Полевые Цветы

Wild Flowers

Сара На Крыльце

Sara On The Porch

Без Названия

Untitled

Красное

Red

Красный Георгин

Red Dahlia

Бамбуковая Беседка

In Search of Genius Loci*. Introduction

Cor tibi magis Sena pandit ** Twenty years of age I came to a foreign land. Set in the ways lent to me by my upbringing, blinded by stereotypes definitive of my - superior, as it seemed at the time - cultural identity, I felt utterly out of place. “Love it or leave it,” you say? I was trapped: I didn’t love it but I couldn’t leave and go back. A rolling stone - strings of any connectedness snapped - I was lost to myself. For four years I existed in a limbo of self imposed isolation: I lived in the community of my expatriates, disliking its noisy crude provinciality. Refusing to learn the new language, I wrote volumes on perceived differences between two cultures. And then it all came to an end. Stripped naked - old ideas and preconceptions swept away as if by floodwaters rushing through - I was left with nothing to sustain my old identity and the consciousness of separateness rooted in it. Stripped naked of any reference point ever known to me, I was - in a sense - born anew into the world that was neither hostile nor welcoming but rather indifferent: it simply let me be. To be is to belong; to belong is to be able to connect and to be connected. For the first time in four years I found myself being completely open to the world around me, my mind empty. I wondered the narrow streets and out-of-the-way alleys of the familiar neighborhood without judging, or comparing, or wishing to be thousands of miles away and discoveries awaited me on every corner. The dancing rhythms and geometrical patterns on the brick walls of five-story buildings cast by the shadows of fire escapes… The depth of the blue sky reflected in the puddle of melting snow under my feet… The bare trees in the spring - being squeezed into narrow spaces between the huts and shacks yet reaching out upward to the sky - so tenacious of life… The radiance of sunlight coming through the thick green foliage and illuminating tiny back yards of miniature two-story houses shaded by the elevated steel supports of metro… The thump of domino chips against the wooden picnic tables surrounded by old men and woman passing time on boardwalk… A solitary figure under a big umbrella wondering in the rain on a deserted beach… As an observer and a witness, I was a part - a part of life confined to all the houses I had not lived in since my birth… a part of life spilled onto all the streets so different from those remembered and cherished since my childhood… And yet - the smell of lilac in the air… translucency of light at dusk… the melody of voices - children playing, women gossiping… my hands red in the wind - black leather gloves left on the train… the cooling softness of the raindrops on my face and on my palms turned upward… the yellow inviting warmth of windows at night - a faint resemblance of life once known so well and claimed… My past and present intertwined, existing simultaneously, enriching, complementing… A call to one another… A conversation… ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ *In contemporary usage, genius loci refers to a location's distinctive atmosphere, a "spirit of place" as opposed to the protective spirit of a place as in classical Roman religion. ** "Siena opens its heart to you wider than this gate" - the inscription on one of the eight gates in Siena, Italy.

Портрет Моего Времени

The Portrait of My Time