Retroactive happy holidays, y'all. (And by y'all I mean Ben, my dad, and the three or four random people who stumble upon this blog by accident. Welcome! I'm not always this annoying, I promise...
Just kidding! I'm always exactly this annoying!) I didn't bother to write about Christmas/New Year's or anything else for the last few months because I didn't feel like it, deal with it, and also: moving on. So I know that on the sidebar I've explained that this blog is devoted mostly to my cockamamie opinions on movies, books, and television, but necessity is driving me to change things up a bit. I may still write about movies from time to time (God knows I've stored enough of them away on my external harddrive, like an industrious squirrel bracing itself for a Torrent-less winter...), but for the most part, this blog is going to be devoted for at least the next six months to my time in Sakartvelo, home of the Georgians. I'll doubt I'll ever be adept enough in kartuli ena, the Georgian tongue, to truly speak the language, but don't be surprised if the next six months is as much about me attempting to master Mkhedruli (the alphabet) and Kartuli (the language) as it is about my adventures teaching English.
So, yes. That's happening.
As for 2011? I could take it or leave it. It was a strange year, and in some ways has felt mostly like a post script for 2010. In 2010 I graduated from Rutgers, finished my internship, packed up my life, and drove southeast from New Brunswick as fast as my car could take me. I landed in Austin, fretted about a living situation, found a living situation, fretted about a job, found a job, and then found myself with nothing tangible left to fret about and still no closer to finding the answers I needed. It turns out that no matter how far you go from the last place you've been, you never outrun yourself. So here's a new theory: real change comes from self-acceptance. You can't decide who you're going to be and what you're going to do until you understand who it is you are and what it is you're doing, right now. In this moment. So if 2010 felt like a whirlwind (it wasn't really, but at the time it felt like it) then 2011 felt like the cottony silence that pours in from all directions once the storm has passed. In 2011 I returned home from Amanda's wedding to my job only to be laid off, wandered around senselessly like a wounded pack animal for a few months, volunteered for South by Southwest, took a road trip with Joanna up through the Ozarks to my parents' place in Canada, worked at a cafe in Long Island City for a few months, and then spent returned to Canada for the holidays. Now I'm kicking around, saying my goodbyes, waiting for the 13th when I fly east to my new home, for the next six months, somewhere in Sakartvelo.
When I write it out like that, it almost sounds like a lot happened. It's not true, though. Not that much happened. Maybe it's not that nothing happened, so much as nothing that inspired or changed or moved me happened. I was not moved this year, in fact, for most of it I felt like a calcified imposter left behind by my real self. I couldn't think fast enough, couldn't move decisively enough, could never seem to get enough air when I breathed. Does anyone else have entire years like this? Maybe, probably. Like I said, 2011: the year I could take or leave.
As for 2012, as long as we aren't all obliterated by the looming Mayan apocalypse, I expect good things.
HELLO.
Fisherman.
Ek'lesia. (Church.)
George W. Bush Street. Funny story this guy from Ottawa told me about Bush St., in Georgia they will add a vowel, usually the -ee sound to the end of nouns that end in consonants. So Bush becomes Bushi, which according to this guy means 'asshole' in qartuli. Bushi. Good stuff.
Evidence of my travels! (I had to hand these in to the people running my program, who I presume use them like receipts, but I wanted to save them for posterity, as well.)
There's what I think is an electricity tower that they have on a hill somewhere to the west (at least I think so, it's in the opposite direction from where I saw the sun rise on my first morning here ), and at night it lights up. And the lights change in patterns, like those strings of Christmas lights that turn off and on in sync with music. It's like some sort of strange, beautiful post-Soviet Eiffel Tower. In the second picture I tried to catch both the tower and one of several very old churches that can be seen in the mountains on the edge of town [to the right, the one that looks like it's being lit from below]. Maybe not a great picture but a very cool view to have from my sast'umro.
Rustaveli Avenue, all gussied up for the holidays, presumably.
Tavisupleba (Freedom) Square, the monument to St. George.
The classiest McDonald's of them all.
