Filed under: vie quotidienne
I’d forgotten this. Amongst other things. I lied, before – I DO want to do something. I want to make what Stef is talking about possible. This was the first question I ever asked him. I was sitting in the basement of a Columbia University dorm over a year ago.
Taking a moment out from Tolstoy’s thoughts on historiography and my own thoughts – which are at this particular moment almost loathsome to me – to feel sorry for myself.
I am now doing what part of me very definitely does not want to do (but which, I must say, both reason and friendly advice both strongly advocate) and planning to go back to Brooklyn. Back to therapy. Back to… well, a journey which was interrupted and for which – at the moment – I have no stomach. That inner journey which seems to me now so loathsome and so… yes, repugnant. The worst epithets I can think of are “boring” and “safe” – which may apply, of course, but if they’re the worst things I can think of, what is wrong?
I have never wanted to live in the way that others advised me to live. Indeed, in all my adult life, I have never lived in one city for over two years’ time, and until this moment (and possibly beyond) I had no intention of doing so, except when it was time to “settle down” and marry and be (the word that just came to my mind is “boring,” but that is not what I had meant) what? To be what? My thoughts, when I’ve imagined that day, have always been that I would be reluctant to give up travel.
It is so much easier to listen to War and Peace and think about Tolstoy’s views on historiography, and appreciate the voices and smells and colors of a Parisian market, or walk along the canals here, or… anything. And if I had an eternity of life, that is just what I would do. For many years would I wander the world.
On this journey, however, I’ve begun to realize that I have not got an eternity of life. And that upsets me – is making me weep at this moment. I have very little time – perhaps 10 years before I will have to be ready to marry, or lose my best chance of doing so, perhaps 40 years more of my working life ahead of me, and perhaps 60 years more altogether in which to live. In which to accomplish all the goals I have set for myself, which would take about 200 years to accomplish.
Something must drop. Something must drop or I will run myself ragged and still not accomplish half of what I would wish. But I cannot let go – or think I can’t. It feels like tearing something out from amongst my heartstrings.
I like the movie Holiday because it’s all about a man taking part of his young years to go out into the world and find out what goes on, and what about it. To find out exactly what he’s working for before he continues to work for it. Well… I know at least in part what I am working for… and yet I have never had any serious conceptions of actually achieving that aim. If I think (as I had never yet thought before about 6 months ago) of a husband, it is only because I can never see myself actually marrying. To be quite honest.
I have lived, and indeed continue to live, as if I was the only person in the world. And screw everyone else. I don’t feel this, and my own thoughts are horrible to me right now because I am extremely ashamed and angry with myself for grieving people that I love (and honestly I would like to just crawl away and be invisible somewhere right now) – but I certainly act like it. As recent events (not just the events of yesterday and the day before) have amply proven.
I have asked for advice, and not taken it. I’ve asked for others to shelter me from problems I have made for myself, and in which they chose no part. I don’t say this to lash myself with it… but because I so hated to hear the truth from another’s lips and because I would not hear it from him… so I shall hear it from me. If I have not consciously been out to destroy my happiness (and whoever is?) I have acted as though I was.
The word “Revenge” comes to mind. Right now, in the back, somebody is gloating who will not speak to me. It is as if I keep peeling layers back on an onion… or, no. It is as if I hold half an onion which is seemingly fresh. But the innermost ring is rotten, so I excise that, only to find that the next, bigger layer is also rotten. So I excise that and find yet a bigger, and yet a bigger, and a bigger, and a still bigger, and an even bigger… that are all rotten. And while I thought that my self-destructive (or not MINE, but we all know that) tendency… or no, that’s not even what it is. And while I knew the patterns I act out, I thought that the damage was only confined, this time, to my not liking one particular job – which would have been alright, thought I, if I was not in Russia. But I was. And then the damage was confined only to my not liking my job, and my failure to secure the other job that I had hoped for. And then to these two plus the fact that I had been acting in unconscious ways to get myself dismissed. And then to these three plus the fact that I couldn’t find another job in Russia in time and found that I didn’t want to. And then to these four plus… you understand.
So what the little man is gloating over is my failure to see – or… no. My absolute intent and effort not to see what was rotten, when my conscious wishes and my feelings were directed towards wanting to see.
It is easy, I think, to say “but that was not me!” but… let us be honest here. I have the hands. And the (now spent) money. The ability to do things, including going to the devil or ruining my life or roaming half-heedless through 3 continents or what have you. So it was me. An unacknowledged bit, perhaps, but still me. I certainly chose to go to the devil.
Honestly, I know what I’m working for – which, also honestly, has nothing to do with my husband or anyone else except me. And also honestly, I know exactly what to do to accomplish it. So either I do not want what I say I want (which has been the case) or… what? There is simply no other option, as has been proven. If I wanted to improve, I’d do so.
Right now, I don’t want to do anything. I don’t want to go outside, I don’t want to read, don’t want to sleep, don’t want to send my CV around for jobs in NYC, don’t want to think about where I’m going to live or what I’ll do when I get there… I just really don’t want to think. Because I’m tortured by recollections – disgusted, upset… and knowing that this isn’t going to do any good either.
I wish, like Tolstoy, that I could believe in determinism, or in the hand of god. Napoleon appeared because history needed him to play a role. This he did. He was sent to Elba, and when he returned the people acclaimed him because his part was not yet over. And when his part was over he was sent to St. Helena, and the actor disrobed, took off his paint and powder, and died. It is neat. It is even comforting in its own way – to be borne along by the times, and to do what I need to do because I need to do it, and have no choice in the matter, and had no will, and could not act otherwise. But to say that is sophistical: it is false.
Napoleon entered Moscow in late September, spent most of November there, and ran away. The Russian army, led by Kutuzov, followed him to the Russian border and tried not to engage – because it knew that the enemy was in flight and would destroy itself of its own accord. The Russians did not need to fight, because Napoleon’s army was in a panicked disorder and lost 9/10 of its men in the retreat.
(Comforting thoughts – those about Napoleon. I just went back and put them in after already finishing this entry. It’s stopped me feeling disgusted, now that I can think about Napoleon. But the more I think about Napoleon, the more I set myself up to do this in the future. This minute’s ease from my thoughts will bear its bitter fruits of disgust in some other season. Better to weep now – to pay what seems an enormous amount now – than to pay an even greater sum in weeping and devastation of life and friendships later. My dears… have patience.)
I have taken what I wanted – even if what I wanted was because I’ve been in a delirium – and now the bill’s come due. A neat little homily. And too simple. I really won’t have it be that simple.
Filed under: vie quotidienne | Tags: Complaints Department, london, moscow, paris, travel
Imagine the scene: I’m sitting on the RER D – a fast train that connects Charles de Gaulle airport with Gare du Nord in Paris. Across the aisle and laden with baggage is an old couple from Wisconsin on their first trip abroad. On the seat opposite, facing me, is a woman from Sydney who has just taken her daughter to the station, bound for a French exchange course in Brittany. We’re chatting pleasantly about this and that – Moscow, the woman’s daughter, how to get the Wisconsin couple to La Defense, etc. I’ve been up for 56 straight hours by this point, and everything seems to be outlined in very bright colors, and not a little blurry.
Suddenly, an accordion strikes up near the back of the train. As we fly across the tummocky, bare November landscape of suburban France, it suddenly comes clear to me: OH MY GOD, I’M GOING TO FREAKING PARIS!!
This was my first half hour in France.
I’m still trying to process what happened yesterday. I left Moscow at 4am, got to London by 11am, spent the day in a cell, was forcibly (ok… the people who did it were very pleasant, but the gun was very definitely in the room) put back on a plane to Moscow at the whim of some director of immigration who – contrary to what 2 of his subordinates recommended – thought there was the barest possibility I might overstay my visa, even though I have an onward ticket and have never overstayed a visa before, was led by a group of very scary-looking Muscovite goons through Domodedovo airport before standing in the freezing cold for an hour outside the guard’s shack as they drank tea from a samovar, and then finally let go with a very typical “No problem!” from the army officer on duty. (In that way I prefer the Russians to the Brits. The Brits make great show of being your friend, of speaking with you, being solicitous, acting as though they’ll let you in, etc, and the screw you over. The Russians totally ignore you and refuse to speak in anything except Russian – though, of course, they all understand English – while inspecting your paperwork to an almost melodramatic scrutiny and generally given you the impression that you’re going to be turned out into the night to starve… and then invariably turn out to be completely cool, no bribes needed.. I will take Russian immigration over UK immigration any time.) I finally got to Paris (via Moscow, London, Moscow, and Vienna) 38 hours after starting my journey.
Totally not my day(s).
I’m in Paris (truly a civilized place – with no landing cards to fill in, no metal detectors whatsoever, and… where’s the border checkpoint in the airport? I didn’t even see one! France, I salute you!) and finally alone in a hotel room… and trying to let the wall down that I built yesterday to keep back terror and possible hysterical sobbing from occurring in one or another cell in one or another country.
Tax cattle. That has hit home.
I return to NYC on 4 December. “Pour aller ou?” as the French would say.
…here it is. Katharine Hepburn reading a letter she wrote to Spencer Tracy 18 years after his death.
It feels like a reboot of this entire journey.
So you all know I got sacked, and why, and that I think this is actually a pretty good thing – since it was a matter of time till I quit anyway, and because they sacked me they’ve got to buy me a plane ticket. But… what the heck am I going to do now?
I’ve started the search for a new position, and it still feels quite a bit like everything is going on auto-pilot. I talked with my MEs last night about how I was feeling – and they immediately came up with “sad” and “scared” – two emotions which I’d not consciously felt. We talked a little longer and I did the meditation and got in touch with a bit of the sadness – and the fright, because the child kept telling me she was very, very scared – but by the end I felt quite peaceful. Now as I’ve continued writing this, I’ve felt some tension coming back.
[note: and then the MEs showed up]
I was watching Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner tonight, and as I prepared my own dinner, I began thinking about my grandmother.
There’s a scene in the movie where Katharine Hepburn says to Spencer Tracy something like “We brought her up to think that people who thought that whites are innately superior to blacks are always wrong… and when we said that, we did not add ‘But don’t ever fall in love with a black man.’”
My grandmother did.
This is something that’s always puzzled me a bit. My grandmother had black friends – or one black friend. However, this friend was never spoken of in front of her white friends, or invited to come when they were over. My grandmother invited her over and gave her a luncheon, but they ate at the kitchen table with the second-best china. And while my grandmother often told me that white people were not superior to black people and that it was good to have black friends, she always added that marriage between the races was NOT ok.
I began thinking… about stories that were told to me about my grandmother and grandfather. My grandfather was a businessman who did business with blacks and Jews in the 1940s-1960s, when it was very dangerous to do so – not because of the blacks and Jews, but because of what other whites would do. My grandfather’s business partner was a Jew, and I was told that one time in the 1950s my grandfather went out to survey a farm that he owned, and was met with “GO HOME TO GERMANY, JEW!” and a swastika spray-painted on the side of his barn. He painted over the symbol and went on working, serving on committees, and doing charitable work with Mr. Barman – his Jewish business partner – and Mr. Truth, his black friend and husband of my grandmother’s aforementioned black friend. He also laid down the law at home – refusing to support his alcoholic ex-soldier brother-in-law, who beat his wife and children. One night Great Uncle George got himself thrown in jail, and grandfather supposedly said, “Let him stay there. He deserves it.”
My grandmother, I was told, was a feminist who supported a woman’s right to work in the 1950s and 60s and held down a job while raising her 5 children. That she would have gone mad if she hadn’t worked, but that she always had a 3-course dinner on the table when her children and husband arrived home from work, baked pies and cakes from scratch for the whole neighborhood, sewed and netted and embroidered, and drove during the 1960s a huge metallic gold-colored Buick convertible named after a James Bond film. She had gone on an engineering scholarship to Cornell in the 1930s – one of only two women to enter the engineering school in that year.
I always used to think, “What happened to them by the time it came to me?”
The answer I always got was, “Well, they’re old.”
But no, that’s not an excuse. What happened to these brave, progressive, open-minded, tolerant, philosophical people? What changed between the 1960s, when my mother was a child, and the 1990s? How, in 30 years, did my grandparents turn from people who did charitable work and supported race relations into people who sat smugly back in their bank vault without ever giving a cent away and only associated with blacks behind closed doors?
The truth is… they didn’t. They couldn’t have. A person’s entire being and way of thinking and their psychological makeup doesn’t change that much, even in 30 years, without something big to give it a shove.
So… something either gave them a shove, or they were never progressive, open-minded, philosophical, or indeed anything else.
Who told me these stories of them? My mother – in the tone of “Well, they used to be so much better than they are now, so give them a chance…” but, no. She deFOOed when she was 18, and for 2 years neither saw nor talked to my grandparents. My uncle was a wild, drunken frat boy when he was 18 and only going into the Air Force and getting shot down over Vietnam “cured” him (as my grandmother said) of his wild ways. My eldest aunt got married at 18 to a drunkard who soon left her for a whole string of other women. My next youngest aunt ran off to Mexico. Only grandmother’s favorite did the “right” thing by going to university, getting married, and settling down. And that aunt is such a hide-bound conservative that there’s no penetrating her. She is the coldest woman I’ve ever met.
With such screwed up children, how could my grandparents have been what their children said they were? The answer: they could not have been.
My grandmother – though she is dead – has been the hardest family member for me to let go. It has been hard of me to let go of her memory, because she did not treat me as badly as mother or my aunts and uncle or my grandfather. She’s “the parent who got away.”
But that pedestal is crumbling, slowly.
To tell you the truth, I’m not sure how I feel about being sacked (nothing to do with the quality of my teaching, though) this morning. There are some good things about it, and some bad things… but now that I’m sitting here, alone in the flat, I’m not sure.
The good things are these: I’m free to search for new jobs in the country of my choice. The school is obligated to buy me a one-way plane ticket to anywhere in the world, which wouldn’t be the case if I had quit. I don’t have to deal with the attendant frustrations of teaching at that school any more. I have 7 days to either leave Russia or find another job instead of 3, as would have been the case had I quit. Most importantly, I can take some time out, re-evaluate things, and work on myself.
The bad things are these: most jobs are currently hiring for January start, so there’s not great prospects of immediate employment for the next month. I don’t have too much money, so options are limited for waiting this unemployment period out.
Frankly, it wasn’t a matter of if I left this job, but when. And in a way, I’m glad it’s sooner rather than later. In a way – is this just the part of me that manages crises? – I’m actually glad the decision was made for me, rather than hanging in suspense.
And that’s the thing: I’m mistrusting myself at the moment. “What if,” I’m thinking, “I acted unconsiously in ways that I knew would get me sacked? What if I precipitated this in order to have a crisis to manage?”
Well… let’s take a look at those thoughts compared to truth. Here is all the evidence I have:
1. I have been very consciously afraid ever since I had a discussion with Stef about 2.5 weeks ago of precipitating crises – stopping my own Renaissance, as it were. I have also been afraid because the thought is “I don’t know how to see this or stop myself!”
2. I have been acting unconsciously recently with regards to others – for example the convo I had with Stef 2 nights ago, and several times with J and GM. In some of these cases I have either caught myself while or soon after doing this, but a couple of times I did not realize until it was pointed out to me. So there is evidence both for and against the points made in #1.
3. I have not talked this over with the MEs yet – or indeed talked to them since the night I talked with Stef – though I know that’s a Bad Thing.
4. I ended some of my classes 3 or 4 minutes early, which I knew was against regulations – though I stopped doing this after the head teacher pointed this out. I was also fairly liberal about calling in sick – which I know (from having worked since I was 16) is a sure way to get fired. I also missed one lesson without having called – though I talked to the head teacher about it before the class was due to start.
5. I have been rather vocal about how I feel about the school’s practice of requiring unpaid overtime from its teachers – and requiring even more when the teacher asks for help. This was said in confidence to other teachers, but I know full well that nothing ever stays in confidence in a school.
6. Outside of my classes (and note that no one sees what goes on in my classes) I have been obviously lacking in enthusiasm, and have kept to myself in the teacher’s room and not attended any parties or drinking nights – which is the main way that people in this school interact. I have not attempted to fit in with the other teachers.
7. I’m feeling a lot of tension as I think about this.
So… have I acted in ways that justify their sacking me? Indeed I have – and I don’t fault the school for doing so. Have I acted in these ways specifically to precipitate this event? Yes, possibly. Probably, even.
Oddly enough… there are some good things to come out of this. First off… I have caught myself just after the event happened. I’ve been in Moscow for not quite a month. This is the shortest interval of this behavior that has occurred. (The last was 4 months in duration – i.e. Nate.) I have also thought of this (or let’s be honest, here – the MEs have suggested it) without it being pointed out to me.
But no, let’s be honest. No recriminations… but I did come here to work on myself, and so far I have a pretty poor track record. I don’t think this would have happened had I been more diligent about journaling or remaining in contact with the MEs. But then again… there’s a reason I didn’t do that.
So, there’s a lot of good that can (will!) come from this experience.
[note: and then the MEs showed up.]
“Call back later, I’m busy, ok?”
Thanks, L!
The recruiter told me that she’d have an answer for me on Monday. It’s now Tuesday afternoon, and I’ve been brushed off. Thoughts have been crowding in. “I need to give notice by the end of next week!” “I don’t want to go to work today!” “I don’t want to work here any more!” “I’ve got to do something!”
It’s taking a good deal of difficulty to remind myself that I don’t have to do anything. Yes, it’s true that if I want to avoid being contractually obligated to give 4 weeks notice to the school I’m working at now, I need to give notice by 28 November – the end of my trial period. But it’s also true that the only thing they have hanging over me is the payment of ½ month’s salary… which I’d make in about 3 days in the job I interviewed for. The school I’m working at now can’t sue me – or they can, but they won’t. I know this for an incontrovertible fact. The worst they can do is cancel my visa, in which case I buy a new one. I wouldn’t feel at all bad giving no notice to this school – because I don’t need the reference, they’ve treated me like utter shit, and fundamentally there’s no difference between giving immediate notice on Friday the 28th or Monday the 1st… because either way they still need to find a new teacher, and 2 days (except from the contract’s point of view) make no difference whatever.
So, the truth is that I don’t have to give notice by the 28th at all. That’s that thought.
Do I want to go to work today? No. I enjoy my Monday, Wednesday, and Friday classes, but I don’t at all enjoy the Tuesday and Thursday ones. Why? Well… could it have something to do with the fact that I teach straight through from 4 until 10? Maybe with the fact that the students in my first two classes are teenagers who don’t actually want to be there, and won’t do anything without my expending significant mental and physical energy? That it really does physically hurt for me to expend the amount of energy needed to get a bit of enthusiasm or laughter out of them? I don’t know. I’m hesitant to blame the students. Maybe, the thought now is, that I’ve just taken a dislike for no reason to my Tuesday and Thursday classes? But that cannot be. Feelings don’t come for “no reason.” This deep antipathy to teaching at Strogino must come from somewhere.
What is it about the Monday and Wednesday classes? The class is pre-intermediate adults. They speak little English, but they are keen to learn and are full of good humor, energy, and enthusiasm. I have a great time teaching them, and will be sad to lose them when I quit. Even my Monday and Friday teenagers – advanced level – love to laugh and are not afraid of looking foolish. They like to swear a lot to try to show off their “cool-ness” but as long as it’s in English and they understand and work with the grammar and vocab I’m trying to teach them, who cares if they swear?
Both of these classes are denominated by great good humor, which is utterly absent from my Tuesday and Thursday classes. The attitude I bring to teaching them is different… but is that a cause of or a result of my dislike of them? Which came first? In the beginning, I tried to like teaching these classes. Why did I stop?
So the truth is… well, the truth is that I find teaching these classes to be utterly loathsome. And the truth is that to maintain my income and residence in Moscow until I can successfully get another job, I choose to teach these classes anyhow. The truth is that the money and place to stay rank higher on my scale of values right now. The truth is also that if I didn’t have to worry about money and a place to stay – if I could find interim measures – I’d quit this afternoon.
The next thought… “I don’t want to work here any more.” Why is that? To be sure, I don’t mind teaching on Mondays and Wednesdays. The American teachers (why only the Americans? Though I must say one is from a town of 100 people in Kentucky, and the other is from Abilene, TexASS – so both have all the prejudices and narrow-mindedness endemic in southern towns) are pretty horrible – their minds are narrow and they have no conversation at all, but I don’t need to have much interaction with them. The British teachers are very nice indeed, and two of them (my roommate, and one other) I especially like, and get on well with. They have somewhat expanded minds and good conversation. I can discuss many things with them – Richard Dawkins and atheism (both are atheists), academia, Moscow life, job searching, etc – and while I wouldn’t count them as bosom buddies (and while I can’t discuss philosophy or the family with them, which prevents me from becoming close to them at all), I do like being around them for short periods. With the Americans, no topic except drinking and how loathsome their students are can be broached. Why should that be? I don’t understand it.
So… the truth is that I don’t actually mind working where I am. I knew about the low pay before I signed up. I needn’t have much intercourse with the American teachers, thank god. The Brits, the Brazilian, and the New Zealander are actually quite nice. There are opportunities to expand my abilities as a teacher by taking part (unpaid, of course) in seminars and workshops on teaching techniques, etc. The only things I really abominate are the classes I teach on Tuesday and Thursday, and the unpaid overtime.
“I’ve got to do something!”
Well… really, I don’t. I could continue in this sober round of days for many years. I am not in any imminent danger. I have a place to sleep, enough to eat, and the prospect of some time to travel – though not, if I continue to work here, the money to pay for said travel. I have been in many worse positions in my life. I’m in a better position than when I first moved to Dallas, for example. In the worse case scenario I would move back to NYC and beg to crash on someone’s couch till I got an apartment and an IT job – or any job, really. That’s not too bad of a case.
In fact, this interlude is actually good in showing me what I abominate – what I can’t stand, or at least don’t like. It’s good for showing me lots of things about this authentic self I’m becoming.
But it is – in about half an hour – time to go to Strogino. I’m feeling the usual tightness in my neck, just on the right side. I really don’t want to go. It would make me feel so good in the short term to quit and not have to go today, or to call in sick and avoid going. But long-term, it’s not sustainable.
What is a higher priority: a place to sleep, or following my feelings? That’s probably the wrong way to ask the question – or the wrong question to ask. There’s got to be a way I can get both. There’s got to be a way I can satisfy both my physical needs and emotional ones.
What way? I don’t know. I’m soooo tempted to pin all this anxiety on one thing – on L’s not telling me whether or not I got the job. Or even whether or not the parents have made a decision. But really… L is not the lynchpin of my life. She’s not the arbiter of my fate. My life is not waiting on her decision. But oh, it’s sooooo tempting to think “She is making me feel this!”
But she isn’t. Why, then, should I not be happy to think that because I am responsible, I only have the power to act?
The silence was palpable as we sat down – K and L on the black velvet sofa with burnt-velvet cushions, and I on a squeaky and uncomfortable overstuffed red leather loveseat. The unliveable “living room” was bright with red marble, red glass, and red leather. The early morning sunshine gleamed off a 60″ flat-panel TV and the white Elton John-esque piano on the sitting room.
K began speaking, and L translating for me. “Why have you come to Russia?”
I couldn’t tell her about Lymond.
I mentioned my interest in Russian history, the language, and the literature. My love of travel. The desire to learn Russian while teaching English. L had told me not to be nervous, and I wasn’t – though I wasn’t sure whether to look at K or L while speaking. K smiled with her silicone-injected lips, tossed her bottle-blonde hair, and smoothed the black sweater over her medically-enhanced breasts and up onto her beautiful shoulders. I – conscious of what seemed my vast bulk in comparison to the reed-thin K – smoothed my black sweater likewise.
K would always have been pretty – even without the “enhancements” which actually detract from her beautiful oval face, high cheekbones, and flawless skin. Her hair – if left to grow it’s natural light golden brown – would better match her large, liquid hazel eyes. A beautiful woman. And a very vain one.
K’s husband Y came in, in the typical suit shining with much starch and ironing – and lurex threads woven into the fabric. His stocking feet made no noise on the marble tile. He sat down in the armchair opposite me without greeting or even touching his wife, and put his mug of milk – new cream, actually, given the layer of fat on top – on the table. L repeated the story thus far to him in Russian. We laughed for some unknown reason, K first, then L, then me. Not a genuine laugh in the room. Y didn’t see the fun in it.
Questions were asked about my schooling (yes, I’m on sabbatical – what’s it to you?) and my experience with children and how long I plan to stay in Russia. Long enough to save up $50,000. But I couldn’t tell them that. I have 3 years sabbatical, I said. They asked if I would not want to go back to the States after a year. No.
Will you live on the top floor of our house, or would you like us to rent you a flat? Our driver will pick you up from the Metro on Friday for a trial day, and you can meet our little girl. Her Russian nurse will be there as well to show you the routine: don’t expect the child to warm up to you immediately. She takes a long time to trust people.
Of course she does. Your vanity has destroyed her by age 3. But I won’t think it. I don’t want to think it of so young a child. It’s not her fault or problem. Maybe she doesn’t have a problem? This doesn’t go against my principles, does it?
I smiled. K mirrored my smile, half-veiled her face with her hair, and gave me a sidelong look. She turned to L. We stood. I was given into the hands of the driver to take me home, and arranged to come back on Friday. No, no, I’m completely free. No classes to teach.
I shall meet the child on Friday, and see if I am able to work there – to stand it for a year. $50,000 tax free, I could save. 3 years of travelling. 2/3 of the Everest guide fees. The fees for Kilimanjaro, Aconcagua, and Vinson Massif combined. If invested, a good chunk of my retirement savings.
And yet I am thinking only about the money, and not about the child. Interestingly enough, the parents feel the exact same thing.
We’ll see if it’s in line with my principles to work in such a family. Nothing is worth a reFOO.
They gave me activated charcoal tablets to swallow. Each one burst in my mouth in a carbon-y shower. The nausea, however, isn’t caused by something I ate, and won’t be ameliorated by any tablet or potion.
I feel sick each time I think of teaching at Strogino. I keep thinking of calling in sick, or walking away. Last Thursday I nearly did just walk away – I was 10 paces down the sidewalk when I turned back… but I thought of you. Of all of you. And of a night in May where, casually, on one of those late-night calls that I so miss, I mentioned that I’d walked away from my final exams.
I thought of you, my friends, and that stopped me. Thank you. And, of course, all kudos to the boys upstairs, who reminded me of that night. Thank you, my dears. I appreciate you.
Today is my first day going to teach there since Tuesday. I do not want to. There’s nothing saying I must, of course… except the fact that. Well, no. Let’s rephrase that – courtesy of those book extracts that GG posted today. “I am choosing to teach at Strogino today because I do not want to lose my job and the housing it provides. I am choosing to teach at Strogino today because I would like a place to stay until I either find something better or choose to leave Russia, and I don’t want to spend the money or undergo the anxiety of staying in a hostel and waiting – and hoping – that I’ll soon be hired. I am going to Strogino today because I am a bit frightened of what will come to pass if I don’t – and I’m not sure how to resolve that yet.”
The prospects of getting another job soon are not that unfavorable. Yesterday I had an interview at an agency which is putting me up for a job immediately. In all likelihood I’ll be meeting the mother of my potential pupil tomorrow. There is another agency which is also looking at potential jobs for me, and I should get a few offers from that place as well.
Due to the visa vagaries of Russia, if I resign my current job they’ll cancel my visa, and I’ll have 10 days to leave the country. I’ll have to go to Ukraine for between 1 day and 1 week, where the Russian embassy there will issue me with another visa – once I’ve got a job offer lined up and a priglashenie issued. So I can’t quit this job until I’ve got another one – or, no. If I want to follow the path of least resistance, government hassle, and expense, I shouldn’t quit this job until I’ve got another.
Trying to take responsibility in these decisions. It’s a difficult, conscious effort right now. But it feels better. It really does actually feel better to know that I’m not at anyone’s mercy. That I’m not hard done-by. That no one is making me stay or making me quit – and that no one has the power to make me do anything.
I don’t want to leave Russia. I quite like it here, oddly enough. There’s money to be made here – and I’m here to make money to finance my travels and mountaineering and returning to university if I decide to do that.
I should leave now for Strogino if I want to get there. I researched hostels today – $20 a night will get me a dorm bed near the Old Arbat. Maybe tomorrow. After the interview with this woman – we’ll see how it goes.
This was the thing I wanted to write about on the board, and I’ve not covered it fully. I would love to speak with some of you about this – not about my situation, necessarily… but about these new feelings of almost (almost!) joy in taking the responsibility, and feeling free – even under stressful circumstances – to act in my own behalf. And the growing feeling that there’s someone behind me who wants to see me happy – not just you, my friends, and not just my conscious ego… but others.
And thanks to Andrea, my inner 5-year-old wants a toy. I shall have to go to the toy shop to get her one. :)
