ or ‘common-sensical,’ coming from different ideologies and thus emploting the story differently. They will not really be talking about the same thing; they perhaps should be talking about their assumptions rather than the details their assumptions inevitably lead them to focus on. Ultimately, this book is the demystification of histories, historians, journalism, and journalists who claim to present things ‘as they are,’ while providing some brilliant methods for determining in what ways a given account lacks ‘complete objectivity’ and how it can be seen as ultimately ideological.


[disclaimer: this is by no means meant to be an exhaustive survey of professor white's book, it is simply a study tool designed for those who have little or no knowledge of the book and would like a starting point. here's the background on this essay]

announcement: the overhaul of skij's 13

Dear loyal readers of skij's 13 and passers-by:

I'm going to be completely overhauling my little blog here and make it into a much more comprehensive literary site with a lot more of my work. That means: I'll be dropping the pseudonym, uploading an actual picture (comments very welcome), and, most importantly, putting up full versions of a lot of my prose. For now some of the new links to the right just send you back to the main page - my understanding of code is such that I have to do this piece by piece - but soon they'll send you to much more organized and detailed pages. So: you'll be able to get lists of stories, poems, etc.. Come back soon - I'll be making the changes in the next few days.

Poetry Collection V

your hand is shaking,

but nerves are okay,

because this day,

will still break, and there’s

always time, again

But none like this.








































oh jesus I have nothing more to say

when you’re already asleep

that I could take, you up in my arms?

and you could wake up,

if my voice were a little sharper,

if I, could make you, pain.

































you are,

just an ugly turn,

of shoulder skin during the dawn:

I could turn it away,

two times dark,

I could keep

myself Together.

































Pack yourself back up
Matchstick man
The wind is colder than
you thought

Ugly hands can feel
in the storm
Troubled pulses can’t hide
their shape




































tumbling for words -

gets stuck


fumbling in morning -

is sick


The sky can't be

all this blue


And all these

people, moving

Poetry Collection IV

after - rain
the streets have not
yet healed
to any
sealing of fricitives
the air - green
wet gasps of
thaT last breath

before sleep:
trying to stay
foot-touched
heart-held
before the rising
heavy
Earth -








































The moon was not/ forever tragedy

In flowers she would have been three (he slept
one as the sunflower you’ll find her
nestled in the creaking darkness of seeds
hinges of shadows' cloud dust or more and
two an orchid of violet fervor (his face, framed in the hills and wet grasses)
skin the flavor of honey blood find shade
in the spiraling darkness behold
her beauty is the legend of
Pagans the blood they heaved as
ballet grace and the drunken love
water for
purity she is her
own legend as calm
seaborn typhoon
or cool summer grass
midnight you’ll find
three flowers
and as she falls in love the tide shivers
and her love
shepherd of men but only as he
reminds us of our mortality
she passed above
his flock for years
and finally
jammed him to Paradise begging forever
(her father smiled)
his life her breath
in a box
a life no less
a life of love
and grasshopper legs












imagine
frameless girl of pixie breasts
daisy swarmed in brushes of her own nakedness
Barefoot seltzer she is
always summer
the brush of a cloud
(Here we pray
knees in the wet mud - volley
deprizal of our
volvulus words
Struck her where a rape they say jammed
volcanic
his winter into
against
(break)
Hands that could not hold on fumbled
the slippery heating darkness when the greatest
of heroes the volt of war pinned
girls against the Walls of Troy
(You cannot pray for nature/ alone in the mud
She ate the DArk Fruit
struck babbled her eyes could
not maintain the image
and the fruit burst between her
teeth drawing
her lips and
summer’s
whet
limp




















Ice is the second most solid container as of
course you know the stories of
the north young child young
men voyaging writing poems for
ice princesses they dreamt of your
father was such a man my child his
eyes like a fox's they
wore long cloaks and braced
their bodies to the ice's heart its womb their
fires were more for the love of smoke
than the invisibility they ate
they never tasted for
north is quite like a sea a garden of
waves caught fumbling in some crystal moment
of loved hating thought caught at
the moment when everything is packed under
only some men have ever returned the story
is an old one for north during days
of darkness days of sheer sparkle either
stellar or the hope the men planted in the
snow and caves and white like thumbnail corn their
eyes would change color you
see deep shades of red some of
leapordal orange aurorial and the ice
worked like slippery magic

Try not to let the nightmares in my
child





















In April
broken heat
stinks rising from
the tool-wise
pavement up-up
by a rounding deluge
to swallow wind
pregnant as wine
blushing
is this air: In April
sounds drop a
ring for lush
garden green hill scenes
pastel picking bare, no -
this is fog
eyes to be piked on
newly found
hollow nasals
and gritty
smelling glands
night lamps share no
fog above the
breeding April earth
My red tongue is earth-wet
and pelvis, vorpal-dead -
even feet are
sloppy in April

Poetry Collection III

go the way of gonzo




why the’ell not
blast out
your brains

on such
a melanch’ly
day?

granted the
Aspen sky
is crisp

Loathing
Fear, loathing
Fear.




























I've gotten you
out of my body

It's only blood
and muscle now

you're
just a
tremor in the bones

a slip between
tongue and lip

just a thought
my skin can't locate

But you should
write back all the same





























I'm in control girl -
I choose to wait,

I could have gotten
drunk hours ago.

no I don't notice -
the days as they pass,

But I knew
you'd ask


































my sock is lost
somewhere in your bed

the coffee tastes stronger cold

you put on your jeans
casual quick

so that’s how the rub can go




My sock is Gone -

Somewhere in your
sheets -

The coffee tastes stronger cold

You put on your jeans

casual-quick

we'll lose more

where that -

came from!



















Oh I speak to you again,
I couldn’t turn it down,
we’ll sit across tables,
candle-dy don’t,
playing on down the smiles,

Oh I could ask you home
after many a drink,
tumbling up whiskey even,
not a kiss,

try it and
we’ll see
what I say.































for Daniel Yuvachev
Of course I’m not sure if I believe
in such a tale but here it goes
there once was a writer who lived by a bridge
She lived by a bridge in England-town
Wrote about cats, wrote about God
A steady six weekends a year

Then one fine England-town day
something strange happened
and only this we know
she did not write she did not write
not about cats, not about God

Five years did pass and again she sat
to write a poem for dear dear Beth
justly returned from holiday she
had been a tourist Anyhow
the writer sat the writer thought
the writer baked strawberry muffins
and the most extraordinary of extraordinary then occurred

Nothing
She had nothing to write nothing to write
Not a single thought upon her head
Not a single thought worthy of God
Worthy of dear Beth

So warn you writers, sufferers all don’t
go like the woman in our tale
write write burn with your God
Write write love your kittens
love your youth

Poetry Collection II

Wipe that smiling off your face,

I'm more to blame than you,

Yes your body is hungry-svelte,

But I supply the gaze.











































If I can’t rub myself out


against you -


then I'll nick


at the itch -


raise up the skin in nervenumb


swelling -


at least feel something new.

























god I could kill you,

if you’d give me a chance,

red lips across your drink,

this is my mask,

just Waverly Worn,

sniffing on out

of the Dark.
































Tempt the Fates, If that’s As loud As you can Speak, Even if No one Reads it, Child



The expression – on – your face –
The moisture – on – your lip –
Such a day –
is only a day –
for you.

All will be forgiven –
because all will be forgotten.



































Just can't get under the skin
Under the skin:

You've shaved your legs
Two-times tart

I know the whole picture
Been in and in

So why these eyelash battings
Whore

I've seen it before
And seen it before

What makes you think I'm
In such pain?

























We walked like strangers

The straight concentration and she found my skin
holding something under breath


was love she said
was love she said

walked heavily
like paste

Poetry Collection I

Stuffed with Blue

Thumbs the - Sun

Pollen - grits it Raw

Nails on Head -

And jars still Closing

Counting Away -

The Sun




































Dead in - summer Hurts the Sun –

all this Streaming - deaf on Grass –

Hedges - of distraught - Attention –

and - these People walking – Home









































If distance is a trick – of what you expect it to be

And Proximity has no texture
Other than what – you've felt – Before

And all you have at death – are the stories
You've always told yourself – to fall asleep

And money is worth only – what you give
– to protect it – as it determines – the scales

And I have changed and you have changed

I'll take my little chances – with no great cause

And leave you –
The pressure of such – little words































The potions in my brain are
swollen, as our attention keeps us
humble, the quiet day begins without
promise, and ends with the future
adorned in the bells and sun dresses
of this prison –
we laugh, cautious





































you’ll pay tomorrow / my friend



\It was a
nervous jerk –
and so:
unfulfilling,
I’m still all nerves.
finger-tips and
heart valves.
The rocking of
sufficient breathing.
And I flit with the
desk lamp to melt
away those lines of light
across the ceiling.
This is it: convergence
of bloods, dissonance,
should there exist
such a word –

where is all of this
space when I’m
on trains? or
choosing breakfast
cereal?

All of those pens,
clips, jagged gleams
of metal on the desk –
Oh would they fit nicely
right back
behind my eyes!








from just moments after, when you have your breath back, if only to write a little something here or there



and – in these moments
of grinding – affectation
your head and your heart
an – awkward system

later there will – be time
to read this to pieces
what you could have waged –
into those little blue eyes

The moment is – escaping
the present: giving it the slip
and pegging reaction – on
dark foreign momentum

is the trick – against your
bones is the – thick against
where – your heart – should be
no, you’re wrong: there is time –

she said

Old Man and the Bar

A young man sits in a smoky cafe with a college-ruled notebook open in front of him. The pages are blank, he’s sipping his terrible coffee Americano, and he’s spinning his pen with his free hand.

An old man walks into the bar, but he looks like he’s already been drinking. He is a fisherman. His hands are bleeding.

The air is hard and smells of cedar.

“Don’t despair,” the old man says, moving up steadily to the young man, with a look that penetrates him to the core, beyond even his blood. “You are a man, and a man can be destroyed but never defeated.”

There is a pause until the young man can speak without shivering.
“But sometimes I feel so much pain and doubt,” says the young man, “It’s as if, all of the sleeping and all of the insomnia, that it’s all for absolutely nothing.”

He is having trouble breathing.

“A man can bear any pain, that is his gift.” The old man stares hard at him, and extends one of his bleeding hands. His eyes are so clear that the young man reaches for the hand. “Just do something that you know – do something you know, and something that is true.”

“Like what?” asks the young man, with a new life in his cloudy green eyes. His brain feels smooth and his breath now comes quickly. He is no longer twirling his pen.

And he looks at the old man until he sees it.

The old man opens his mouth to speak. The young man begins to cry. The old man’s eyes are sharp and clear. He pulls out a gun.

“Bear all pain,” he says, because he noticed the tears, and shoots himself in the head.

A Walk Down the Clyde in the Summertime

They walked through Glasgow, arm in arm, along the lazy Clyde which hadn’t impressed either of them – they had been expecting something more in the way of a mountain stream but this, they supposed, was what impressed the English that drove up North because it was a half more rapid and wild than the lazy English marshes and lakes and they came upon a brightly-lit, nice-looking cafe just as the sun had hit the rolling Scottish horizon and the buildings in the distance became dull like lead pikes and they would have green tea for Siobhan and whiskey for Mike.

“Now in this cafe you have to sound more Irish,” said Mike as he pinched Siobhan’s right shoulder in the only place where her right shoulder had any flesh.

“Ouch!” she said, “that actually hurt!” She stuck her tongue out and looked away as Mike reached for the cafe door.

“Hurt your pale little Irish skin,” he said with a smile into her ear, pausing with his hand on the doorknob.

“Yes, my pale little Irish skin, but I think it would have hurt any skin. And why shouldn’t you have to sound more American?”

She looked a little hurt Mike could tell because she hadn’t looked back at him when she said this and so Mike smiled more to show he was just being playful. And the stones on the pavement were beginning to pick up a sheen of street light out of the indirect haze and it did smell a little bit like mountains.

“No,” he said, “that won’t do. The more American I sound the more trouble I get into. More American would mean Texan, and they don’t like Texans any more than I do. But you should try to sound as Irish as possible, you know, or else they’ll think you’re American. You know how it is. And nothing’s worse than a pair of traveling Americans.”

“Okay,” she said, finally brightening up because she got the joke and Mike felt his muscles relax a little around his neck as he opened the door finally, “I’ll try to fit Dublin into my order.” She said Dublin with a strong accent, the ‘u’ sound nice and deep. “You just don’t be such a fucking cunt,” she said with a cute smile that lit her whole face up and squeezed him back on his shoulder as they walked into the cafe and went past the glass tables to the corner where she would want to sit, and Mike thought great, I’ll feel great, at least tonight.

“And I don’t get what would be so bad about being two Americans,” she said after they brought her the tea. The lights had gone down and some French jazz had picked up and the cafe smelled like black crusty Scottish bread with a touch of whiskey. The jazz and the soft Scottish and the hissing of the espresso machine was a relaxing background and Mike reflected on how much prettier she looked when she smiled. “After all, we’re not fat and you can’t go two minutes without saying something that sounds tremendously intelligent.”

“I’ll tell you about it later,” said Mike and he was looking hard at the whiskey on the rocks. He was looking hard at it because he couldn’t very well tell them to bring it back like he had ordered because you couldn’t be that American, not once you left the airport, so he drank it down.

“You’re always going to tell me things later,” she said and took a long drink of tea herself and looking long down the winding Glasgow streets towards the main square in between glances at his empty glass and her eyes were so goddamn lovely it made him really want another drink. “That can get boring, you know, only knowing things in the future.”
Mike was feeling fine and the whiskey was bringing a neat burn to his stomach and he was enjoying looking at Siobhan and the glass felt cool against his fingers.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Seriously.”

“Nothing.”

He sat back while she leaned in over her tea and looked again outside and followed a few couples walking through the streetlight down towards the river and the pavement was now very bright in the wet summer air and you could see the reflections of the streetlights off the stone almost as clearly as the streetlights themselves.

“It’s July and I’m in Glasgow and I’m in love,” she finally said and looked at him.

“With whom?”

“Stop messing,” she said and rolled her eyes.

“My sweet little pale Irishwoman.”

“My big stupid Yank.”

“Would you like another whiskey?” asked the waitress, a chubby, dark girl as Siobhan stuck her tongue out to Mike but this time playfully.

“Yes ma’am,” he drawled and Siobhan rolled her eyes again.

Mike toyed with his napkin a little and Siobhan reached for his hand.

“You’re so quiet tonight,” she said.

“You know, it’s all just hard, right now.”

“Excuse me,” came a voice over Siobhan’s shoulder. It was heavily accented, French, with a Scottish edge and Siobhan had noticed the girls sitting there but Mike hadn’t yet so he didn’t realize who was talking to them at first. The first thing he noticed was the concentration of pretty faces, the lack of thick thighs, and only third was that it had been one of these faces that had addressed them.

“You are not from Glasgow, no?”

Siobhan turned a little but not enough to face the French girls, she was still looking at Mike but turned enough to give the girls a corner of her face when Mike would answer because she knew it would be Mike who would answer. The three girls were cute and young and their cheeks were flushed with wine and coffee. Two were dark, almost as dark as the waitress, and had many bracelets and rings and earrings and the third had shocking red hair that was cut short to frame her face that was brushed with light freckles and very full lips.

“Easy enough to tell?” said Mike right as the waitress brought his whiskey which, of course, had ice in it. He laughed a comfortable laugh.

“Yes,” answered the red-head matter-of-factly, as if she was receiving a correct answer in a classroom, and then turned back to one of the darker girls who had said something quietly and she responded with something that sounded quite aggressive and emotional, even for French, and then stood up, her eyes flashing ever so slightly. “You mind?” she asked, pointing to the chair between Mike and Siobhan.

“Not at all,” said Mike and Siobhan was still looking at him with her tea-cup up against her face.

“Thank you, merci,” she said as she walked over to their table, looking back once and narrowing her eyes at the two girls who adjusted their chairs to face the other corner of the cafe. Now Mike could only see the glossy sheen of their dark hair and the occasional hand with bracelets and rings rise and fall emotionally.

“Sorry, I hope we didn’t...” started Mike.

“No, no, is nothing at all.” She looked at Siobhan and pursed her lips. “I am Julie.” The smile she gave Siobhan was broad and cautious and she handled her lips like she knew everyone was looking at them.

“Nice to meet you, I’m Mike,” said Mike and just then the waitress brought Julie a giant blue cocktail with a cherry, a lime, a red straw and an umbrella.

“You know it was the Americans who invent the cocktail?” said Julie and she pursed her lips around the straw and looked up at Mike.

“Oh?” said Siobhan.

“Yes. I read your Fitzgerald. In translation, of course.”

“Well, we’re not Americans,” said Mike just as he noticed his whiskey was getting diluted. The water left a weird mark in the liquid, and it would taste too cold.

“Oh?” said Julie, dipping her index finger in her blue cocktail. Her neck was strong, and she sat straight and alert, like she was ready at any moment to spring up. Her tone didn’t sound surprised or engaged so Mike had to act fast to save the moment.

“No. She’s from Dublin. I’m the only American.”

“Oh, I see. Is hard for me sometimes, the accents.”

“But you knew we weren’t from Glasgow.”

“Yes.” And she took another drink, this time looking outside and Mike wondered if she would get up and go back to the two dark French girls who, from their body movement, seemed to be in an argument over Julie because they kept looking over at her. Siobhan was checking her phone with her pursed lips and there was something about that look that brought the tension back into Mike’s shoulders. “Yes, I know you are not Glasgow, but because how you act.”

“Really, and how exactly we do act?” Mike said, realizing the moment was saved and things would be easy now and he reached for his drink to mark the moment.

“You act, like you walk into the cafe for the night. The one night. But here, everybody knows each other.”

“Just for the night,” said Siobhan, not looking up from her phone.

“You are on holiday – or vacation?” asked Julie, looking from him to her.

“You might say we’re both heading home,” said Mike as he motioned to the waitress over Julie’s shoulder. ‘But there’s no way to motion for no ice,’ was one of his thoughts at the moment. And he was sure he knew who was texting Siobhan but he couldn’t mention it, not now and not later.

“And is home Dublin or America? Or les highlands?”

“Mike actually lives in Shanghai,” said Siobhan, looking up from the phone and setting it on the table by the sugar, looking softly at Julie and meeting her eyes for the first time but without committing her expression to any particular attitude, just looking, “I’m going back to Dublin.”

“Oh, then this is sad occasion? I should leave then, because,” said Julie and her body did take the form of preparing for movement. Her perch was shaky and she could be on the other side of town in a minute, her posture said.

“No, please stay,” he said.

“Yes, do,” said Siobhan, looking over at him.

“So where are you on the way home from?”

“We both lived in London for a year, studying – university and tutors and the Thames and things like that,” said Siobhan.
“Siobhan was on a year abroad, I was just doing some graduate work.”

There was a pause at the table while Julie looked outside and Mike almost said what he was doing work in but then remembered what Siobhan had said earlier so he kept quiet and let the silence manifest itself and let himself hear the jazz again. “And what are you up to?” asked Mike, feeling very American.

“What am I up to?” said Julie, smiling and taking another drink. A touch of the blue cocktail mingled with the perfume reached Mike and he took a deep, silent breath of it in and tried to look a little bored.

“Yes,” said Siobhan, looking back at her phone.

And they drank for another hour and even discovered that Siobhan and Julie knew someone in common who was studying at Polytechnique and had lived with someone in Lyons who knew someone from Munich and while they were talking about him or her Mike looked down the Glasgow street and watched the figures coming in and out of bars and boutiques, and then he looked over his shoulder with his whiskey in his right hand to give authority to the gesture.

‘Because what had Siobhan been looking at?’ he wondered to himself and realized he was on his fifth whiskey and also realized that Siobhan was no longer bored but also that Julie might be but he could never tell with French especially the nervous kind because they could be bored out of their skulls but still look like they were going to jump you any second and then he wondered why the fuck he should care if Julie was bored or if Siobhan couldn’t get along with her and he sank back in his seat and looked up through a little wash of haze and the room seemed darker. Fifth or sixth whiskey?

“... just never calls, even when I don’t call him for three days and that is always supposed to work for the men,” Julie was saying.

“No, but you can’t ever generalize with things like that,” said Siobhan after a long, protesting drink of the blue cocktail Julie had talked her into ordering.

“What’s wrong?” Siobhan asked Mike an hour later as the two of them were leaning against the railing of a bridge over the Clyde a mile up from the cafe. It seemed much later to him, and he looked at his watch a second time.
“Nothing’s wrong,” he answered, and stared hard at the gleaming water and it reminded him vaguely of some of the rivers back home, but it still seemed slow and didn’t have any of the rocks rolling out of the surface that he associated with a mountain river and the smell wasn’t the same and the air was still moist.

“Are you drunk?” she asked tipsily, probably to soften the question, thought Mike. And she reached up to rub his shoulder and for a second he could feel her fingers and he could tell how cold they were because they were stiff and because she was always cold.

Mike, to his surprise, found himself shrugging off her hand.

“I just feel... irritated.”

“I wish I could help,” said Siobhan, still kindly. She gently returned her hand to the railing.

Mike didn’t answer for a few minutes and in the meantime Siobhan looked straight on at the river, too, and then back at the flashing lights of downtown Glasgow in the near distance and the sounds of cars or small drinking parties would waft out to them every once in a while and deaden against the sound of flowing water.

“I just wish I could help you. I think I could.” She was still looking forward and didn’t turn when she added, “I love you, Mike.”

And the sounds were washing over Mike, the sounds of this river and the rivers at home and the noise of the streets in London and the throbbing in your ears when you’re walking back home with Siobhan after a club and you’re laughing and walking slowly.

“London was great,” said Siobhan after another few minutes, watching his eyes and then the water. “I guess we’ll never have it again. At least how it was this summer. And I can’t believe it’s...” but she didn’t finish the thought because they had agreed not to talk about it any more.

And he looked over at her and she looked at him during the long silence that followed. What a stupid expression on my face, he thought, what a stupid moment that I try to keep forever and leaned in and kissed Siobhan and her lips reacted like they’d been waiting for it, they were hurried and a little shaking. ‘And you barely noticed that she was trembling.’ And he kissed her harder and put her hands against his bare stomach and they were cold.

Half an hour later they were walking back to the hotel and the stone streets glittered and most of the cafes were closed with their heavy wood chairs up on tables and they would only hear the occasional murmur from a bar. Siobhan had her right hand on Mike’s right hip and Mike’s hand was on Siobhan’s lower back and they both knew they would make love straightaway in the hotel room probably still half clothed with the lights off and he felt so lonely and hated making love feeling so lonely so he tried to focus on his lust because that could carry him through, too, and he probably wouldn’t even remember this moment afterwards. That made his shoulders tighten the tightest they had been that night.

“I got Julie’s email,” said Siobhan.

“Let’s just not talk about Julie, okay?”

“What’s wrong? Babe? Mike?”

And they walked on and Mike let go of her and walked with his hands in his pockets and hated the face he must be making and would have done anything to get rid of it because it embarrassed him and he tried to think of anything but Siobhan, of the Shanghainese girls and their skinny little bodies in their jeans and tank-tops and that brothel his friend had told him about he had promised himself he would force himself to try.

“This hurts like hell,” she finally said, as they turned down the alley that led to their hotel and he suddenly stopped and she looked at him hopefully and gently and knew that she would keep looking at him hopefully and understanding even though he hoped she would yell at him, raise her voice, tell him she was fucking pissed off and how could he leave like this and that she would never forget how he had treated her this last night and did she really mean so little to him but she didn’t. Mike opened his mouth to say something but stopped short. He could hear a street saxophonist somewhere up and off, and, putting his hand into Siobhan’s and squeezing it, he thought about how there would never be another London, but also never another Glasgow, either. And he hoped Siobhan would never guess how small and lonely he felt at that moment, about to kiss each other, his hand curled around hers.

:: coming soon! ::

please hold your breath - this page coming soon


for now, please enjoy this stern picture of me

Prime off the Lights of Pokrovka

The lights from the cafe, behind the shimmering, humming glass, dazzled his eyes. It was 6 p.m. on a slushy Moscow Tuesday in March and Sveta was looking through the front door. He felt dizzy but was happy because he had half a chicken wrapped in foil in his bag and his breath carried the sting of the strongest vodka he could afford that morning. So each breath in felt good, they filled his lungs with energy, and his teeth were sharpening to tear into the greasy, roast meat.

All around them was Moscow at rush hour, the light indirect, the sounds of the rumbling traffic mingling with the icicles dripping onto patches of ice and hurrying pedestrians sliding on the narrow strips of pavement, hitting puddles of gritty, cold sludge, sparkling with the lights of casinos and headlights and sushi restaurants.

And against all this movement stood Vladimir and his wife, Svetka, still looking into the cafe.

Svetka licked her lips. She had been drinking, too, and her old, pudgy face was screwed up into a peering little ball.
“We can eat in here,” she said without turning.

“Svetka, move,” he said as two hatless blondes in high heels clicked behind him, “move before someone opens the door and smashes your old face in.”

“Aren’t you listening to me? I said, we can eat in here.” She reached up for the door handle. Vladimir made an uncomfortable gesture, smacking his lips, but Sveta, as usual, anticipated his objections and said impatiently, “we can eat in here, Vovka.”

And with that she opened the door.

Vladimir shrugged uncertainly, looked up and down the street to see if anyone was watching him, and then followed his wife through the gust of warm air and coffee and the smell of a clean floor and furniture.

For a few seconds, the two of them stood, motionless, as the door closed behind them. The music was unnerving to Vladimir: it was loud, electronic sounding, and strange. Svetka stood to his right, smacking her lips and blinking in the bright light, whether from the shimmering strips of metal that extended across the interior, from the register counter to the ceiling and to the tabletops, or from the pulsing, alien music he couldn’t tell.

Vladimir waited for something to happen. There was a large, open refrigerator to his right, like something he had seen the time he had been in that giant supermarket by his old factory. Straight in front of him was a counter and three girls dressed in identical clean, green shirts, watching him over the shining steel surface that looked like something from the TV, it was so clean. To his left were tables and stools up by the windows.

Vladimir kept expecting one of the girls in clean green shirts to yell something at them, hurl a curse or call over a dog, or shout at them to go away, or motion over some giant kid in an a guard costume. But they said nothing. The did nothing. Vladimir kept bracing himself. But they just stood there, watching.

Svetka clutched bravely at the plastic bag in her hand and then set off authoritatively to the left, towards the tables, wobbling slightly as she walked, as if she hadn’t even noticed the girls in green.

“Where are you going?” shouted Vladimir, maybe a little too loudly because a few girls looked up at him from their sandwiches, even though he hadn’t meant to say anything at all. “Where are you going?” he repeated much softer, because there’s nothing to do when you shout something you didn’t mean to shout except to repeat it much softer and trick everyone that you meant to say it. The girls kept looking at him – now the other girls in the green, the ones behind the shining counter, were sure to do something. The blood rushed to his face, but Svetka, brave Svetka, kept walking. She didn’t even turn back. So he started after her, and the girls looked on without talking.

Svetka kept limping until she got to an empty table. She put the plastic bag that held the farmer’s cheese and the bread onto the chair and turned to Vladimir. He had stopped halfway.

“What are you doing standing there? C’mon!”

“I’m coming! I’m coming!” He yelled back. Now more tables were looking at him, he was sure of it.

He reached the table and stopped up next to it. Svetka stood next to it for a while, too, like she had been waiting for Vladimir to come over but then had gotten lost in thought. There were a lot of really rich businessmen sitting around their table, stirring their small, steaming drinks with bright white plastic sticks. The drinks were in bright paper cups. Every once in a while, they would, for no reason, pick up a clean piece of paper and rub at their lips. Vladimir put his own hands on his pockets. For a second, his heart froze. The chicken wasn’t where it should have been. But then, with a deep, gratified sigh, his fingers touched on the weighty bulk, and he removed it from his pocket. The delicious grease was leaking out at the edges and Vladimir had to check himself from licking it off his fingers right away.

“Well,” he asked, holding the greasy foil package in his hands, “what now?”

“Sit down, you ogre,” she said. “That’s what they do here, they sit.” And then she added at half volume, “I’m going to get some knives and forks,” her right eye pinching into a fierce squint. She walked over to the nearest side of the shining counter, one without any guard or girl in green, looked around, first suspiciously and then calmly, her squint gently easing up, and then she quickly stuffed a few fistful of the plastic ware into one of her bags.

A young man, a foreigner by the looks of him, sat at one of the higher tables with a notebook, a book, a nice-looking mobile phone, and a half-full glass of beer in front of him. He looked up as Svetka put the knives and forks into her bag. Vladimir made eyes contact with him, and the foreigner went back to his scribbling.

Svetka quickly, but not too quickly, walked back to the table, stood by it for about fifteen seconds or so, and then sat down herself, close enough so that their elbows were touching. She stared greedily at Vladimir as he began devouring the chicken, skin, meat, gristle, fat and all. Her ears tensed at the slurping sound. He pulled at the cold, slick skin, folded it up with the meat, and sucked it into his mouth through his wet fingers.

Svetka snatched one of the bones and started sucking out the marrow. Between each suck she smacked her lips.

Vladimir didn’t notice the music or the foreigner, or even remember to keep a look out for any guard. His head began to swell with a gentle heat.

“Toilet,” she finally said after a few minutes of slurping, chomping silence, licking at the dripping goo on her palms. “They got a toilet here.”

“Yeah?” he said, looking up. “You going, then?”

“Yes, I’m going,” she snapped. “Look after the bag, and leave me some chicken.” She got up and limped off.

Without Svetka, he started noticing the music again, as well as the foreigner and the table full of girls. One of the girls in green suddenly appeared form nowhere, he had forgotten to watch out for her, and walked up to his table. But she didn’t yell at him, like he expected. He even already had made that look on his face that makes people think you don’t understand them so they’ll stop yelling at you because why should they yell if you don’t understand. Instead of yelling she just passed by, picked up one of the brown trays that still had half a decent sandwich and some of those bright paper cups on it, and then walked by again.

He took another giant hunk of dark meat and skin between his thumb and forefinger and stuffed it into his cheek. Svetka would be mad he had taken so much, but she would still get full. He was warm and comfortable and eating, and he didn’t have to apologize to anyone. He picked up one of the bones, cracked it open with both hands, prepared his tongue for the marrow’s extraction, but then he abruptly heard a shrill sound that stopped him altogether. One of the pieces of bone fell from his hand and onto the floor.

It was Svetka.

“Help, help, Vovka!” she screamed from somewhere. “Vladimir! Vladimir!” her voice was high and piercing, and each time she pronounced his name it came out a little differently.

He turned his head left and then right. Many other people were doing the same but he barely noticed them.

“Svetka!” he shouted, dropping the other part of the bone. A sliver of chicken skin shot from his lip to the glass table and hit it with a soft sound, like Svetka’s smacking. “Svetlana!”

“Vladimir! I’m here! I’m here!” And then he remembered, the toilet.

‘They got a toilet here,’ she had said.

He stood up too fast, too fast for all his vodka breath and the contents of his stomach sloshed around uncomfortably and he almost fell, but managed to steady himself even though he almost tripped on one of those coats hanging from a nearby chair. What the hell was coat doing on a chair like that? He stumbled quickly to the giant concrete tube that Svetka’s voice was coming from.

“Svetka!” he shouted again, and suddenly he noticed that half of the room was staring at him and the other half was just trying not to. The door, giving off an eerie metallic sheen, was rattling frantically on its hinges, and the doorknob was spinning helplessly back and forth.

“Svetka, open the door!”

“I can’t!” she called back. “I can’t open the door!”

“Just open it!”

“You ogre, that’s what I can’t do, is open it!”

He stepped back with his mouth wide open.

“Svetka! Svetka!” And the whole room was looking at him. Everyone, that is, except for the foreigner, who scribbled away and finished his beer in a big gulp.

The door banged around, pulled the hinges a little more, the shining metal door shook in place, and Vladimir took another step back. He finally remember to check on the chicken – it was still there, on the table. And then he looked back at the door, his mouth still open and head still spinning.

“Vladimir – I,” she yelled, but just then the door swung open and Svetka tumbled out of the concrete tube. She tumbled but caught herself and then she looked from Vladimir to the chicken on the table and then casually limped back to her seat. Brave Svetka.

“Goddamn bathroom and this Goddamn restaurant and their Goddamn door handle,” she muttered to herself as she sunk gingerly into her seat and reached for the chicken.

Vladimir continued standing by the concrete tube, not sure to do with his hands. He suddenly noticed that most of the people had their coats off and some had even left them hanging out of reach. Strange, what rich businessmen will do, he thought to himself, so rich they don’t even care where their coats are hanging. It was a strange thought, he knew, but that’s what he thought while standing there.

Most of the Russians had gone back to their food or conversations, but a few were still watching Svetka. And the foreigner was now looking directly at him and Vladimir decided he didn’t like his eyes.

He found the strength to move forward, but he kept his eyes hard and locked on the foreigner who sat still, pen in hand, naive eyes sparkling in the metallic cafe lights.

Vladimir’s features suddenly hardened, and he stopped walking. The foreigner blinked, but Vladimir’s gaze held strong. His look said, without any irony and without any mistaking, “Don’t pity me. Don’t pity me, and don’t even try to understand me.”

The foreigner’s glance settled on his empty beer cup, and his fingers played with his black pen. Svetka had opened the farmer’s cheese and had already shoveled two scoops into her trembling mouth.

:: poetry ::

Poetry Collection I :: the first ...

Poetry Collection II :: love, not love ...

Poetry Collection III :: play ...

Poetry Collection IV :: narrative ...

Poetry Collection V :: melancholy ...

Browse by poem title

Browse recent poems

goddamn / hay / fever

Whetever the grind and gristle
of the Shit I'm drinking
I'll take it

Catching on the Bottom of my Toes

Better than the Itch
And Tangle of the World
Out there

:: essay/articles ::

[1] I wrote a column for element, a moscow entertainment magazine, between January 06 and July 07. You can find my column if you go into the back issues page and search around a bit.

Here are a few quick links; check page 5:

How To: Become a Babushka :: because why fear the reaper when he reaps so good? ...

How To: Break Up Moscow Style :: why do anything less than spectacular? ...

How To: Appreciate Moscow :: pollution, traffic, sometimes you do need the encouragement ...

How To: Get to Petushki :: it was the best day of your life ...

How To: Get to Domodedovo :: you have to get to the airport, but only have 650 rubles ...

How To: Eat a Biznes Lanch :: they're delicious and cheap, but you have to be on guard ...

How To: Be an Obnoxious American :: as opposed to just loud ...

How To: Torture your Tenant :: how to revel in their vulnerability ...

How To: Be An April Fool I :: some sound advice, I promise ...

How To: Be An April Fool II :: part two ...

How to: Get Drunk Fast :: sometimes you must grip and you must rip ...

[2] Here is an essay on why I hate my former landlady. Do you think 14 degrees celsius is a reasonable apartment temperature? If so, I can recommend a great Soviet apartment bang in the city center.

[3] Back in 2002 the Moscow Times asked me to write an article for them on my experience at the Salt Lake Olympics. By the time I got them the article everyone was already so pissed off by the various medals scandals that the paper was trying to run as little on the Olympics as possible. Don't really blame them. But you can read my Olympics essay on the blog, baby.

[4] A few years back, when I first started the blog, I thought it would be hilarious to post one of my grad school papers about the roots of the word Hell, and how there is no direct evidence that it actually exists in either Testament as such. Notice my tough-and-clever introduction to it, trying to distract attention from the fact that I was actually posting a grad school essay...

[5] Speaking of grad school school, I thought this essay was a funny parody of academic writing, but feel free to form a different opinion. It's a deconstruction of a Michelob commercial.

[6] Funny story. Four years ago, when I first started my now-defunct Stanford homepage at stanford.edu/~skij, I decided to throw up all kinds of academic papers, more because I felt like a tool only putting up a poetry collection and a play. I was grasping for content. So, I included this essay on Hayden White's Metahistory on the page, not thinking much of it. A few months later, I found my essay had been cited for all kinds of essays, including the wikipedia and answer.com article on Metahistory. It even somehow started this metafilter discussion, whatever the hell metafilter is. Pretty unexpected for a grad school book report. I actually did take a class with Professor White, but never mentioned that my little article on his book came up higher on a google search than the book itself...

You can see the 65 places where that White articles was referenced here.

[7] Sadly, not many people found my mime on suicide as funny as I did. My favorite comment is "because I want to live" - not really rising to the challenge, I thought.

[8] Also, this seems as good as anywhere to mention my translation of one of Akhmatova's poems.

:: Short Fiction ::

Loss and Return :: Hunter drives from Brooklyn to Sterling, Colorado, certain his family will be able to tell how much he has changed ...

Jessica and Jeremy :: he's decided to finally get her a present - maybe it will teach her to finally be careful what she asks for ...

Fall Story in the City :: the nerves and ambiguity of the metropolis cause a young man to reflect how he got there in the first place ...

Old Man and the Bar :: looking for direction in the likeliest of places ...

A Walk Down the Clyde in the Summertime :: a couple's last night before he moves to Shanghai leads them to the banks of the Clyde and a few unexpected encounters along the way ...

Scene in a Classroom :: getting more and more entangled in a dangerous game of flirtation ...

Prime off the Lights of Pokrovka :: a homeless couple makes their way down the grit and neon of downtown Moscow and eventually find one of those new cafes ...

Adventure Title :: adventure on the high seas - a sailor finds himself alone on the deck of a heaving ship in the middle of a storm ...

Diary Found in a Bottle :: a man ends up in a room, forced to search for clues as to who brought him there and why ...

GEH :: a Nietzschean Tragedy in honor of the most mysterious of Russian letters ...

Diary Found in a Bottle

1:30 pm
Dear Diary,
Where am I and how did I get here? The last thing I remember is waking up in an Irish girl’s bed – I know I’ve been there before – exhausted, and she was very unhappy but I don’t think it was because of me. She looked up with these squinting sleeping eyes and said, “So you’re going to have to go, then?” She looks exactly like what you would expect an Irish girl to look like.

Now I’m sitting in an empty meeting room, white walls, no furniture besides the oval glass table and the chairs. There’s Russian music playing from somewhere and Kronenbourg beers ads in Russian on the walls (the only decoration) so I can only assume I’m still in Russia. But why the French beer? And why the thickness in my head?
But I know nothing further than that. And I can’t even be sure this really is Russia, or that I’ve actually been there before. My God. My head.

Just finished a cup of sugary instant coffee. Tasted like cheap candy, and was only a little warm. As I write, the tea-cup shudders around on its saucer, from the jerks of the pen against the paper, to the unstable glass table, and then the cup rattles around. The way the sticky, thick liquid swirls around the green-stone cup makes me nauseous.

And I hated the sound of the metal spoon against the inside of the cup when I stirred in the sugar.

As far as I can remember I was asked here to do some sort of job, but the fact that it’s Sunday (an assertion dually supported by my diary notes as well as my phone calendar as well as, partially, by the emptiness of this typical office) and the fact that I’ve been sitting in this empty meeting room with white walls, a Kronenbourg poster, completely alone for the past 25 minutes don’t seem to support that. And what job was it in the first place that you’d come in on a Sunday? I can’t remember. And bring me away from the warm bed and warm Irish girl? I can’t remember.

Let’s think about this logically. Let’s continue to assemble the facts and then we can try to piece something further together. Yes. The facts are:

1. Irish girl’s bed.
2. Cold coffee dregs.
3. Empty meeting room.
And then we have the following inferences:
1. Sunday (?)
2. Russia (?)
3. Job (?)

And also:
There is a half-eaten chocolate bar and a heap of slimy, sticky pastries on stone plates on the glass table, they also rattle a little but not as much as the tea-cup on the saucer, and I can see my dirty black socks through the glass table. My entire body feels dirty. Dirty and exhausted. Maybe I’m supposed to go somewhere?

1:45. Still here and nothing’s happened. Alone with the sticky, sticking pastries and the half-eaten chocolate and the rattle rattle rattle when I move my pen like this. My phone still has reception so at least I can hope I haven’t been kidnapped. Some crazy thoughts are starting to come to me. Because

1:55. My last thought was that the phone still has reception, so I can’t be in a room that looks like a meeting room on a giant vessel out at sea or in space. Unless they’re very, very clever. I’ll keep my eyes open for any kind of evidence.

1:56. I’d just like to make it perfectly clear that that last entry was a nervous tick which I will erase shortly, a minor lapse in common sense. I was a little thrown off because in the middle of my note-taking a short bald man came into the room (he might very well have been the one who led me into this room in the first place but short bald men can look so similar especially if I was still a little drunk from whatever last night was when I arrived here in the first place) and told me in Russian that they’re not ready yet. Then he was gone in a flash.
But still, this is evidence. It supports both the ‘job’ and the ‘Russia’ inferences, and I’ll go ahead and tick them above, but also add in a question mark in the margins.

So, now, questions:
- Am I being paid for any of this?
- Am I being paid to sit in this room?
- Who are these people who aren’t yet ready?

- Who was the bald man?

Space ship indeed.....

2:00 Nothing has become any clearer. I’m not sure why I’m writing all of this down: maybe to appear busy when they finally do come in, or because I’m genuinely anxious. The scratch of my pen has begun to both frighten and irritate me. At first it was calming. Then the tea-cup got to me so I put it and the saucer down on the floor (won’t they be confused), and now the writing itself seems to drag and pull on all of the nerves in my head. But still, I continue, even if I’m not exactly sure why.

I’ve checked my bag (NB no food, so all I’ve had was that evil coffee, the poison spreads fast after it hits the heart) (I’m also of course lactose intolerant so the chocolate and pastries are a kind of joke) and the only clues I found there that pertain to my situation are:

- a map (for traveling? Was I hoping to go somewhere? Or am I just cautious by nature? Or did somebody need me to have it?)
- an overnight bag, containing saline solution, contacts case, toothpaste, toothbrush, ibuprofen (so did I intend on staying at her apartment last night? Or am I going somewhere today?)
- a fresh pair of boxers (if they’re mine, why aren’t I wearing them? They look like they could be mine – and they feel much cleaner to the touch).
- a lighter (I don’t think I smoke, though. No, I don’t).

2:05 I dare not venture out of the meeting room. If ‘they’ aren’t ready then ‘they’ aren’t ready. No sign of the bald Russian, neither of them (if they were different people – unconfirmed) though I have heard a strange sound that seems to come from the other side of the white wall just opposite me. Not photocopying, not computer tapping, not call conferencing, nothing like the usual office sounds. I’m trying not to let my imagination run with it.

2:06 Imagination running with it.

2:08 Dangerously close to falling asleep suddenly. Nerves eased I guess. Wish I could have more sludge coffee but I’d probably regret it later so it’s probably for the best right now that there’s none.

2:10 Now I can hear voices (in Russian, so most likely I am in Russia, and apparently I can understand Russian). They are about to “print something.” For me?

2:12 Wait, there’s an earlier entry about being able to understand Russian. Why can’t I keep it all in my head at one time?

2:16. Must not have been for me. The copying. Voices gone but sound on the other side of the wall is still there. Maybe slightly fainter but still there.

2:25. The bald man returned, brought a small yellow dish of canister salted almonds and peanuts. He said nothing and then left. I was going to say something but realized I had nothing to say. If I am here for a job I can’t let on that I don’t know what the hell is happening – that’s unprofessional. My nerves are on their last string.

2:30 What was that? What the hell was that?

2:34 I try to remember where I was earlier today and it’s just a jumble, this feverish sweaty mass of breathing and white light and missed time. And it’s strange, I try to remember what the Irish girl looked like, and all I can remember are my own words, “She looks exactly like what you would expect an Irish girl to look like.” No face, no body, just a series of images that come to my mind when I say those words to myself but are out of focus and won’t come together and in the end I’m remembering some film I once saw. And, of course, I remember her “So you’re going to have to go, then?” and her accent but nothing more. I can’t remember any other words she’s ever told me.

I look back at my first entry and see that I wrote she was unhappy. But why couldn’t I remember that without having to read it? And why wasn’t she happy? And what else did she say to me?

“She looks exactly like what you would expect an Irish girl to look like....”

2:45 The nuts are gone. Next I’m going to scrape out the sugar dregs from the coffee cup.

2:46 And there’s no water.

2:55 I’m back, I’m sitting, and I’m shaking. I haven’t searched that carefully yet, but I don’t think there is any way out. Of this place, I mean. This room has a door, other parts of the ‘office’ seem to have doors, but I don’t think there is any way out of this structure, whatever it is. Of what I can remember when I came in, there were these huge doors that took forever to open. I don’t think I thought anything of it at the time....

I had just been trying to keep myself calm, I think, while those giant doors were opening. And make favorable first impressions so of course I didn’t notice anything. Like at a party when you’re worrying about how you’re standing and how you’re dressed and then don’t remember anyone’s name or job and then you’re afraid to ask.

3:05. It’s funny. The things. That come into your head.

3:10. Oh God Oh God, I just realized what the sounds are, coming from the other side of the wall. It’s a group of men (I hope) shifting around, watching me. They’ve fed me coffee to make me sick to my stomach and salted nuts to make my head hurt and now they’re watching. Or: planning worse. No sign of the bald man. No sign of anything. I can’t even feel the table move now as I write.

3:11 Must just breathe.

3:13. That’s it, I’m going to get up and explore outside the room, find out where the bald man is.... and maybe he will have pity. Maybe he can be moved to help me escape. Or maybe I’m just not in the right place.

Why can’t I remember her name?

3:20. My God, my fucking God it’s far worse than I ever imagined. You leave this little meeting room and you’re out in this hallway the most non-descript office hallway you’re ever been in your entire life, and you walk down the corridor. But here it is. You can walk a ways in either direction, past door and door and door, but then the corridors inexplicably end. In perfectly normal-looking white walls. There are doors everywhere, but all of them are locked and none of them will budge. Didn’t try all of them but they must be locked. My fucking God. All I can think to do is sit and scribble. Literally nothing I can do but write to myself. And the doorknobs were all cold, like they had never been used before. I doubt they even have rooms behind them. Maybe just painted on.

And, further, I can’t remember where I came from, how I got in.....

3:24. And the noise... it’s not coming from the other side of the wall. I sat by the wall, heard the sound, but it came from the other direction this time. So I came back to my chair. Sometimes it sounds like it’s coming from all around me, sometimes even from behind me. I am going to close my eyes and try to sleep.

3:27. The best thing to do now: is to wait this out. It can’t be as bad as I think it is. Something will change with time because time makes things change. It’ll all seem funny and hilarious tomorrow. And I’ll tell... that girl all about it.

3:28. It’s like a low, slow grating, like that sound that passes through your head right after someone scrapes their nail on the chalkboard, that sound that reverberates in your head and won’t settle and you can’t get control over. It just screws you all up inside. And hurts your eyes and your teeth.

I think my imagination is getting the best of me.

3:35. Now I am resigned. My imagination can go on if it wants because I have given up - I don’t even know why I’m writing any more. My other greatest fear has been confirmed. Even though I have signal on my phone, clear bars of indication, no calls can make it through. Tried texting myself but it didn’t send and didn’t confirm. What could that possibly mean? I mean, it’s impossible?

And what the fuck was her name? I even have to look at my earlier diary entries above to remember anything, to remember what she told me. Even: that there was a she.

She was Irish it would seem.

3:40. Wait, my address book is empty. On my phone. As is most of my diary. Wait.

3:50. I thought I heard the sound of a photocopier from the hallway but by the time I went out it was gone.

I’m going to go try every one of the doors.

4:06. Tried every door.

4:09. Tried every door a second and third time.

4:10. I’ve just hurled the pastries against the wall. They made a pleasing, fatty smack and left a gooey trail a foot or two down. Their greasy outlines are still against the clean, clean walls like silhouettes. Next I’m going to hurl the cup through the glass case covering the Kronenbourg poster and then smash the stone plates through the glass table and get bits of glass all over my dirty socks.

4:15 “Bald Russian Man!” I yell in every language I know, “Bald Russian Man! Guards! I make up German phrases: “Balder Russischer Mensch!” “PEOPLE ON THE PHOTOCOPIER! I’m putting this plate through the table unless you come right now and give me my work! I don’t care if they’re ready! I don’t even care who they are I’ll work just open one of the doors!”

4:23 The stone plate went solidly through the center of the glass table and the table itself creaked and crumpled up into itself. With one of the exposed steel legs, I’ve managed to give to door to my meeting room a good bashing. The sound of the leg on door went thump thump down the hallways and bounced nice and solid off all the locked doors. I’ve also discovered that these locked doors, though they will get dented and scraped, won’t go down. I think I even broke a finger trying, one on my left hand so i can still write no problem. Some of them, I think, are just steel walls with a door painted on, but not all of them. And my shoulders hurt like hell.

4:55 Now I know why they gave me the lighter.

5:27 My God, the strangest... strangest things. I don’t think I will even bleed if I put my hand into the glass.

5:29. Yes, I will. I will bleed.

6:05. And I am...? Was so worried about that girl (as I can tell from earlier entries) but not at all worried that I don’t know who I am! Or where I am! My God, what distraction! It’s horrifying the little things your mind clings to in moments of crisis, like that girl, who that girl was, how it stuffs all of the other horrors away when you still maybe could have done something about it.

6:25. If the bald man would but show his bald little head.....

6:28 Yes, positive I know what the lighter is for.

7:000000000 Still writing on the floor, cause the table is gone. Where is the table, you ask? It’s all over me! And inside those locked doors and against the walls and some of it even inside of me.

AFTER EVERYTHING I’m putting these pages into my over-night case. I can only assume that this is working right into their plan but I have no other choice – because the lighter is here to burn this place down and that’s the only place the pages can go is into the over-night case. Maybe from the rubble they can.... much better than I expect for me. Sorry for the blood smeared everywhere. It’s time for this place to erupt and for the noises to stop and the photocopier and if I
m lucky even those giant doors I’ve just read that I passed through earlier will go down and maybe I’ll even catch one of them, off-guard, burn some red heat through a bald head

Oh, it glitters, the lighter as it catches and clicks and my clothes have caught on much faster than in my wildest dreams as they sparkle with ash and spark and glass, and all this extra paper and the backpack and these clean clean clean walls And it clicks and fuses, all this flame And it feels wonderful, so wonderful, that I can give them everything they need from me