On Russia

 I woke up this morning in a flurry of small thoughts as I do most mornings. Tiny little registering complaints or anecdotes, scattered for my witness there, atop the increasing awareness of my wakeful state. I twisted and turned and relearned my body lying in folds, tucked away under pillows and blankets and remembered my book beside me. There was my last thought, I'd strained to remember the last lines I was reading before falling into an intoxicating sleep that lasted till morning. 

And how I love my book! Oh Russia! It has only been a new inspiration for months now, but in the unraveling of daytime, as I scudder about the kitchen and consider my surroundings, making tea in smoky silvered beaten pots, on my old white chipped stovetop, I recall Russia as my homeland.

It was said to me long ago, and repeated throughout my adult life, that my small and simple peasant-like life would be the life of a rich man in Russia. There I would be a doctor! There I would be somebody! My apartment was always neat and well arranged, and I could imagine myself a Russian and would have my fantasy keep me warm from the chill of an American peasantry life, which I knew familiarly since childhood, but had grown fonder and fonder of as the rich, decorated apartment of a doctor. American peasantry can be very sustaining in Russia. 

I am always convicted of living in low light, of an aptness for quiet and solitude, which remind me of days written of in candlelight and frozen Russian landscapes. Of simplemindness and frankness, which are contained in every tale, spoken mostly in monologues.

But I also imagine things newly, as I am now reading my book of tiny epitaphs and sketches, some only a half page long, would be filled with the same Russia I have come to know, all culture and very little history, all one in the range of many faces, distinctions and rubles, many sighs and looks to the icons. And in returning home, where I am but a peasant, but who knows what a peasant is here? Home which I am for a moment disgusted with, my own country, who in the same time I read of has gathered a history of its own, and now full up here of anger and bitterness in the Canadian style. Overconsumption. 

I love visiting Russia in my book here, I have known her now so long. She is my home at home, and my promise of significance. My cottage life, and now my books, my religion, and my passion. In some ways, Russia is my family.