Category: reflections

***

On Friday, Boris received his passport with the new visa. He received an email last Thursday, and mailed his passport to the embassy immediately, but a week with both US and Finnish holidays delayed the processing. By then, there were additional worries because he had to travel with the EU during the first week of June, and he couldn’t do it without his passport, which was in transit.

Yesterday, we talked for a very long time, and finally admitted that we both were trying to hide from each other the extent to which we were affected by this three-month-long ordeal. We both confessed to each other that at some point, we accepted that this could be a permanent situation, and we couldn’t worry about it anymore.

I guess it’s good that we talked it through. Boris’ optimistic estimation of recovery time is “one more week.” As for me, I am not so sure. He told me that he can see that I still haven’t recovered from my big fight, and it shows in how I function.

As always, I am optimistic, so I hope that things will get better.

***

As it is clear from my last several posts, I am on my way to “back to normal.” However, something has permanently changed; in some sense, it is a “new normal,” and I am trying to figure out how the past several months have changed me.

One thing is that I feel removed from “ordinary human feelings,” and I am unsure whether this is here to stay with me. Since October last year, I have been so focused on Prairie Postgres that everything else has become non-essential. I blame myself for not contributing to election campaign, not doing canvassing, not talking enough about the issues. I was among many who didn’t do enough. I definitely didn’t have “cycles” for that, but still.

My decision matrix, my Eisenhower quadrants, were skewed to the sole purpose of making sure the Chicago conference happens, and the Chicago community is not negatively affected. I consistently find myself at a loss responding to “how are things with you, what’s new in your life?” I mean people, who might not be my closest friends, but who know me well enough or care enough so that I can’t reply: “All good, thank you for asking.” Still, I understand that it would be the weirdest thing to start answering such questions with what is really on my mind. Because the honest answer would be something like that: “For several months, some people were trying to make my life incredibly difficult to the point I was afraid to check my email, and they were trying to stop me from doing things which were important to me and to my community. There were many times when I wanted to quit and walk out, but I did not give up, and now everything is good, and nobody is after me.” And that’s the first, second and third most important thing in my life.

I know that I didn’t talk enough with many people who care about me, and I care about them. There were several months of ignoring emails, skipping events, and telling myself that I will have time for all of that later. I can only imagine how many of my friends, especially my “remote” friends think that I forgot about them, or that their lives are not interesting to me anymore.

Looking back at the past several months, I do not know how I did it :). When i was at the PGConf.dev, and when I attended multiple meetups last week, many of those to whom I told about my not-for-profits reacted: oh, you got 501(c)?! Congratulations! Or asked me: is it your full time job? So, I guess, I did something good, and something to be proud of.

Still, I want to get back to “being human,” but Prairie Postgres would still remain not “one of the things” I am doing, but “the most important thing” I am going, and hopefully the thing that outlive me :).

This Week’s Events

I didn’t post it on Wednesday, but as usual, better late than never. Here in Chicagoland, the suburban elections demonstrated the reverse of the course in comparison with the November elections. Even being a Blue State as we are, the November election results shifted in favor of Republicans, which looked like a concerning trend. However, last Tuesday, we witnessed the opposite shift. We also saw very close margins in Florida elections, even when they were not won by Democratic candidates, so once again, things start to change.

Obviously, the highlight of the week was Susan Crawford’s election. Her victory is important not only as a victory of a democratic candidate in a swing state but also as a victory of people over money. We always knew that even though fundraising is important, votes are cast by people, not dollars. Susan Crawford’s victory proves exactly that.

Shostakovich’s 11th

It was definitely not the first time I heard Shostakovich’s 11th Symphony, but I guess it has been a while. Or it’s just how it feels these days. Usually, I leave the CSO uplifted, with the general feeling that “life is not so bad,” but the 11th Symphony left me feeling hopeless, especially the finale. Too many cultural references, plus too many parallels with today’s situations (more than one). After the last accord, when the audience exploded with applause, I felt almost insulted by this sound: how could anybody applause after hearing that?!

There was one interesting episode at DevOps Day. I met one person at the beginning of the day (he was a partner of one of the speakers). He approached me later in the day, asking my opinion about some abstract situation (and he told me that he was constructing this situation based on the previous responder’s feedback). After several clarifying questions, I finally realized which moral dilemma he was trying to solve. I told him: you do not need to ask me about the hypothetical situation; I have been in a similar situation for the past three years. And I hate myself for not doing enough years before. I hate myself for not doing enough now, for having my spoon being too small to scoop the water out before the people drown. And I feel guilty for “living a life” and worrying about a million non-critical things while some seriously evil things are happening all over the world…

At the end of our conversation, that person thanked me for sharing my opinion and said that he was sure I would have something to say. I asked him why he was so sure, and he said that he listened to my talk and knew I had opinions.

I don’t know why I feel this conversation is related to Shostakovich’s 11th, but somehow, in my mind, it is!

Busyness

I didn’t comment on one of my recent listens: Oliver Burkeman’s “Epidemics of Modern Life”

I listened to this radio collection, but he has separate books about at least two of the epidemic: Business and Angryness. The radio collection consists of four parts: Addicted to Busy, The Power of Negative Thinking, Why Are We So Angry? and The Death of Nuance. All of them touch on important topics, but I was especially interested in the first part. According to sociologists, it’s not like we are busier these days than in the past, but society’s expectations and standards have changed. For example, it’s a well-known fact that despite many devices that make cleaning the house and other household chores easier, people don’t spend less time on house cleaning than previously. And there is an explanation for that: the standards of cleanliness have changed. As Burkeman states, “Now the floor shouldn’t be just clean, but clean enough to perform an open-heart surgery on it.”

Another interesting observation is that people started viewing things that they do for themselves (like attending a meditation session) as “projects,” which also increases business.

As a side topic, there was an interesting discussion about “paid” and “unpaid” work. I never thought about it the way Burkeman approaches it, but it does make sense: if you can pay somebody to do this, and you will still get the same result, it’s work, paid or unpaid; otherwise, it’s not. For example, you can pay somebody to bake a cake for you, and you will still get a cake without baking it, so baking a cake is work. On the other hand, you can’t pay somebody to go to the theater to see the play instead of you, it will defeat the whole purpose of going to the theater. Incidentally, that perfectly illustrates what I always say about my baking: I love the process. I am fine eating out and I am glad that they feed us at work, but I will never delegate my baking to somebody (yes, I love Vanille desserts, but I am not trying to reproduce them!).

And at the end of this episode, Burkeman talks about the necessity of idleness. That is something many researchers are talking about: to innovate, our brain needs some idleness (I always generate great ideas when I am on vacation!) It is also related to the state, which I am trying to achieve with not much luck – not to have a super-packed schedule with no wiggling room. With all seriousness, I know it’s not good, and I know that there is a physical limit to what I can do. My only success in this area is that I learned not to be upset when my plans collapse.

I guess these are very appropriate thoughts on a day when Boris’ flight was delayed for 24 hours. To be precise, there was an emergency landing because they could not start a backup generator and had to wait for repair. So much for trying to have a day off together!

Books

Hardly Ever Otherwise – the second book by Maria Mateos I read, and I liked it even more than Sweet Daruisha, which I read earlier. It is exceptionally well written, and I couldn’t put the book aside until I was done (to be fair, I put it aside right after I started for a while because I had something due back to the library, the book club reading, etc., but then I picked it up again and read non-stop). It’s not an easy reading, but nevertheless.

Small Great Things. The Goodreads reviews are mixed, from one to five stars. I gave it four and read several reviews, and I understand why the opinion differs drastically. There is one review that a reader rewrote several times, giving it five stars first and then gradually changing it to two. I think it’s very much worth reading, especially these days, to remind us about the dark sides of human nature, which are unleashed (again( by the current Administration’s actions).

The Trail of Mrs. Rhinelander. Not from the first page, but I got hooked pretty soon into reading this book and couldn’t put it down. Once again, I understand the mixed reviews, but I liked it. One of these stories in which you learn a lot of unexpected things about the very recent past and what were social norms in a very recent past (barely a hundred years ago).

2020: One City, Seven People. The stories of seven new-yorkers during the pandemic and after. OK, but judging by the book description, I expected more.

The Black Utopians – same as the previous book, I expected much more for the description. I wish the book would be better structured, more organized, and more engaging.

One More Elpha Post

Since I almost lost one of my Elpha posts, I want to make sure another one is also stored permanently. Actually, I might have published it already, but just in case!

Continue reading “One More Elpha Post” →

Overheard On The CTA Bus On January 16

— My son told me yesterday: I want to study Islam. I said: You want to study something six thousand years old? Do you know what day it is today? Go and find out what happened in 1968 and figure out who you are!

From a man carrying all his possessions in a rolling cart talking to another passenger.

Russian Lies #2

The second documentary of the ‘Russian Lies” series, this one is focused on Russian Literature. And once again, I can repeat word for word the same things I said in the comments on the first documentary: none of this was ever hidden or not accessible. Ever.

We all studied Pushkin, Lermontov, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky at school. We all read (or at least were supposed to) the books in which the never-ending war on Caucuses was a centerpiece. And brave Russian officers fighting with violent Chechens were the heroes. And we never ever questioned that assumption. Pushin’s private letters were always available in the “Complete Works.” It fact, many of them were frequently cited during the Russian Literature lessons. There was no secret of how he felt about the expansion of Russian territories from Peter the Great onward.

We knew that Russian literature didn’t exist until the 18th century. The was a Tale of Igor’s Campaign at the end of the 12th century, and then pretty much nothing (with few exceptions) until the beginning of the 18th century. But as I already mentioned, the language of the “Tale” is not Russian; it’s an old Slavic language that later evolved into three separate East Slavic languages. The language of Shakespeare is archaic English, but nevertheless, it’s English, while the language of the Tale is not Russian.

A side note. It’s a stunningly beautiful piece of literature. I was so taken away by it when I first read it (I was not older than ten) that I started to learn it by heart. I read all the scientific comments and learned what each word meant (not what it sounded like). As a result, I hated all “officially recognized” poetic translations because I could spot inaccuracies immediately. I still can recite big chunks of it.

Back to the main topic. We didn’t study any literature except for Russian. The exception was my English school; if I remained there until graduation, I would have two semesters of English literature and two of American literature. However, I moved to a specialized mathematical school. I know that regular schools had a “foreign literature” semester in the 9th or 10th grade, so the students there had at least limited exposure. As for us, we were unlucky to have a very good literature teacher. It’s not a typo; she knew Russian literature very well, and we worshiped her. On Saturday afternoons after school, she read forbidden literature to us (not completely forbidden, but let’s say, not approved, such as Bulgakov, Leonid Andreev, or Akhmatova). We believed every word she said, and she was saying that Russian literature is the greatest (she had never read any foreign literature in its original language) and that there was not enough time in the curriculum for us to learn what she wanted us to learn, so to hell with any foreign literature.

This baggage was very difficult to get rid of; somehow, the modern “progressive” writers didn’t charm me that much; somehow, I was able to detect the imperial mindset more or less right away, but many of my friends didn’t.

OK, enough commenting – please watch the documentary.

What Makes One’s Life A Happy One?

I wrote this post three months ago, and meant to write a follow-up since then. I am not dismissing the importance of “magical moments” in our lives; they are important for happiness. And I agree that they can be very “uneventful.” For example, one of my most treasured memories is a moment when Boris was waiting for me outside the Orchestra Hall in Saint Petersburg, and when he saw me (it was still time when his vision was good enough to recognize me from a distance), his facial expression and body language were such that an older lady standing by him waiting for her party smiled. Or the one when we walked down the street in Moscow, and a man walking in the opposite direction said loudly: Look how much she loves you! I also understand that anybody would be happy with a surprise gift or a lovely message but I do not understand why these things might be more important than everything else, and I understand even less why the absence of something might be “magical.”

I think that the best thing that happened in my life was that for the past thirty-six years, I was with one person, and we shared all aspects of our lives and no matter how many differences we had and still have, we are there for each other.

Boris says there must be some cultural and historical context for my mom’s beliefs, and I tend to agree with him. I remember that as a teen and young adult, I loved the concept of a “have to be a strong woman.” One of the “bard” songs that I loved ended with the following verse:

You paint the sky blue, and you paint the rocks grey,

and then you paint men always strong, and women for sure weak.

But the sky is blue only sometimes, and those that are gey are not rocks,

so you have to be strong while you long to be weak.

I mentioned in this blog multiple times that it was commonplace for a man to exhibit some grand gestures to win a woman’s heart, and it’s not cool to accept somebody’s courting until such grand gestures are made. “A woman should be treated with respect” included opening and holding the door, helping with getting in and out of the outdoor coat, pulling the chair, carrying anything heavier than a purse, and all other things that meant a woman was “treated like a princess.” At the same time, within the same mind frame, it was assumed that when you are married, you have to take care of all your husband’s needs; you cook and clean, wash and iron the clothes, and do most of the shopping. I want to reiterate that men didn’t refuse: we just never thought about asking for help, at least my married friends and I.

Possibly, it was something like, “You will never be treated like royalty after you are married, so make sure you are treated like this once in your life.” Or, it was a weird mixture of the pre-revolutionary upper-class and lower-class household patterns.
I am left with the question, why did we believe we were “treated with respect.” We were not; presuming you are weak and must be assisted is not a sign of respect. Why did we rush to get married? Why did we rush to divorce? Why was a display of something more important than having actual feelings or help

It took me years to understand how wrong I was and even more years to internalize these ideas. And now, I need to come to terms with the fact that my mom is forever frozen in that historical mindset and not try to change it. Honestly, it might be OK with my mom, but when I hear the same nonsense from people my age or younger, I don’t know how to comment!