Clarissa's Blog

When I’m reading something (which is about 84% of my awake time), I really don’t like it when people interrupt my reading to ask what I’m reading.

Reading is an intimate process that only bears talking about when one decided one is ready to talk about it.

I was in a big event today, with 600 people in attendance. Indoors. The event was an awards ceremony, and it was completely spoiled by the absence of music. It feels really weird to walk in complete silence to the stage across a large ballroom.

“Why is there no music?” I asked one of the organizers.

“Because of COVID,” he replied seriously.

You know how some books are announced as fast-paced, keeping you on the edge of your seat, and breathless? Natural Law is the exact opposite. It’s very unhurried. The narrator is in absolutely no rush whatsoever to get anywhere. As a result, reading the novel becomes a powerful experience because it forces you to slow down, take a deep breath, and stop rushing. It’s almost meditative in nature.

The story is good, too. A deadbeat dad, an eccentric mom, and 4 kids who try to build their own lives in the midst of extreme familial dysfunction.

Still, the novel doesn’t live up to its potential. The reason why it’s not a work of art is the first-person narrator. His name is Ángel, and he is, indeed, so angelical, so excruciatingly perfect, so dauntingly flawless that you want to hit him over the head two minutes into the 500-page narrative of his unmarred perfection. The novel traces Ángel’s life from early childhood to adulthood but it isn’t a Bildungsroman because there’s no Bildung. Ángel remains exactly the same at every stage of his life. The same, terribly annoying and completely robotic individual. The author tried to humanize Ángel by giving him a love interest but that didn’t work either. Ángel’s constant protestations that he loves Irene fall flat because of his placidly indifferent reaction to Irene’s extreme promiscuity, drug addiction, and a penchant for humiliating Ángel.

Natural Law is set during Spain’s transition to democracy, a time of extraordinary change in every aspect of people’s lives. You can see how those changes impact everybody in the novel (except, of course, the Android Ángel) and think about what it means to live in a time of epochal changes. This has become a crucial question, and we all are answering it whether we want to or not.

Johnson is being hardcore, and I’m jealous of the Brits for the first time ever.

The West isn’t dead yet. This is good to see.

There was an intense propaganda campaign in Russia that lasted for over a decade and encouraged people to adopt children who lived in Russia’s terrible orphanages. It’s a great campaign, obviously. Adoption is great.

But the campaign failed. Nobody listened, nobody cared.

So please spare me the talk about the poor, brainwashed Russians. Nobody gets brainwashed into anything that’s completely alien to their sensibilities. They didn’t let themselves be brainwashed into adopting Russian kids but were somehow magically brainwashed into murdering Ukrainian children. What sense does this make?

Exactly what I said yesterday about the UK moving into the world leadership position that is being left vacant by the US. Why the US has decided to dismantle its cultural, economic, political and every other advantage is a different question. Things like that aren’t subject to the laws of primitive materialism.

This is what Freedom Square in Kharkiv looked like after Russians hit it with the very first air strike on the city:

This is what it looks like today:

There are still no window panes but see how it’s all been cleaned up? People went out and cleaned. The square now looks better than any regular Russian town looks in peaceful times.

I’m hearing that people are planting flowers in the many flower beds around the city. Daily, groups of citizens come out to clean and beautify the city.

What’s really messing with my head is that Kharkovites didn’t used to be this way. One of my biggest complaints when I emigrated were piles of dog shit in the streets, no trash cans, and mountains of soggy garbage everywhere. I have a highly developed aesthetic sensibility, and seeing dog shit was freaking me out.

This is what a nation-state does to people. It makes them want to see their land beautiful. Ukrainians changed so much in the 21st century. Imagine how fast they’ll rebuild with just a little bit of help and hopefully some peace.

We also went to an Italian banquet today. It was Italian in that there were mountains of excellent Italian food and everybody played an Italian bowling-type game which is supposedly the oldest game in the world. But actual Italians, there were only two. There were more Slavs than Italians, with several second-generation Czechs, me, dressed in the colors of the Ukrainian flag from head to toe, and two Russians, one good and one bad.

Most of the organizers and the attendees were Irish. Nothing happens around here if the Irish don’t organize, obviously. Some people referred to themselves as “Dutch Irish,” which I don’t know what it means because it’s hard to keep track of all the varieties of Irish. I say this lovingly, of course.

My department came up with the idea of the banquet but an Italian cultural organization (consisting of all those Irish folks) funded it. When we asked them what the budget was, they said, “we’ll eat! We’ll drink! We won’t talk budget! Just get food.” After a series of painful and fruitless efforts to get a specific number out of the Italian-adjacent Irish, we went ahead and bought mountains of food. We are used to public university scarcity, and it felt weird to be able to order whatever we wanted for the event and to be told to order more.

It went amazingly well. Even the bad Russian didn’t manage to mar the festivities for me. I’d say the best part of the event for me was to see a group of 70-year-old men discuss how they all were together in first grade. And they still hang out together!

And by the way, I submitted an article yesterday and another one today. Now I have to go to an Italian banquet but I’m wiped out.