I woke up early thinking that there is no more graceful way
of wearing a scarf than did Julie Christie in Dr. Zhivago. Or Young Cassidy.
Then I made coffee as my dog does not like to go out when it
is cold and snowing. The coffee tasted
very good.
… As the year is ending, I closed my eyes and remembered the
lady who sold corn husk dolls in Bratislava. It was a stone throw from Vienna
where I spent many moons in the past decade or so. “Much more forgiving than all the kouklas you may have seen in Kalithea”
that lady told me.
Vienna. The coachmen cigars that the Emperor smoked dreaming
of Sissi. And the small Prosecco bars in Old Town.
Yet, the Green Fairy was queen in the catacombs of Prague or
even on the square of Brno. Wormwood and detachment. Taking portrait photos
with a 1950s Soviet Zaria 35mm camera that had a cracked lens. I even took one
photo of the orloj in Olomouc that when
printed seemed to defy the principles of architecture. As if the Green Fairy
had dripped into the Zaria.
… Filled another cup of coffee. Still dark and cold outside.
I could hear my dog snoring in the next room.
Pierożki reminds me
of Krakow. So does a bottle of Spanish cava while listening to the street
traffic at midnight. I wished I had hot coffee then as my hotel bed had a cold
pillow.
But Oslo had its museum with slanted ceilings. In memory of
the Vikings and their ships. That architecture cut my horizon short.
.. As the year is ending, I thought of Dr. Zhivago, a name
that means life in Russian. And could
not shake away the blue of Julie Christie’s eyes from my mind. Nor her grace of
wearing a scarf in the snow.
And as my dog kept on snoring, I went back to bed.
December 26, 2019
© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2019
"Zhivago, a name that means life in Russian" - this is what wikipedia climes with reference to Mary and Paul Rowland (Rowland, Mary F. and Paul Rowland. Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago. Southern Illinois University Press: 1967.) By Russians it is not so simple and the name Живаго comes from a prayer that impressed Pasternak in his childhood "Ты есть воистину Христос, сын Бога живаго" , https://goldlit.ru/pasternak/428-juri-jivago-obraz.
ReplyDeleteIn internet one can find the speculation that due to global warming "by 2050 Poland may have become a leading global wine producer, while vineyards in the south of Italy and Spain may disappear due to drought[http://www.uwm.edu.pl/en/egazeta/poland-wine-making-country]", drinking Segura Viudas in Krakow forty years before that should not be a sin.
surprising interest in the Slavs!?