A few days ago I took a walk. I started off east from our apartment, popped in a computer store to look at laptops (I'm afraid James' is on its last legs), then wandered past a pond (more like a large dirty puddle that a few people were staring into expectantly, of what I'm not sure), and into an old apartment subdivision. The buildings of the subdivision were blocky and drab, but the surroundings were beautiful. More trees than I've seen since Plum and Cabbage whisked me away to Подольск that weekend. People were out walking their dogs and pushing their kids in strollers (the weekend walk in the park is a strong tradition here), it was a beautiful corner of the city. I emerged close to the ring road and crossed it via the переход, a long underpass that usually has stalls selling music, sunglasses, baked goods, magazines, lingerie, mp3 players, etc. Sometimes there's a 6-lane (or 8-lane, nobody seems to know) road to cross and no переход, in which case, as Plum says, you had to be born on the right side of the street.
I walked along the ring road a little ways, past clothing boutiques and themed coffee houses, and took a right on Цетной Бульвар. A бульвар (bul'var) seems to be a long stretch of road with a park in the middle and blini/ice cream stands at intervals, where businesspeople spend their lunchbreaks and friends go to hang out and drink beer (at all hours of the day...it might as well be Sprite here). Цетной empties out a few blocks north of the Kremlin in an old, pedestrian part of the city. A lot of the buildings there look like they could be in Vienna (they have the same sorts of sculptured flourishes and pastel colors), except they're about 3 times too big.
I walked down towards the Kremlin, the shops getting posher with every block, and ended up near where Baked Beans and I stood and watched the Victory Day parade. I passed the Duma (the federal legislature, a building that's immense and completely inscrutable save for a little plaque out front), and took a right on Большая Никитская, a beautiful street lined with coffee houses, florists' shops (classy artistic ones, not the 24-hour apology-boquet kiosks around Новослободская), and onion-domed churches. I stuck my head in the Bol'shoy theater, but I think it's under construction and out of commission for a little while longer.
I have to go meet my exam class at Кофе Хауз (that's Coffee House, spelled phonetically...kind of like the Russian Starbucks), but that was pretty much the end of my walk. Down another бульвар, past an outdoor Christian rock concert (I had no idea what was going on until someone handed me a pamphlet and I sounded out the Cyrillic and found some words that were vaguely like Jesus Christ), into the Pushkinskaya metro, and home.
Yesterday morning, there was a message on my facebook wall that said "rhubarb, have a great week. tretyakovka was fun."
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
D and Tretyakovka
A few days ago I got an email from D, a Williams '03 grad who's in Moscow for the summer. He was perusing facebook, found Beach, got in touch with her, and she pointed him in my direction. He got to Moscow only a couple weeks ago and hasn't seen much of the city yet. He suggested we meet at Tretyakovka, a gallery of Russian art that spans from early Byzantine icons up through realism of the 20th century, pretty much always in the wake of European art. After getting minimally lost by the Третяковкая stop I found him at the gallery at noon.
Last night I mentioned D, before I knew anything about him, to Aubergine and his friend Julia Mafia (yep, that's her real name). Julia Mafia is a fabulous Russian girl with hair, lips, and eyeshadow all strikingly different shades of red. The last time I saw her she had bought a pair of shiny silver shorts (she hasn't worn them yet...maybe on her birthday).
"You didn't ask for a picture??" she asked last night. "What if he's fat and ugly? *wrinkles nose* *wild fit of giggles*" Hate to say it, Ms. Mafia, but you are wroooong. D is easily one of the most attractive Russian men I've met. That places him comfortably above average on the American scale. Forgive my bias. Maybe if Putin clamped down on the rampancy of mullets and pointy elf-shoes, I would feel differently, but by and large, Russian men don't do it for me.
D is a very pleasant surprise. His looks are just a bonus--I could talk to him for hours. He grew up in a small, beautiful town (the gallery had some paintings of it) about 3 hours south of Moscow. He studied English at school, got a job washing dishes for a summer camp in Massachusetts, got an affadavit of support from his host family to stay in the States, spent a couple years at Berkshire Community College, then transferred to Williams as a junior. Harvard was his original goal. He ended up getting accepted there, but only as a freshman. At 23 years old he wasn't interested anymore.
He's every bit as intelligent and self-assured as you'd expect him to be. There must be crazy undercurrents of tenacity and resourcefulness, but in conversation he's affable and almost soft-spoken. He majored in political science, and is a gold mine of fascinating insight and perspective on America and Russia. Plus he smells really nice. Okay, before I talk myself into falling for him, let me tell you his reason for coming to the States. It's...
...wait...
...a little more...
...trust me, this one needs one more ellipsis...
...crap, I can barely make myself type it...
...Arnold Schwarzenegger. Yep, the gubernator. Either D is way too good at being deadpan, or has a clinically underdeveloped sense of irony. I bet it's the first one--when he said he wanted Arnold as the next US president and I showed no signs of taking him seriously, he said ok, actually he likes Hillary.
I have to say, though, that he ended up having a surprisingly decent and substantial explanation for the serious side of the Arnold thing. He read a book about Arnold when he was a teenager (intended to be an expose, but he said he was oblivious to the bad parts), and that put the idea in his head that if you find a way to get to America and are hardworking and resourceful, you can do pretty much whatever you want. He obviously understands, better than I do, the problems surrounding that...myth, I'd go so far as to call it, but, for him, it was what it was and he did what he did and I can't bring myself to snicker at that. Except when I picture Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Other interesting things D said: I mentioned to him Embassy Guy's comment that if America had helped Russia to its feet more in the 90s, we'd be reaping friendship rather than missile-threats now. D said that's totally off-base. If anything, he said, Clinton was too hands-on in the 90s, and a larger American presence would only have created more resentment and confusion.
Since I'm struck by how much more socially at ease I feel surrounded by a bunch of Americans at the embassy (even in comparison to other native English speakers), I asked him if he found it easier to talk to people in Russia and if it was a relief to be back. He said it was quite the opposite--he misses how Americans go out of their way to be friendly, even if it's not exactly genuine, and prefers that sort of interaction to what he described as the sullen, oblivious silence of his Russian co-workers.
I hope I see him again soon.
Oh, right, the paintings in the gallery were cool too.
Last night I mentioned D, before I knew anything about him, to Aubergine and his friend Julia Mafia (yep, that's her real name). Julia Mafia is a fabulous Russian girl with hair, lips, and eyeshadow all strikingly different shades of red. The last time I saw her she had bought a pair of shiny silver shorts (she hasn't worn them yet...maybe on her birthday).
"You didn't ask for a picture??" she asked last night. "What if he's fat and ugly? *wrinkles nose* *wild fit of giggles*" Hate to say it, Ms. Mafia, but you are wroooong. D is easily one of the most attractive Russian men I've met. That places him comfortably above average on the American scale. Forgive my bias. Maybe if Putin clamped down on the rampancy of mullets and pointy elf-shoes, I would feel differently, but by and large, Russian men don't do it for me.
D is a very pleasant surprise. His looks are just a bonus--I could talk to him for hours. He grew up in a small, beautiful town (the gallery had some paintings of it) about 3 hours south of Moscow. He studied English at school, got a job washing dishes for a summer camp in Massachusetts, got an affadavit of support from his host family to stay in the States, spent a couple years at Berkshire Community College, then transferred to Williams as a junior. Harvard was his original goal. He ended up getting accepted there, but only as a freshman. At 23 years old he wasn't interested anymore.
He's every bit as intelligent and self-assured as you'd expect him to be. There must be crazy undercurrents of tenacity and resourcefulness, but in conversation he's affable and almost soft-spoken. He majored in political science, and is a gold mine of fascinating insight and perspective on America and Russia. Plus he smells really nice. Okay, before I talk myself into falling for him, let me tell you his reason for coming to the States. It's...
...wait...
...a little more...
...trust me, this one needs one more ellipsis...
...crap, I can barely make myself type it...
...Arnold Schwarzenegger. Yep, the gubernator. Either D is way too good at being deadpan, or has a clinically underdeveloped sense of irony. I bet it's the first one--when he said he wanted Arnold as the next US president and I showed no signs of taking him seriously, he said ok, actually he likes Hillary.
I have to say, though, that he ended up having a surprisingly decent and substantial explanation for the serious side of the Arnold thing. He read a book about Arnold when he was a teenager (intended to be an expose, but he said he was oblivious to the bad parts), and that put the idea in his head that if you find a way to get to America and are hardworking and resourceful, you can do pretty much whatever you want. He obviously understands, better than I do, the problems surrounding that...myth, I'd go so far as to call it, but, for him, it was what it was and he did what he did and I can't bring myself to snicker at that. Except when I picture Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Other interesting things D said: I mentioned to him Embassy Guy's comment that if America had helped Russia to its feet more in the 90s, we'd be reaping friendship rather than missile-threats now. D said that's totally off-base. If anything, he said, Clinton was too hands-on in the 90s, and a larger American presence would only have created more resentment and confusion.
Since I'm struck by how much more socially at ease I feel surrounded by a bunch of Americans at the embassy (even in comparison to other native English speakers), I asked him if he found it easier to talk to people in Russia and if it was a relief to be back. He said it was quite the opposite--he misses how Americans go out of their way to be friendly, even if it's not exactly genuine, and prefers that sort of interaction to what he described as the sullen, oblivious silence of his Russian co-workers.
I hope I see him again soon.
Oh, right, the paintings in the gallery were cool too.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
You type fast for a grungy bird
Last night after class (the last one for a few days, thanks to Russian independence day), I went to Safir with Artichoke, Apple, Celery, Apricot and her boyfriend, and some of Celery's students (Celery was the first to duck out, of course.) The conversation was pretty typical. Artichoke and Celery egged each other on into an increasingly graphic conversation about sex, Apple threw in occasional snide comments, Apricot and I glazed a bit, then Artichoke got self-conscious and set about redeeming himself by talking about something intellectual, jokingly at first but then more involved. I took the bait and argued, this time, that pure mathematics isn't just a physicist's toolbox, that it can anticipate advancements in physics (when Euclid's parallel postulate couldn't be proved, leading to the discovery of spherical and hyperbolic space, nobody had a clue that maybe the universe was spherical or hyperbolic, right?). Unfortunately I don't have Artichoke's skill in talking about math so that normal people are still interested in it, so Artichoke's and my conversation splintered off from the other 4.
Afterwards, Artichoke and Apple and I went to the kiosk. We met some Russian guy who Artichoke knows because the guy used to work at Vogsal, a restaurant really close to school. The four of us went back to my place (Plum's still off visiting Cabbage's family, yesssss), drank champagne, listened to my deliciously shitty iTunes collection. The Russian guy (can't for the life of me remember his name) left and it was the 3 of us.
All night Artichoke told me how unfathomable I was. Usually he can get a decent read on people within about a week of meeting them, he said, but it's been two months with me and he doesn't have a clue. He says I have no modus operandi. I only vaguely understand what he means by that--something along the lines of me not putting up a front, for better or for worse, when I relate to people. He would ask me Who are you?, I would tell him I was Rhubarb and that's about all there is to it, he'd be horribly unsatisfied and tell me to just start confessing things, and I'd have no idea how to respond. Apparently he finds me fascinating and frustrating, which I already strongly suspected, and which explains his frequent bizarreness towards me. I feel like I have something in common with him that I don't have with anyone else here, and maybe that's what enables both of us to perceive that there's a lot going on under each other's surface.
Apple went to sleep and Artichoke dragged me into the kitchen and poured me another glass of champagne. He asked me what I thought of T, his girlfriend (one of my ex-students--not sure if she'll be a major enough player to warrant a fruit). I was non-committal, which is honestly how I feel. I have nothing at all against her, but she's too socially well-honed to be all that interesting. When pressed, I told him I preferred people with more substance. He told me to elaborate and said "one person's substance is another's baseball fan," which I thought was a cool insight. I defined substance as an abiding interest and passion for something outside of oneself, he looked amused by that judgement of T, and I felt kind of chagrined because it really wasn't my intention to bash her.
At one point he was looking through my iTunes, found Born in the USA, tried to play it, saw that it need a password, and called me over to type it. I sat down next to him on the couch and typed away. His arm found its way around my waist by way of some semi-drunken, unconscious variation on the movie-theater yawn. He retracted it once it registered. iTunes crashed or some such, and I absentmindedly went to nytimes.com. "You type fast for a grungy bird," he said (bird's the British approximation of chick, as far as I can tell). I asked him if he thought those two were contradictory. To me, he might as well have said "You're tall for someone with blue eyes." Yes, I'm both of those...can you honestly not imagine them simultaneously characterizing someone?
Afterwards, Artichoke and Apple and I went to the kiosk. We met some Russian guy who Artichoke knows because the guy used to work at Vogsal, a restaurant really close to school. The four of us went back to my place (Plum's still off visiting Cabbage's family, yesssss), drank champagne, listened to my deliciously shitty iTunes collection. The Russian guy (can't for the life of me remember his name) left and it was the 3 of us.
All night Artichoke told me how unfathomable I was. Usually he can get a decent read on people within about a week of meeting them, he said, but it's been two months with me and he doesn't have a clue. He says I have no modus operandi. I only vaguely understand what he means by that--something along the lines of me not putting up a front, for better or for worse, when I relate to people. He would ask me Who are you?, I would tell him I was Rhubarb and that's about all there is to it, he'd be horribly unsatisfied and tell me to just start confessing things, and I'd have no idea how to respond. Apparently he finds me fascinating and frustrating, which I already strongly suspected, and which explains his frequent bizarreness towards me. I feel like I have something in common with him that I don't have with anyone else here, and maybe that's what enables both of us to perceive that there's a lot going on under each other's surface.
Apple went to sleep and Artichoke dragged me into the kitchen and poured me another glass of champagne. He asked me what I thought of T, his girlfriend (one of my ex-students--not sure if she'll be a major enough player to warrant a fruit). I was non-committal, which is honestly how I feel. I have nothing at all against her, but she's too socially well-honed to be all that interesting. When pressed, I told him I preferred people with more substance. He told me to elaborate and said "one person's substance is another's baseball fan," which I thought was a cool insight. I defined substance as an abiding interest and passion for something outside of oneself, he looked amused by that judgement of T, and I felt kind of chagrined because it really wasn't my intention to bash her.
At one point he was looking through my iTunes, found Born in the USA, tried to play it, saw that it need a password, and called me over to type it. I sat down next to him on the couch and typed away. His arm found its way around my waist by way of some semi-drunken, unconscious variation on the movie-theater yawn. He retracted it once it registered. iTunes crashed or some such, and I absentmindedly went to nytimes.com. "You type fast for a grungy bird," he said (bird's the British approximation of chick, as far as I can tell). I asked him if he thought those two were contradictory. To me, he might as well have said "You're tall for someone with blue eyes." Yes, I'm both of those...can you honestly not imagine them simultaneously characterizing someone?
Friday, June 8, 2007
On Wednesday, after dropping the entire remainder of my paycheck on a presentable-looking dress, I went in to the US embassy to meet Embassy Guy, the head of the science policy department who Mom's friends-of-friends put me in touch with. Two stops over on the circle line, past the zoo, down the hill towards the river, around the spotlit brick walls of the compound, past the alertest security guards I've ever seen, and in through the south gate.
EG is an unpretentions older man with a pleasantly unhurried demeanor and an amusing tendency to overuse the expression "feeling their oats." We spent about an hour talking about the function of his department, life in the foreign service, and cool places to see in Russia. My best-case scenario hope was that he'd offer me a part-time paid internship on the spot. Didn't happen, but he had a wealth of other ideas--he got in touch with his friends at NASA and ISTC (an international organization that gives grants to ex-Soviet weapons scientists so they can research more peaceful things instead of relocating and getting a job with another country's nuclear program). And he knows someone at the website of a world-famous magazine (I don't want to mention the name for fear of jinxing it, but it's the one with the little yellow rectangle) who was lamenting the lack of coverage of Russia. The first two ideas didn't pan out, NASA because they just got a couple interns and ISTC because I don't have enough security clearance, and the NG guy hasn't written back yet. At least it's a start, and hopefully even the dead ends are helping get my name out there.
I thought EG's department would be much more hands-on and collaborative with the Russian government (maybe more along the lines of ITSC). It sounds like it's more concerned with surveillance of Russian science and science policy then reporting back to Washington. So it does have that communicative aspect of looking at science, synthesizing it, and relaying it to non-scientists, but it's more of a one-way street than I thought.
Before I went in, I told one of my classes about it. As soon as the word "non-proliferation" was out of my mouth (and I had explained what it meant), I had one of those sickening shifts in perspective where all of a sudden you see yourself from the point of view of the person listening to you and you think ohhhhhh shit. Now I've just aligned myself with everything that's paranoid and hypocritical about American foreign policy. I made something up about how the embassy division and Russian government were working together towards non-proliferation (cough) and it blew over.
EG is an unpretentions older man with a pleasantly unhurried demeanor and an amusing tendency to overuse the expression "feeling their oats." We spent about an hour talking about the function of his department, life in the foreign service, and cool places to see in Russia. My best-case scenario hope was that he'd offer me a part-time paid internship on the spot. Didn't happen, but he had a wealth of other ideas--he got in touch with his friends at NASA and ISTC (an international organization that gives grants to ex-Soviet weapons scientists so they can research more peaceful things instead of relocating and getting a job with another country's nuclear program). And he knows someone at the website of a world-famous magazine (I don't want to mention the name for fear of jinxing it, but it's the one with the little yellow rectangle) who was lamenting the lack of coverage of Russia. The first two ideas didn't pan out, NASA because they just got a couple interns and ISTC because I don't have enough security clearance, and the NG guy hasn't written back yet. At least it's a start, and hopefully even the dead ends are helping get my name out there.
I thought EG's department would be much more hands-on and collaborative with the Russian government (maybe more along the lines of ITSC). It sounds like it's more concerned with surveillance of Russian science and science policy then reporting back to Washington. So it does have that communicative aspect of looking at science, synthesizing it, and relaying it to non-scientists, but it's more of a one-way street than I thought.
Before I went in, I told one of my classes about it. As soon as the word "non-proliferation" was out of my mouth (and I had explained what it meant), I had one of those sickening shifts in perspective where all of a sudden you see yourself from the point of view of the person listening to you and you think ohhhhhh shit. Now I've just aligned myself with everything that's paranoid and hypocritical about American foreign policy. I made something up about how the embassy division and Russian government were working together towards non-proliferation (cough) and it blew over.
Monday, June 4, 2007
I got an email today from the head of the science-policy department of the embassy, saying I can come in on Wednesday (today's Monday) and meet him. I am beyond excited about the possibility of an internship there. I'm getting a little antsy to get serious again about science and various things, and this would be an amazing opportunity. If this doesn't work out, I'll look for other opportunities in science writing or science policy, and if I can't find anything, I'm not sure I'll last here much beyond the summer. Right now I'm trying to think of intelligent questions to ask and trying to get myself up to speed on news and everything...wish me luck
Sunday, June 3, 2007
People ask me a lot what it's like to be in Russia right now. If you're reading this much later, just to situate you, a few days ago Russia tested a missile capable of penetrating missile-defense systems like the one the US happens to be building in Poland, and Putin's drawing more and more criticism for censoring the media and curtailing freedom of speech.
I don't ask my students about it too much, because I don't want to treat them like my amateur pet sociology project, but when politics does come up, they seem fairly resigned to the fact that the government's going to do what it's going to do and it's a waste of time to think about it much beyond that. The same attitude, I suppose, is common in America, but the difference is Americans feel guilty about it. We hang on to the belief that the government represents us and that, in the end, we're responsible for its actions because we elected it, so we really should be paying attention even if we're not.
That feeling of responsibility doesn't really exist here. People view the government is its own beast, something that has to be sidestepped and accommodated so they can go on with their daily lives. (Khrushchev's granddaughter has interesting things to say about the government and peoples' mentality: http://www.readrussia.com/a_1_2007_12.htm) The protests in Red Square a few weeks ago got a fair amount of press abroad, but here there was barely a blip. The people who paid the most attention, as far as I could tell, were the expats.
I don't ask my students about it too much, because I don't want to treat them like my amateur pet sociology project, but when politics does come up, they seem fairly resigned to the fact that the government's going to do what it's going to do and it's a waste of time to think about it much beyond that. The same attitude, I suppose, is common in America, but the difference is Americans feel guilty about it. We hang on to the belief that the government represents us and that, in the end, we're responsible for its actions because we elected it, so we really should be paying attention even if we're not.
That feeling of responsibility doesn't really exist here. People view the government is its own beast, something that has to be sidestepped and accommodated so they can go on with their daily lives. (Khrushchev's granddaughter has interesting things to say about the government and peoples' mentality: http://www.readrussia.com/a_1_2007_12.htm) The protests in Red Square a few weeks ago got a fair amount of press abroad, but here there was barely a blip. The people who paid the most attention, as far as I could tell, were the expats.
Saturday, June 2, 2007
Artichoke
Artichokes and I have always had a conflicted relationship. They're fascinating because they're so complex, and they're really unique among vegetables, but all the same I just can't stomach them.
One of the first things Artichoke said to me, a Кальян the first night I was there, was "What are you running from?" I answered noncommitally and it got swept under by the rest of the conversation. The running-from theme is one he returns to a lot though. Not about me necessarily, but he thinks a lot about people and their reasons for being here. His theory is that happy, functional people stay in their own countries, and everyone else has some sort of damage they're trying to escape, but they can't, obviously, because they're carrying it around. I'm not sure to what extent he thinks of himself in those terms. I bet if he's honest with himself, his theory was tailor-made to his own self-image.
He's studied a ton of math, and yet is surprisingly socially lubricated. When he's in a room with people there's almost always some sort of noise coming out of his mouth. About 30% of it is complete and utter bullshit, maybe 60% masquerades as bullshit but conveys something truthful that he's thinking about, and about 10% is brilliant and insightful. I'm often in the crosshairs of his bullshit ("We all HATE you." "Rhubarb's got that alcoholic tendency." "Shut up, we don't like you THAT much" (on my birthday), and others I've lost track of). But then, he goes out of his way to help me learn Russian, help me plan my lessons, make sure I'm ok with other things, etc. Artichoke even told my FCE class when it was my birthday, and they brought me a cake. He's toned down the vicious variety of bullshit, I think, now that he's seen that he can't pick a fight with me and I don't want to compete with him. Lately his bullshit, of the 60% variety, has taken a different turn. ("Rhubarb, will you marry me?" "I like girls who speak softly and read books and use words like [some big word I had used earlier]"). I know I occupy an above-average portion of his mental space, I just don't know what with.
His girlfriend's one of my students. He's told me he's not in love with her, but she's crazy about him. She's really smart and motivated, but has a modus operandi (Artichoke's phrase) of being hypercritical and disdainful of everything. Once that drops, though, she's cool. I think he wishes he were in love with her. In a way I feel sorry for men whose incapacitating need for sex ties them to people they don't actually like all that much. Or maybe that's not even what's happening with him, I don't know.
Artichoke almost left the company a couple weeks ago. He was all ready to get on train to Helsinki to get his other visa, then Giant Midwestern Underground Fungus made him an offer he absolutely couldn't refuse, so he stayed. He was really torn. His friend started calling him Hamlet, which was (and perhaps continues to be) about the aptest thing ever. In all, I'm glad he stuck around. We're falling into a tenuous sort of friendship, and if someone's that interesting, I'll forgive him a lot.
One of the first things Artichoke said to me, a Кальян the first night I was there, was "What are you running from?" I answered noncommitally and it got swept under by the rest of the conversation. The running-from theme is one he returns to a lot though. Not about me necessarily, but he thinks a lot about people and their reasons for being here. His theory is that happy, functional people stay in their own countries, and everyone else has some sort of damage they're trying to escape, but they can't, obviously, because they're carrying it around. I'm not sure to what extent he thinks of himself in those terms. I bet if he's honest with himself, his theory was tailor-made to his own self-image.
He's studied a ton of math, and yet is surprisingly socially lubricated. When he's in a room with people there's almost always some sort of noise coming out of his mouth. About 30% of it is complete and utter bullshit, maybe 60% masquerades as bullshit but conveys something truthful that he's thinking about, and about 10% is brilliant and insightful. I'm often in the crosshairs of his bullshit ("We all HATE you." "Rhubarb's got that alcoholic tendency." "Shut up, we don't like you THAT much" (on my birthday), and others I've lost track of). But then, he goes out of his way to help me learn Russian, help me plan my lessons, make sure I'm ok with other things, etc. Artichoke even told my FCE class when it was my birthday, and they brought me a cake. He's toned down the vicious variety of bullshit, I think, now that he's seen that he can't pick a fight with me and I don't want to compete with him. Lately his bullshit, of the 60% variety, has taken a different turn. ("Rhubarb, will you marry me?" "I like girls who speak softly and read books and use words like [some big word I had used earlier]"). I know I occupy an above-average portion of his mental space, I just don't know what with.
His girlfriend's one of my students. He's told me he's not in love with her, but she's crazy about him. She's really smart and motivated, but has a modus operandi (Artichoke's phrase) of being hypercritical and disdainful of everything. Once that drops, though, she's cool. I think he wishes he were in love with her. In a way I feel sorry for men whose incapacitating need for sex ties them to people they don't actually like all that much. Or maybe that's not even what's happening with him, I don't know.
Artichoke almost left the company a couple weeks ago. He was all ready to get on train to Helsinki to get his other visa, then Giant Midwestern Underground Fungus made him an offer he absolutely couldn't refuse, so he stayed. He was really torn. His friend started calling him Hamlet, which was (and perhaps continues to be) about the aptest thing ever. In all, I'm glad he stuck around. We're falling into a tenuous sort of friendship, and if someone's that interesting, I'll forgive him a lot.
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