walking

snow. love when it snows. i always think of one time sitting at the old coffee garden and looking out of the window. that memory is incripted in my head forever. the time passed so slowly and beautifully that afternoon. the sound the snow makes when one steps in it is like biting rice krispy. walking in the snow while it is snowing is probably one of the most dramatic and sexy things one can do. i wonder what its like to make love in the powder.

and i am not even jewish, but it feels like home

last night danced away to jewish flutes with john's college friend from chicago. i have never been much of a little kid type of gal, babies don't really do it for me usually, but last night i ran around with elise's little girl mia the whole evening. we had so much fun, we did karaoke, ate fondu chocolate gross bread stuff, exchanged little hebrew between each other, danced, rolled around the floor. she looked like dagny when dags was little. it reminded me how much fun dagny and i use to have. i remember we use to turn up music really loud and dance for hours. if i had a camera, today i would take a picture of john, my books, painting of tbilisi, my parents, film strips hanging all around, thor, brutus and paco and most importantly there would be dagny standing in front. her face and body would be bigger and brighter then anything else. she would be smiling and happy.

bells and balls dominate the music

diner busy. tight shot on toma's face. tense anticipation to the upcoming holiday. joy of another day interacting with the friends we've made at the diner. derek enters. he is early. oh wait it is a clock at a bar, which is always 10 minutes early for last call. it was snowing earlier. so very pretty. the bar down the street from our house. many men all about the age of santa clause, sit and drink. so do john and i. drink, drank, still stuck. check your voice mail. talk to gary, we just got here. don't have much family in town. here is john. he is on the phone. same girl is at the bar. she is always at the bar. she laughs and has fun. she seems lonely. we meet david. he is skinny. his father works for the paper. david was raised in the press room. david knows i am georgian. david knows i make films. david sees john in front of the house. john thinks david is shane. david likes to dance. cruming, capuera, ballet meld them together, he says. karen is beautiful and not a girl. say a woman. david likes forskin penises. but he wants to have a baby with a beautiful italian waitress. her name is karen. we see mclwein. he stops for a drink. he has to go soon to talk with his korean girlfriend. she is a lawyer. he says they broke up. he seems to be interested in her more then others i have known before. robert stops by. we play pinball. its loud, the sounds of bells and balls dominate the music. robert tells us about his cancer. i put on my skirt. it is christmas eve in salt lake city. dagny is with her father. if i could take a picture it would be of the booth at the bar.

cameraless i am back

its happened. my camera broke. first there was a huge crack, then i couldn't see out of the screen which kind of made it a cool challenge, now it pretends to take a picture but there is nothing there afterwards. i have decided to blog everyday with or without the camera. maybe santa will be all knowing? diner christmas party was fun, i am always amazed how many cool people live in this city and how close i feel toward some of them. dagny is with her dad, which makes it little more relaxing at home. its crazy how much i miss her when she is not here, but we seem to get along well this way. i probably take the role that walter usually enjoys. john has been super stressed but i am getting used to this reaction around holidays.

last night we partied with elliot and erika in park city. we drank crazy amount of wine and ate crazy expensive food. fun? yes. except today i barely made it to work and top it all off i caught a cold, so i am sick and... hungover.

i watched the spiderman for the first time tonight. i want to be a hero. i guess we all do. the girl is pretty hot. i've had many cups of tea. if i took a picture today it would be of me and my dogs laying on the couch.

trying to fit in

i always feel so left out on holidays. at times it feels cool because its kind of like i am not doing the traditional crap like everyone else, but after receiving looks of 'pity' from friends when i tell them we don't really celebrate thanksgiving and no i don't want to attend their family thanksgiving, i begin to feel countryless, traditionless. yes, i don't understand thanksgiving, or even if i do understand it, i have 0 emotional connection to it. i don't have family here, dagny always goes to her dad's, i don't really enjoy cooking and if i was going to cook i definately don't want to cook turkey and gravy. but its not like i celebrate many georgian or russian holidays, so once again i just don't fit in anywhere. there seems to be so much tension around holidays in general, families seem to stress out, fight, argue, talk about each other in mean ways afterwards... john however tells me his family never did that. john loves to paint a perfect picture of his family. he says they all just ate,got along, watched tv and fell asleap early. thus i feel double, triple guilty and just bad. i am the wife who doesn't really care to cook big meal and set up a table in a fancy way and create these traditions. instead i want to go play penny slots in wendover or read a good book in bed with a tea pot on all night or eat tv dinners like in 'stranger than paradise' or go see double feature starting in the early afternoon or go have vietnameese food or go around salt lake and take photos of people's houses as they eat from outside or practice piano all nigth long or drink a lot of whisky or spend a day minimizing all my posessions...
maybe i am a bad immigrant, mother and wife?
maybe it is really difficult for me not to feel displaced.
maybe i am just being difficult.
maybe everyone around just can't handle when people don't do what they do.
maybe i should just do my homework.

red state

regina spector told all of us on friday to shut the fuck up, if we didn't want to listen to her music.
i think as we create 'art' we have to allow people to react / interpret it whatever way they want to.
it was a good show anyway. people think i look like her, it must be the russian thing. i do want to play music...
last night i had a dream dagny started to smoke sigarettes, ironically yesterday was the first day she acted semi normal.
she was less moody compared to general, she actually joked and treated us like we werr pleasant people. what a surprise, huh? my parents are actually cool and funny and young...
today i voted, all democratic votes in this red red state. funny, red country to red state. go figure.

one of them is an anthropologist and filmmaker the other one runs a television channel and is a screenwriter. i first saw jen's film when i was pregnant with dagny and trying to make my little experimental films. i was totally blown away. i remember going home and looking for her phone number in the phone book. i am not sure what i was going to say to her if i would have found it. i called some numbers but couldn't find the right one. years later i picked her up as a hitchiker as i was driving from sundance film festival. that's when we became friends. i don't think i have ever told her about our stocking past. mary i meet when she was still writing for a small paper in town. i would arrange press screenings at the tower theater. she has done so much since then! and she has always been sooo sweet to me. right now she has written a screenplay that is completely sold out. it deals with atomic testing that was done in utah and nevada, resulting in many premature cancers and other deseases. the was she talked about her own cancer in the play was incredible. i love women like mary and jen!

rat race?

i have a funny feeling its all going to work out...

i will start making movies
we will move somewhere far far away
dagny will be sweet to me and she won't do drugs or get pregnant (not now i mean as a teen)
georgia will stabilize
we'll all smile a lot

so there, that's all i want

only a rat can win a rat race
(thanks michael franti for a great show)

maybe there is nothing that does that

last couple of days all i can think about is how much i want to be part of something that transcends everything else. i don't think linguistics does that.

the way in which

"our burdens may be of such a nature that we feel bound to bear them cheerfully or without complaint. they may arise from the nature of our situation; they may be allotments of Providence; they may be the consequences of our errors. what is upon us, as a load, we commonly carry with greater reluctance or sense of oppression. it is our loads, our burdens that difine who we are by the way in which we accept and carry them."

weeks, days, minutes

the weekend was spent seeing my host sister with her new dude as she has gone from one rehab to another tracking the steps of california hard way, she and her new guy, who has also gone through rehab and looks like a street thug, i want him in one of my movies
listening to rockabilly legends and legends to be/was, watch rockabilly john dance with a pinup girl
watch my husband watch another girl... like really watch, uncomfortably so.
learn about pakistani school project
house a little girl who is lost and thinks she wants to end her life, wonder what if that was dagny, who would she go to?
serve
have many many men hit on ... not me
i miss dancing oh so much dancing,
i know this city of salty lake like it is a palm of my hand, except i only think i know my palm
even now when i cover my eyes i see tbilisi, it is ironic that i will probably never live there again
in paris men loved me, i have never received as much attention as i did there, uncomfortably so.
maybe i should not care about that
maybe
john wore a brown velvet jacket today, it looked nice.

only some things are reliable

my hair is long, it is light, my body is long, it is medium color, my breasts are small, most of the time i want to be taken away, i am prone to breathing too fast, i am lucky because i have always liked my body, i have never worried about it or my face or hair or cloths, but this doesn't mean i don't worry, i worry endlessly if i can ever get away from myself, i worry if i am loved by the people that tell me they love me, if i have a place to go when i need to go, if my brain is good enough to do anything important, i wonder what it means to keep up appearances, i don't understand why i cry as much as i do, i have more than i can handle, yet i want more...i don't understand how it is that i was born somewhere so far away with people so different than anyone around me now and i don't understand where they have all gone, i don't understand how i have lived so separately from my family and everything that seemed to be so comfortable to me, i don't understand why i don't make movies, i don't understand why i worry so much about being smart, most of the time i wish i could do myself a favor and...

i do know that i am not a kiss up and will never wear diamonds

i do know that my ankles are small, my lips and eyes are crooked, and my legs are long

lately

when i go to work and serve eggs and work with the people that i work with i am reminded that everyone i meet is afraid of something, loves something and has lost something. one day i will make a movie about this.

went to our friend's movie tongiht. that's all he does. he makes movies. in between he will work at a coffee shop or record store, but he just makes movies. are they good? they are. they are hip and cool and trendy, they follow conventions of not following conventions. he does his talk, you know, he makes movies because he makes movies. he makes films about pretty girls and pickpocketers. he shoots them in black and white. his characters speak french and italian. but he makes them. i sit here and write blogs about it.

tall like a sycamore

i don't want to drown

today i did. i did.

if there were words that were not so loud and clear

today i got hit by a traffic stoper for the trains. i was on my scooter, music in my ears was loud (i have big, amazing headphones) and i didn't hear all the beeps and sirens and those things usually produce... i was imberassed, scared, my head hurt. i think only two people know about this post, otherwise i would hide this event with due shame. also today while registering dagny for school at the welcome back bbq, we ran into another parent who i went to high school with. we were friends, we are friends, although mostly have been bound together by the teenage pregnancy. as we were making small talk through the sounds of overly excited seventh grad girls hugging each other and under develoloped seventh grade boys still playing some version of hit and run game, this mother told us how she can't stay in wendover overnight. she can go there, but she refuses to stay in the hotels there. why? because its gross. because all kinds of gross people sleap, stay there. i go through out my days and the distance between me and others grow. at times unintentionally, other times intentionally... what the fuck makes someone think they are so much better that somehow them sleaping on a certain bed is ok and when others do it, its gross? is it becaue that other is poor, black, hispanic, uneducated, strange, because they gamble, because their social interactions are not according to the standard? or is it only because they are the other? how does my high school friend breathes the air that we all share? is it truly possible that she has never thought of the possibility that for so many others in this country and around the world there is so much more, ohhh so much more they worry about every morning they get up? i slept in wendover's 3 star hotel couple of nights ago. i felt guilty that after we left they had to wash the sheets as part of protocol. when we were both in high school and got pregnant right out of high school and had to figure out everything, a hotel room would have been a luxury even for her. i don't know if it is the age, money or what changes us so much.

don't stop breathing

8 years
2 months
17 days
there is one thing that i know and it goes like this:

when john and i are together, it doesn't matter if life has no guarantees

it doesn't matter if other things may never be

i never knew this was possible,
before

back into the routine

how does one make someone else's dream?
when i get old the only regrets i want to have:
1. i wish i wrote more
2. i wish i visited my friends in other parts of the world more.
what will become of me?

i said

almost 13

she gets in the car and slams the door. i feel like i should say something, because it would really suck if the door fell off of my mom's car, the car that is the only car she has ever owned and takes a lot of pride in, but i don't say anything. i don't want to sound like a grandma concerned about the door and telling the girls to always be gentle, soft, careful, less rough, more girl like... plus she knows what she is doing, in fact did she not slam the door to get my attention? she never makes an eye contact at those times, times when she is mad at her mom, because it is all her mom's fault, whose else would it be? not surprising that 20 minutes later dagny is just fine. she is acting like nothing has happened and her mood magically, miraculously is happy after-all. while she is laughing and doing all of those things that happy people do, i decide this might be an opportunity to talk about one of the things she does not want to talk about: MAKEUP. she can't wear makeup, until she is older, it is a pretty simple, straight forward policy. this of course is made difficult by the fact that her best friend who is sitting next to her has her eyes painted with thick creamy black eye-shadow and penciled around the contour just like the pictures of egyptian queen, the difference of course it that those girls are 12-14 and live in salt lake. as soon as i mention no make up, the mood changes again and within minutes i get a text from dagny telling me how i am not supportive of her and don't understand her struggles with her identity and how i just make life and everything in general very very difficult. oh yes, and how all the other parents are so much better because... well they just are. of course life goes on and i try to talk and explain that she is just a little too young, that she is beautiful without it, that her talents and thoughts and ideas are what makes her beautiful. i try to do my best to cheer them up again, pretending that i am in a great mood, but of course the reality is that i am actually having a day when i feel totally alone and lost, etc.... in fact my feelings are probably very similar to the ones dagny is experiencing and i wish i could tell her how similar we are, that nothing really changes as you get older, we continue to try to figure ourselves out and her feeling insecure or lost has nothing really to do with me, i am just an easy target right now to be angry at, because i am the mom. i don't say much, instead we go to simpson movie and beach and drive along california coast, eating strawberries we bought on the side of the road, hoping that nothing else sets her off. toward the end of the day i feel like a champion, we are laughing together, making jokes, sharing clothes, i feel like a great success, like i've overcome my almost 13 year old daughter's natural "need" to not quite get along with me, life is great, it will be all o.k.... until she says: "so, mom i have figured everything out, i know what i am going to do when school starts." "oh yeah? great, what is it?" " well, you know how i finish school at 3:30 everyday, between 3:30 and 4:30 everyday i have decided that i am going to play guitar on the streets to make money and express myself..." as imagined, due to my reaction to this plan, i got another few hours of angry, door slamming almost 13 year old. oh well, i did enjoy the shared moments of laughter...

it's got to start somewhere

this is the life i kind of always wanted and never got and now at 31, i am living in the dorm. what would it be like to have had a chance to apply to colleges? instead of going where i had to because moving wasn't an option at all. just that whole process of choosing a college seems so fantastic and magical. traveling around the country deciding where to attend university. i hear people talk about it and they speak of where they would prefer to live, which city has better art, more mountains, clean air, proximity to the water, prof. they like ... the fact that i somehow got through my bachelor's degree and paid for it in salt lake so dagny can be closer to her dad seemed like an achievement at the time. now i just feel like an underachiever. i get jealous of opportunities people have and don't even realize. i get jealous of people who didn't have to worry about anything other than showing their trascripts and personal essay to admissions... i begin to wonder what school would have i attended, how would i pick, how would it be like to just go to school, go home for christmas, work on the weekends? well i am not sure, but i do know what it is like to be living in roble hall dorm room #216 at stanford this summer, attending five linguistics classes, riding my bike around, connecting with people around me, getting to know palo alto. my dorm has four desks in one room, separate room has two beds each. they are bunk beds. we are lucky, only two of us insted of four showed up. it gives us more space. the beds are covered with red blankets, desks are wood and old, windows large, three in a row, each room has a sink, bathroom is in the hallway, rigth across from our room, at times there is hair stuck in the shower drain, from my windows i see palm trees and a dry lake, i listen to loud music when my roommate is not here and study at moonbeam cafe when she is. she is young and sweet. we all eat together and act like we are all best friends, although we just met three weeks ago. i have enjoyed waking up in my stark dorm room and working at my bare brown befitting desk leting california heat sink into my bones

"we haven't had AC for 30 years"

that was what the grumpy motel lady told me over the phone. oh well, we fooled her anyway. even after many threats of no visitors, 6 linguists (dagestanian documentarian and descriptivist who will not have premarital sex but dances like she has two minutes left to live living in germany, australian spandex wearing beach hating kite flying anthropologist in an indiana jones hat, ambitious grateful dead loving computational linguist from midwest, sexy blonde jewish new yorker studying vernacular african american english from canada, big eyed french speaking dancing queen linguist anthropologist at heart from oklahoma, and i) were able to sneak into this 1 star paradise. eating and drinking many beers at the mexican dive by the amtrak bus stop only got better when we were joined by a car sales man and a business student. oh my...

"big dog an ugly woman"

linguistics summer institute at stanford this summer. today is wednesday, day off from the classes. i am at the library of my dorm "roble hall". carpet is burgundy, lights are florescent, there are three of us here, with headphones. between the songs i hear the keyboard typing. we watched walt wolfram movies tonight "the last one" and "american tongues". linguistics combined with documentary film. brilliant. cara and i had sushi in palo alto. we talked about her past, boys. dagny and john were argueing in salt lake, i heard about it over the phone. my stomack hurt, from worry or bad food. probably worry. florescent lights are calling me back.