What Happens In Siberia
So 2018 is starting off by trapping us all in our homes with an icy, vise-grip sent straight from the devil. Got it. Mmkay . . .
Guys. I'm cold. But it's productive.
I just started watching television again, after a two-year break, or, exile, as I think of it. I think of it like that because I've always loved reading about exiles, specifically exiles in Siberia. So, I've taken up watching "Ekaterina: The Rise of Catherine the Great"on Amazon Prime. (Catherine wasn't an exile, but my watching the show is significant because for a long time I haven't been able to deal with stuff about Russian history.) (Yes, I get this is funny.)
I've been hard in love with Russia since I first read Chekhov and just go ahead and ask me what you want about the Romanovs and Rasputin because I will blow your mind. Opposites attract. Sunny me could never stay away from dark hearts and the possibility of wolves. It was thrilling, the horror of being cast out of one world and thrown into another. All you love, all that soothes you, gone in a blink and there you are making coffee out of bark and can't even throw together a decent soup. Comfortable teen and young adult me could sit for hours reading about a land of hunger, endless nights, and crazy-eyed mystics because it was moon-foreign to me and I knew I'd never go there.
And then I went there.
These past two years have been simultaneously the best and hardest of my life. I woke up, running, a thirty-something single mom with two little girls to care for. Throw in a mortgage, bills, and a Basset Hound puppy. I took it on the only way I knew how, which was messily and with all my heart. I checked back in and paid attention to my body; its hums and tingles seemed to be telling me to drop yoga and take up bloodsports, to eat intuitively. For two years I've been molting, shedding layers of old fluff, fears and weight, both emotional and physical. It was never my intention to get this skinny; it just happened.
Last winter was not so cold and I still had some meat on my bones. And I did not then know how long it would take me to find a real job. For the first time in my life I was responsible for not only my survival but that of my girls. I sent out 445 resumes. Had twenty or so near misses, a handful of heartbreakers. No one wanted me. No one wanted my MFA or the stuff I knew about writing or teaching. A few potential employers who called to explain why they did not select me even went into lavish detail on the fine attributes of the candidate they chose. By September 2017 I was running on hard boiled eggs, coffee (good, strong Folgers), and desperation. My leggings were baggy. Fall crept in early for me and settled in my bones. I haven't been warm since Labor Day. It felt like exile. I was in Siberia and my crimes were comfort and acquiescence. I realized I hadn't ever hustled nor stumped for myself in my adult life and so I started doing that.
First, I had to accept help. My mom and dad sent food, my eggs, half & half, little pizzas and fancy cookies, paid for my gas, and smuggled in notes of encouragement. (This is all metaphor, you get that, right? The girls and I were in Jamestown the entire time and Mom and Dad brought the stuff in person) I didn't have time for reading and television and I was no longer a happy voyeur of struggle because I was the one struggling. Reality television was too real, and that beautiful copy of Simon Sebag Montefiore's "Romanovs: 1613-1918" sat untouched on my bookshelf. It was getting too cold to read it.
Then, I had to mean up. I shaved my sleep down to four hours a night, grabbing at the only time I had to write and job hunt. These short stories I've been kicking around went from folksy mountain parables to bleak tales of dark magic and avenging murder. My cover letters for job applications went from Twain to Pancake.
And then, like it sometimes is, opportunity arose just in the nick of time. I found a real job, two real jobs, and we wandered out of the forest back into civilization. At this time I should be typing up a syllabus, as I prepare to head back to my undergrad alma mater as an adjunct English professor. I'm giddy at the thought of teaching alongside the same incredible faculty who poured so much love into me over a decade ago. Warmth is within reach.
My brain is wired different now, and I have no protective layer against this actual cold hitting us so hard for the foreseeable future. But I have a big coat and in all this polar vortex or whatever, I can see my breath in front of me and I am once again out among them. Maybe I still have exile brain, and maybe I don't want to lose it ever. I'm lean and hard but here I am laughing some now, and there are my hands reaching for books and so tonight I might open "Romanovs" after I watch episode two of Catherine. After I eat this sausage biscuit. After I type up my syllabus.
And here's some good exile readin' http://mashable.com/2016/12/17/exiles-convicts-siberia/#xEcmxcDnpkqQ
https://www.rbth.com/travel/2014/06/06/the_ultimate_guide_to_siberian_gulags_and_soviet_exile_sites
Guys. I'm cold. But it's productive.
I just started watching television again, after a two-year break, or, exile, as I think of it. I think of it like that because I've always loved reading about exiles, specifically exiles in Siberia. So, I've taken up watching "Ekaterina: The Rise of Catherine the Great"on Amazon Prime. (Catherine wasn't an exile, but my watching the show is significant because for a long time I haven't been able to deal with stuff about Russian history.) (Yes, I get this is funny.)
I've been hard in love with Russia since I first read Chekhov and just go ahead and ask me what you want about the Romanovs and Rasputin because I will blow your mind. Opposites attract. Sunny me could never stay away from dark hearts and the possibility of wolves. It was thrilling, the horror of being cast out of one world and thrown into another. All you love, all that soothes you, gone in a blink and there you are making coffee out of bark and can't even throw together a decent soup. Comfortable teen and young adult me could sit for hours reading about a land of hunger, endless nights, and crazy-eyed mystics because it was moon-foreign to me and I knew I'd never go there.
And then I went there.
These past two years have been simultaneously the best and hardest of my life. I woke up, running, a thirty-something single mom with two little girls to care for. Throw in a mortgage, bills, and a Basset Hound puppy. I took it on the only way I knew how, which was messily and with all my heart. I checked back in and paid attention to my body; its hums and tingles seemed to be telling me to drop yoga and take up bloodsports, to eat intuitively. For two years I've been molting, shedding layers of old fluff, fears and weight, both emotional and physical. It was never my intention to get this skinny; it just happened.
Last winter was not so cold and I still had some meat on my bones. And I did not then know how long it would take me to find a real job. For the first time in my life I was responsible for not only my survival but that of my girls. I sent out 445 resumes. Had twenty or so near misses, a handful of heartbreakers. No one wanted me. No one wanted my MFA or the stuff I knew about writing or teaching. A few potential employers who called to explain why they did not select me even went into lavish detail on the fine attributes of the candidate they chose. By September 2017 I was running on hard boiled eggs, coffee (good, strong Folgers), and desperation. My leggings were baggy. Fall crept in early for me and settled in my bones. I haven't been warm since Labor Day. It felt like exile. I was in Siberia and my crimes were comfort and acquiescence. I realized I hadn't ever hustled nor stumped for myself in my adult life and so I started doing that.
First, I had to accept help. My mom and dad sent food, my eggs, half & half, little pizzas and fancy cookies, paid for my gas, and smuggled in notes of encouragement. (This is all metaphor, you get that, right? The girls and I were in Jamestown the entire time and Mom and Dad brought the stuff in person) I didn't have time for reading and television and I was no longer a happy voyeur of struggle because I was the one struggling. Reality television was too real, and that beautiful copy of Simon Sebag Montefiore's "Romanovs: 1613-1918" sat untouched on my bookshelf. It was getting too cold to read it.
Then, I had to mean up. I shaved my sleep down to four hours a night, grabbing at the only time I had to write and job hunt. These short stories I've been kicking around went from folksy mountain parables to bleak tales of dark magic and avenging murder. My cover letters for job applications went from Twain to Pancake.
And then, like it sometimes is, opportunity arose just in the nick of time. I found a real job, two real jobs, and we wandered out of the forest back into civilization. At this time I should be typing up a syllabus, as I prepare to head back to my undergrad alma mater as an adjunct English professor. I'm giddy at the thought of teaching alongside the same incredible faculty who poured so much love into me over a decade ago. Warmth is within reach.
My brain is wired different now, and I have no protective layer against this actual cold hitting us so hard for the foreseeable future. But I have a big coat and in all this polar vortex or whatever, I can see my breath in front of me and I am once again out among them. Maybe I still have exile brain, and maybe I don't want to lose it ever. I'm lean and hard but here I am laughing some now, and there are my hands reaching for books and so tonight I might open "Romanovs" after I watch episode two of Catherine. After I eat this sausage biscuit. After I type up my syllabus.
And here's some good exile readin' http://mashable.com/2016/12/17/exiles-convicts-siberia/#xEcmxcDnpkqQ
https://www.rbth.com/travel/2014/06/06/the_ultimate_guide_to_siberian_gulags_and_soviet_exile_sites
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