My typical m.o.: I'm a do-er. I figure out how to make things happen. I ask for help when needed, take action and see results. I keep on the move to make things better, more beautiful, more meaningful.
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So how odd, how enfeebling, to find myself so often impotent in the face of the Russian (and American too) bureaucracy. One way I've been giving myself psychological relief--when not playing fiddle tunes, dashing off to Cambridge, or eating vats of coffee ice cream--is by shopping for rugs for my boy's room. I've ordered and returned three already. If I keep up at this rate, I'll have been able to furnish the entire room with the money I've blown on return shipping. But, hey, it beats gambling or dropping cash on shoes. At least Daniil will be padding around on the eventually-settled-upon rug someday soon, God willing, and for many happy years to come.
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It's down to these final two, one striped and oblong, the other a patterned circle.
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p.s., a few days later: I'm going with the circle.
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I have had two Russian professors in the course of my educational career, both women. One was at UNH and one was at Harvard. Both shared a distinct set of attitudes, pragmatic, creative thinkers, with a sensibility inaccessible to me. I could not have come up with their thoughts in a mmillion years...so, instead, I picked their brains hoping to gain some inside by the "freshness" of thier mental workings. One of them, Vera, was a painting professor of mine. I remember being upset by one area of the painting that I found annoying. She addressed me as if burdened by having to state the obvious and said, "Just let it annoy you." This was an entirely new concept to me.
ReplyDeleteThe thing is, when building a whole, something annoying eventually disappears into the camoflage of all that develops. And anyway...I saw that rug in Daniil's little room and it is perfect.