Azerbaijan, apparently. Baku (the capitol) for two weeks to teach aviation English to Air Traffic Controllers. I remember when I first started to work for this school they said there was a chance I could go there, to which I promptly said yes I'd love to. THEN I checked the map and kept not finding this 'country'. And then I found it. And then I thought, 'I wonder if I really do want to go there?' Turns out I do, and I will in two weeks.
As for it's location, I plan on just acting real casual and never looking South, like avoiding an ex at a party. Also I'm now Canadian, and a devout Muslim.
Almost all of my co-workers have done two week stints there, some have done a month and all are very white and have had no problems. I get an apartment on the Caspian Sea, a hefty pay check and the opportunity to walk around and have people look at me like I'm wearing a Cookie Monster suit.
In other news, Thanksgiving was a good ole time, thanks to some great friends I've made since landing. I liken myself unto a pilgrim, arriving in a foreign country and being taken care of by the locals. On Thursday night there was a raucous gathering at my old apartment with lots of fantastic dishes, including real mince pies, homemade stuffing and all the rest. As the night went on people started picking up instruments and soon were in full swing - banjo, mandolin, bass, lap steel, fiddles, etc. We sang 'Pocahontas' by Neil Young and if at that point I wasn't convinced I was among kindred spirits, someone started up a Fred Eaglesmith song.
The 2nd Thanksgiving was on Saturday with my friends from the ITC training program and was also a lot of fun. I made two chickens in lieu of a turkey and there were lots of good dishes to feed and overfeed all 10 or so of us. Then we headed out into town and hit the clubs, just like our family does on Thanksgiving back home...
Much more seems to have taken place over the last few weeks, but for some reason I've captured exactly none of it with my camera.
It snows here occasionally, like today, then tapers to rain and leaves everything slippery at night.
Also I'm happily staying at a friend's studio for the next two weeks before heading East for two weeks, then I'll come back and move into an apartment quite near my old one, just on the other side of the fallen angel statue that I posted pictures of a while back. I'll live with a girl from Australia and a girl from Italy, both in their 30's and very nice. The place has a very calm and stable feel to it and I'm really looking forward to setting up my easel in front of the big window in my room.
But tonight I'll enjoy this space, with it's supply of books and solitude.
Monday, November 26, 2007
Monday, November 12, 2007
One of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite books.
'The best thing for being sad' replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow,' is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then - to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look at what a lot of things there are to learn - pure science, the only purity there is. You can learn astronomy in a lifetime, natural history in three, literature in six. And then, after you have exhausted a milliard lifetimes in biology and medicine and theocriticism and geography and history and economics - why, you can start to make a cartwheel out of the appropriate wood, or spend fifty years learning to begin to learn to beat you adversary at fencing. After that you can start on mathematics, until it is time to learn to plough.'
from The Once and Future King
by T.H.White
from The Once and Future King
by T.H.White
Thursday, November 8, 2007
reflection
This morning on my way to my first lesson I again experienced a reoccurring sensation that I've often heard other people describe, but haven't felt so strongly until recently. 'Like you're watching a movie about yourself' is how it's often described, and that's pretty much how it feels to me. Not a scary movie, not a comedy, just like someone set up the whole shot and I was an actor, or maybe just an extra in someone else's story.
I woke up at 6:00, two minutes before my alarm went off as usual. This is a fun little game my brain plays with my heart every morning. 5:58 looks exactly like midnight, 2 am, 3:28 am, etc. So i wake up and think 'awesome, it's the middle of the night, I'm going to sleep for 17 more hours'. Then the alarm goes off. I always grab it and jab the button to tell me the time (it's my cell), sure that the phone has malfunctioned or just changed itself while I was asleep. (Like Dane Cook's alarm clock that grows legs and plays 'little clock games' with him.) Then, after several rounds with the snooze button, I get up and fumble around with clothes and papers and my laptop and somehow end up on the little elevator that descends into the day, which has only just arrived.
Here's where the 'movie' sensation starts. I have my bag on my shoulder, a black leather attache case that Katharine was getting rid of, my earplugs in, usually something soothing, like Mark Kozelek or Gillian, and moments after walking out my front door, enter the metro station nearest my house, Karlova Namesti. Once down the mile-long escalator I'm integrated into a crowd of people, dare I say a throng, that moves like cattle - long-faces, purposeful jockeying for position, bumping into one another and finally squeezing into a metro car, with me somewhere in the middle. Like any crowded train car, people glance around at each other, then choose a place to lock their gaze on like they're preparing for some sudden pain. (Is that how people feel about their day? Is that how I feel?) I do the same, but often, like other people I'm sure, find myself staring back at my own reflection in the glass. I have my red Team Zissou hat on, white earplugs in, my new glasses that still look like a disguise, and a long gray overcoat that goes down to my knees. Under all that is some guy who used to make furniture in a dusty shop, a guy whose morning routine was taking clamps off table tops and loading up the wood-stove. In another life he would walk a mile along broken concrete to the top of a hill where vultures glided around the roof of the school. In another he put a book on tape on and drove 40 minutes through the Blue Ridge Mountains to a small town where literacy was a losing battle. I stare at him in the black glass of the train window and try to remember when things changed, how it could be that I was there and am now here, like the maps in the back of the bible I had growing up, a red line to mark Paul's 3rd jaunt around the middle east, or the map that shows Indiana Jones' plane move from Germany to India.
But how? How did it happen? Wasn't I just learning how to knead dough? Weren't we just making shrimp and grits in the kitchen on Chestnut St, with the music on real loud and people steadily arriving with beer and bread and wine?
I walk into my room at the end of the days and am surprised by it almost every time. The clothes in the closet look like a grown-ups clothes - shirts, ties, two jackets. I put my black briefcase down for what feels like the first time all day and massage some feeling back into my shoulder. I take off my disguise and rub my eye sockets, then put them back on when I realize I'm used to them now and can get a headache without them. I make tea and sit in the comfy chair in my room and look out the window at the dark clouds over bright wet rooftops. Soon it's dark enough to see myself staring back again, and this time, I recognize the face.
I don't sit long. I know the morning's waiting in the elevator for me. I get up, put some music on, something upbeat like Modern Times or Old Crow, get out some charcoal and start putting my new easel to use.
Lately I've taken to doing self-portraits with a big mirror I have in my room. When I look at them the next morning, they look strange. Do I really look like that? I always think my face is still chubby, like when I was in 6th grade and am surprised to see hard lines, sharp angles. Then I remember that I'm almost 30 and spend most of my days walking quickly through a strange city. I remember that I came here because I wanted to see a new place and have new experiences, because I vowed not to spend another winter in the woodshop.
Thin light is coming in my window, I'm somehow awake and dressed and my briefcase is packed and ready to go. I put on my coat, pull on my hat, insert the earplugs and head out to the elevator, which takes me down 5 flights and deposits me into my new life with a soft thud.
I woke up at 6:00, two minutes before my alarm went off as usual. This is a fun little game my brain plays with my heart every morning. 5:58 looks exactly like midnight, 2 am, 3:28 am, etc. So i wake up and think 'awesome, it's the middle of the night, I'm going to sleep for 17 more hours'. Then the alarm goes off. I always grab it and jab the button to tell me the time (it's my cell), sure that the phone has malfunctioned or just changed itself while I was asleep. (Like Dane Cook's alarm clock that grows legs and plays 'little clock games' with him.) Then, after several rounds with the snooze button, I get up and fumble around with clothes and papers and my laptop and somehow end up on the little elevator that descends into the day, which has only just arrived.
Here's where the 'movie' sensation starts. I have my bag on my shoulder, a black leather attache case that Katharine was getting rid of, my earplugs in, usually something soothing, like Mark Kozelek or Gillian, and moments after walking out my front door, enter the metro station nearest my house, Karlova Namesti. Once down the mile-long escalator I'm integrated into a crowd of people, dare I say a throng, that moves like cattle - long-faces, purposeful jockeying for position, bumping into one another and finally squeezing into a metro car, with me somewhere in the middle. Like any crowded train car, people glance around at each other, then choose a place to lock their gaze on like they're preparing for some sudden pain. (Is that how people feel about their day? Is that how I feel?) I do the same, but often, like other people I'm sure, find myself staring back at my own reflection in the glass. I have my red Team Zissou hat on, white earplugs in, my new glasses that still look like a disguise, and a long gray overcoat that goes down to my knees. Under all that is some guy who used to make furniture in a dusty shop, a guy whose morning routine was taking clamps off table tops and loading up the wood-stove. In another life he would walk a mile along broken concrete to the top of a hill where vultures glided around the roof of the school. In another he put a book on tape on and drove 40 minutes through the Blue Ridge Mountains to a small town where literacy was a losing battle. I stare at him in the black glass of the train window and try to remember when things changed, how it could be that I was there and am now here, like the maps in the back of the bible I had growing up, a red line to mark Paul's 3rd jaunt around the middle east, or the map that shows Indiana Jones' plane move from Germany to India.
But how? How did it happen? Wasn't I just learning how to knead dough? Weren't we just making shrimp and grits in the kitchen on Chestnut St, with the music on real loud and people steadily arriving with beer and bread and wine?
I walk into my room at the end of the days and am surprised by it almost every time. The clothes in the closet look like a grown-ups clothes - shirts, ties, two jackets. I put my black briefcase down for what feels like the first time all day and massage some feeling back into my shoulder. I take off my disguise and rub my eye sockets, then put them back on when I realize I'm used to them now and can get a headache without them. I make tea and sit in the comfy chair in my room and look out the window at the dark clouds over bright wet rooftops. Soon it's dark enough to see myself staring back again, and this time, I recognize the face.
I don't sit long. I know the morning's waiting in the elevator for me. I get up, put some music on, something upbeat like Modern Times or Old Crow, get out some charcoal and start putting my new easel to use.
Lately I've taken to doing self-portraits with a big mirror I have in my room. When I look at them the next morning, they look strange. Do I really look like that? I always think my face is still chubby, like when I was in 6th grade and am surprised to see hard lines, sharp angles. Then I remember that I'm almost 30 and spend most of my days walking quickly through a strange city. I remember that I came here because I wanted to see a new place and have new experiences, because I vowed not to spend another winter in the woodshop.
Thin light is coming in my window, I'm somehow awake and dressed and my briefcase is packed and ready to go. I put on my coat, pull on my hat, insert the earplugs and head out to the elevator, which takes me down 5 flights and deposits me into my new life with a soft thud.
Monday, November 5, 2007
The Grounds of the Senate
Mostly pictures from the grounds of the senate, a sprawling maze of hedges and fountains, statues and yes, owls.
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