"Strive"

Wade

Through the shadows of yourself,

Through the caverns of your confusion

And the dark night 

Of your doubts and fears.

Wander

Through the wonders of reflection

Through the thoughts of yesterday,

Of time long past and yet 

So here, and now.

Wait

Upon the quiet hope 

Of memories yet unarrived–

Upon the daring of a moment, 

And the hope of today,

Of a thousand summery tomorrows.

"pity these hands," à la e.e. cummings

pity these hands,

gnarled and crippled

that never ached

to bring another aid,

that never sweated

in the cupped palms of a lover

and grew wrinkled, old,

alone.

pity that heart,

battered and befuddled,

deprived of love

by love once lost,

that never knew mankind

nor humanity–

that heart

that ticked and tocked

for want of other occupation

and then, gears grown thirsty

and beset by rust,

one day

stopped.

The Googlot

We never had a Googlot in the village, but we learned about them at Wikademy. Mom said that if she got some more clients, we could consider buying one, but I knew that there would never be enough clients in our small town, so I built my own. It wasn't long, I guess, before the CR showed up and took it away, but by then, we were already so used to it that I didn't see any way of living without one. So, when I saw one standing at a Magna-rail stop one day, I woke it up and grabbed its hand and led it quickly to the blink gate in the McDonalds by the depot. Bush! Mom was mad when she figured out what I had done, but when I told her that the neighbor had taken a look at it and wiped it clean, she calmed down a bit and even started to smile a little. I think she had really always wanted one, but she had grown up around laptops and clear-boards, so she still wasn't really used to any of the newer Applied Ingenuity software. I mean, they had robots and stuff back when she was a kid, but it was like they weren't even alive. They couldn't think or carry on a real conversation or anything. They just kind of sat there and repeated programmed phrases or fulfilled repetitive tasks, and they were always breaking down or having to recharge. That was before Takashi and Sandhi came up with Rejoints and Plaskin-- I just can't believe they used ball bearings for so long or that they were able to work when every screen had scratches all over it. Bush... Doesn't make sense at all...

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Also, for those of you interested in gaming, 3D graphics, and/or artificial intelligence, this is an interesting video. There is one swear word and an animated female android who is never fully naked but is pretty close to it (privates and breast covered up though). Anyway, a really interesting look into potential issues in the future of artificial intelligence.

To Peter and Back Again

That is, in fact, a monkey in a sweater.

We arrived in St. Petersburg (henceforth, Peter, as it is referred to in Russian) on Thursday after a rather enjoyable train ride where all the Russians stared at the loud Americans for seven hours straight. We, of course, felt very flattered that others thought us so fascinating as to pay so much attention to us. We were supposed to stay at a hostel that night, which, if we had been in Western Europe, would have meant we spent the night with a bunch of backpackers, young tourists, and generally interesting people. Unfortunately, Peter didn't get the memo or something, because we walked in and it was fully of forty-five-year-old ex-cons in wife-beaters. We had joked before arriving that we would end up in some hole-in-the-wall place, one where there's a creepy guy in the corner who just stares at you and doesn't ever say a word. We coined the phrase "Kyrgyzstanian in the corner" based on its alliterative quality rather than as any statement about Kyrgyzstanians, who are some of the nicest people ever. Anyway, we didn't exactly have the "Kyrg in the corner" in mind when we got there, but it soon became much more relevant. Most of our new ex-con friends were pretty inebriated and didn't give us much of a problem, but there was one excessively friendly one who insisted on telling us that the Kyrgyzstanian in the other room had stabbed someone the week before, and the Kyrgyzstanian in the other room insisted on yelling at us. So, we decided that there wasn't reason to find out whether the rumor about the "knife fight" (as the friendly one put it) was true and ventured out to find somewhere else to stay.

Catching Up

Street art!

It has been a while since I've written, so this will likely include a lot. I think the last time I wrote, it was the day before I went in for my first day at my internship, so I guess I'll start from there. I'm working for the Gorki Institute of World Literature in their Folklore Department, and that's been a real joy so far. The Institute itself is a research branch of the Russian Academy of Science, so they really don't do much in the realm of bachelor's degress or anything like that, but they have classes for PhD students, and as I understand it, they have a good number of interns who are doing research to get their Masters degrees as well. Anyway, the people there are really nice and really experienced in their fields. The lady that we work with most closely is Yelena, and she is possibly the kindest human being I've met in Russia so far. She is super accommodating, and it seems like most the time, her objective is to help us to accomplish whatever we are working towards personally, whether that's in research, sightseeing, or anything else. She has been super helpful in getting stuff lined up for my research, and  we've been learning a ton each day about some of her interests, like Russian folk music and ritualistic traditions among various Russian groups. The first day, we got to watch and listen to some old Siberian songs, and that was a real treat. I sang some Georgian folk music last semester with some good friends, and it reminded me of that. Anyway, since then, we've been learning all about the Russian calendar, holidays, funerary traditions, and foods-- just to name a few things-- and it has really opened my mind to understanding a lot of things that were, before, a "dark forest," as the Russians put it. I am really loving the subject material, and I'm excited to get into some translation work over these next few days. We're going to be translating Russian articles into English for publication in Folklorica, a journal of Slavic literature and folklore. In any case, I am stoked.