Surprised When I Gushed

My best friend is over in Paris.  He didn’t tell me this but rather, sent me a nine second clip, shot from a phone atop some Parisian roof with Sacre Coeur, off in the distance, church- bells in full-pull.  I knew this trip was coming up for him and his girlfriend.  “Are you there now?”  He confirmed and soon we were rifling through all the things he had planned and all things I insisted he must do as well.  My family and I were all walking about in the la Ville Lumière the summer before last so everything is reasonably fresh, in my mind, like stumbling upon the Place De Vosges during a late-night run for falafel with my younger one.  

Back in New York they have been walloped this year with one after another nor’easter.  Beijing has had a tepid winter by comparison and up until today, we hadn’t seen a flake of snow.  My older one and I ducked out the door this morning, me in my shorts and thin coat only to see fat flakes of wet snow driving down hard and melting upon impact on the wet asphalt.  It’s St. Patrick’s Day and I remember one from perhaps six years back where the same thing happened.  As parents tend to do, I reminded my older one who was complaining rather than marvelling at the flakes that March comes in like a lion before it makes its lamb-like exit. April’s on deck and it’s the best month of them all.

Was on a business call yesterday with a gentleman whose name was Konstantin, based over in the Bay Area.  We had a good exchange about what he does and what I do and then before we got off I asked him where he was from.  I really wasn’t sure.  His accent was imperceptible and had imagined that he might have been from Greece.  He told me he was from Russia, perhaps a bit pensively.  There is so much nonsense hysteria in U.S.-Russian relations these days.  And I believe he was pleasantly surprised when I gushed with enthusiasm, explaining straight away that I was planning to take the Trans-Siberian this summer with my family.  When I mentioned that I was midway through my hefty Trotsky biography as well, he recommended a TV series on the revolutionary that looks extraordinary. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt7632428/?ref_=ttep_ep1

                                  

I spent some time with Leon last night and again this morning.  It’s a sullen period in 1924-25.  He’s been censored by the Party, removed from his post at the head of the army, and he seems to use the time to sharpen his voice on the role of the arts in revolutionary Russia.  No wonder people idolized him.  Here is the party leader who argues art should be able to take its own path and that it cannot be directed by the Party.  Idle perhaps, but one can’t but wonder how different that Soviet experiment might have been with him calling the shots instead of Joseph: the man of Steel.  The chapter I’m making my way through this weekend is entitled “Interval.”   I’m bracing myself for the chapter that follows entitled “The Decisive Contest”, which we all know Mssr. Jugashvili comes out on top of. 

Saturday, 03/17/18