#it was just pushkins daydreams

[starcrustduster]

the captain's daughter is the worst self-fanfiction i've ever read sorry

[swann-song]

daydreaming - part three

summary: pierre comes looking for you at the library. but meet cutes can only go so far, is it all in his head

in anticipation of pierre coming back to the library, you’d been putting in a bit more effort at work, always watching the door. when the library regulars saw you getting more dolled up and distracted, they’d arch their eyebrows at you and you tried to ignore it. however, as pierres book was now completely overdue, you’d resigned. he probably hasn’t even started it. you retired the cute dresses and went back into your trusted sweaters, mrs moreau thought you’d been dumped. a one sided crush definitely felt like it.

you had the entirety of science fiction sprawled across the floor, it was a dead afternoon, the book club had already left. the library had a hush that was best for these deep cleans you liked to do. you were making a pile of bordage books when you heard your name. pierre was standing over you with a polite smile, he was just outside your fort of books.

pierre looked ethereal, warm light was glowing around him. he had a white button up on, two buttons undone, his sleeves rolled up and you saw his toned arms. his hair was parted neatly in the middle and it fell around his face delicately. his blue eyes clear and big, were you hallucinating?

you stand to greet him and almost trip on a few books, you grab the shelves to steady yourself. pierre had reached out and steadied your elbows. "be careful" his voice hushed in the quite library. you were flushed, and quickly greet him, the small talk brief.

"do you enjoy the russian classics. pushkin's one of my favourite poets" you watched pierre’s brows scrunch together, he looked back at his hand, holding his book and nodded.

"ah well, i just needed something to help me fall asleep" you laughed, the sound of it grating your own ears in the silent library.

"do you need any help picking these up?” pierre offered. "oh.. no, it’s kinda my job, i’m reorganised and cleaning the shelves, it’s fine i enjoy it, therapeutic you know. what are you doing here?" you waffle on, your arms in the air and pierre looks like he’s trying not to laugh at you.

"you weren’t at your desk but don’t worry i won’t hold it against you, your very busy" pierre watched you climb out of the books, you smiled up at him a little lovesick. he followed you back to the desk and waited patiently for you to stand across from him.

"do you want another recommendation, if you need books to make you sleepy i know this dickens is very good for insomnia" you held up bleak house to him. you had your own motivations for urging him to get another book, customer service aside.

pierre shook his head. "that’s fine, just returning this please" you were trying hard to think of something to say, something to make him stay. your computer was lagging and you looked up at pierre, his eyes bore into you and you smiled awkwardly.

"are you busy tomorrow evening?” pierre asked. your face lit up, you couldn’t help it, your cheeks began to hurt, you were smiling at him too much. "no.. why?" you sat back in your chair, arms crossed and grinning at him, you began to swivel your chair side to side a little.

pierre’s eyes were crescents moons, he chuckled and rested his head in his palm. "le cheval blanc at 8. i can pick you up" you scribbled your number onto a bookmark and slid it towards him. you couldn’t stop smiling at him. "okay, sounds fun". pierre puts it in his pocket and winked at you. "see you then" he left you on cloud nine.

you looked around you and snapped out of it. your face felt hot and you were in shock. of all the things you expected, that was not it. you had a date with pierre chavanges, at the best restaurant in town and soon. a real lesson in patience.

daydreaming masterlist

[prxseodim]

WELCOME TO MY WRITING BLOG !

Good day, everyone! My name's Marika and I'm a twenty year old maladaptive daydreamer from Kyoto. Here I'll post my various SFW/NSFW fics for the fandoms I'll list below. My inbox is always open, and I'd encourage you guys to request as many fics as you wish, since I tend to be slightly inconsistent when I don't have anything to work on that has been specifically asked for. I am also open for chats, so if you have anything to ask about that isn't directly related to my works, please feel free to do so!

D4DJ GROOVY MIX - IDOLM@STER SHINY COLORS - IDOLM@STER CINDERELLA GIRLS - ENSEMBLE STARS - HATSUNE MIKU: COLORFUL STAGE - BANG DREAM: GIRLS BAND PARTY

GENSHIN IMPACT - NIER AUTOMATA - DANGANRONPA - UNDERTALE (please do not request any AUs for undertale!! i only write for the canon storyline and for the timeskip one.) - DELTARUNE - DOKI DOKI LITERATURE CLUB - SALLY FACE

WATASHI GA MOTENAI NO WA DOU KANGAETEMO OMAERA GA WARUI! / NO MATTER HOW I LOOK AT IT, IT'S YOUR GUYS' FAULT I'M NOT POPULAR! - BUNGO STRAY DOGS - DEMON SLAYER - A WHISKER AWAY - A SILENT VOICE - THE DISASTROUS LIFE OF SAIKI K / SAIKI K NO PSI NAN - HORIMIYA - MISS KOBAYASHI'S DRAGON MAID - YURU CAMP / LAID BACK CAMP

SFW : drabbles. relationship headcanons. platonic headcanons. family headcanons. imagines. sfw alphabet. personal character headcanons. hurt/comfort. angst. matchups. longer fics. smaus. playlists. oc x canon. you know the drill!

NSFW (NON-MINOR/AGED UP CHARACTERS ONLY) : smut headcanons. kink headcanons. drabbles. nsfw alphabet. playlists. oc x canon. once again, you know the drill!

SFW : polyamory relationships; i absolutely do NOT have anything against polyamorous/polysexual people, it just makes me a tad bit uncomfortable writing for being in a relationship with more than one person. cheating/infidelity.

NSFW : extremely hardcore sex headcanons (I have a personal preference for it being vanilla, so while I do write for LIGHT bdsm and degrading, I won't go further than that.). necrophilia. watersports. hardcore age play. objectum sexuality. tentacles. wax play. knife play. coprophilia. mysophilia. et cetera.

CHARACTERS : aimoto rinku, ohnaruto muni, kurumi shiratori, kasumi toyama, arisa ichigaya, keito hasumi, kuro kiryu, souma kanzaki, tomoyo mashiro, nazuna nito, mitsuru tenma, shu itsuki, tetora nagumo, makoto yuuki, nene kusanagi, aloy, raiden shogun, kamisato ayaka, kamisato ayato, baizhu, dainsleif, kyoko kirigiri, leon kuwata, mondo owada, kiyotaka ishimaru, chiaki nanami, ultimate impostor, teruteru hanamura, maki harukawa, miu iruma, ryoma hoshi, sayori, yuu naruse, yukichi fukuzawa, kyoka izumi, ryuro hirotsu, motojiro kaiji, sakunosuke oda, ogai mori, ango sakaguchi, everyone from the guild except for poe, bram stoker, ivan goncharov, alexander pushkin, mushitaro oguri, nathaniel hawthorne, agatha cristie, paul verlaine, saigiku jono, tetcho suehiro, tengen uzui, gyomei himejima, kyojuro rengoku, nezuko kamado, muzan kibutsuji, genya shinazugawa, sanemi shinazugawa, aoi kanzaki, enmu, akaza, douma, kyoko hori, riki nendo, kokomi teruhashi, kineshi hairo, metori saiko

you're a proshipper. you're racist, xenophobic, antisemintic, islamophobic. you use slurs you can't reclaim. you're lgbtphobic or transphobic. you're a fujoshi/fudanshi. you justify pedophilia, abusive relationships, incest of any kind. you're against any sort of non-binary identity.

♡I speak Japanese, English, and a little bit of Spanish! But this is an English blog, so please refrain from speaking Japanese to me if you also know the language.

I use she / it / they pronouns, and I'm bisexual.

I'm currently writing my own book! I also have a hyperactive imagination and tend to be able to come up with prompts and scenarios instantly if given even the slightest bit of inspiration.

My birthday is on the 28th of March, and I'm an Aries! My rising sign is Libra and my moon is Taurus.

My favorite genres are domestic noir and tragi-comedies.

I'm an absolute sucker for pancakes and cheesecakes, so that was one of my main if not instant reasons for kinning Akito :)

I own a siamese cat named Koyo!

I absolutely adore Studio Ghibli movies please talk to me about them

I'm sorry if this first post was a bit messy, I'm still figuring it out! I'm looking forward to writing for you all♡

[thequeerness]

Dark academia apps

Because though we all love books and 19th-20th century, we still live in 21st

Obvious: Duolingo, to learn Latin!

Poesie, which help discovering new poems

Endel, because with it you can finally focus and just for a little stop daydreaming

Or, perhaps, you are eager to some classical music — Idagio is for you

Forest, as studying is even better with it

Curio. New ideas astonish you, right? Well, this app is the way to get them even while commute

Some apps to buy second hand — eBay, Avito or anything in between

Bookey, because some books really don't worth reading them from the beginning to the end

Для русскоговорящих:

Arzamas, с которым можно учиться и эрудироваться незаметно

Pushkin, благодаря которому можно выучить стихи Пушкина, даже не уча их

Smartfiction, ведь проза хоть и не так прекрасна, как поэзия, но тоже достойна внимания

[ladyoftheoldcentury]

I’m certain Tatiana had Maladaptive Daydreaming 

(Tatiana from Onegin, Pushkin)

[chris-phd]

we need more RHOD content. [especially fyovan like ivan is smitten with this god complex boi and oguri and pushkin are like 'dude u got it bad' save me X'D ]

Hey Anon~ Sure thing ~ 

This man is so such a drug to me ~ awajdskhfsk he really is GOD! 

Ivan is playing with his hair like a schoolgirl in love while daydreaming how much his Master carrreeess about him ~ 

Puskin gets emotional at the pure love Ivan shares for Fyodor, even if that man is so cold with him ~

And Oguri is just….’it’s this for real? Is he always like this? ‘ he didn’t saw too much of Ivan acting around Dostoevsky-sama x’D

(arfskhfskgs I will draw more of them after the semi-hiatus ~ tbh I couldn’t resist on this one~ !!! Nice one Anon! )

[ecotone99]

[RO] A Distant Daydream

It is necessary for the sake of both narrative consistency and authorial vanity to start this recollection by explaining the exacting and tedious circumstances under which I rediscovered the muse for this little story.

One cold November night as I was wasting away amidst the gaudily floral décor of my University Reunion, surrounded by mundane faces and half-empty glasses, I saw her again. There is a long running cliché in the Romance genre where after the protagonist sees his old ingénue (or femme fatale depending on the story) after a long period of time has elapsed, he immediately drops everything to talk with her. Don Quixote was its victim when he clasped eyes on Dulcinea (del Toboso), great Achilles fell to it when he was with Patroclus again in the underworld, and that night I also fell to it. (Albeit with less literary significance)

The shadowy glitter of the tawdry lights illuminated the outline of her body against the faded backdrop of the Reunion. Nervously, I watched as we orbited the various old-acquaintances and older-ex-professors that stopped us to talk as we made our separate ways around the room, drawing closer until we were face to face. After the awkward introductions had been made, the meaningless pre-prepared platitudes voiced, and the small talk talked we got down to the serious business of remembrance. We started with the fates of friends, whose minor heartaches and tragedies fortified us to go deeper into the catacombs of memory. We compared our lives since University had finished and after a time it became clear to me that she had become an adult. We both had. Finally we arrived simply, on time and on budget, at our old relationship.

“At that time, if I am remembering things correctly, I was quite pleasantly in love with you.” I said. (The universal laws of literature dictates that Romance stories must always start with, in some shape or form, a declaration of love)

Her eyebrows rose as if in surprise before forming a perfectly indecipherable mask, “That must be I think the first time, or at least the first time I can remember, when you said you were in love with me. And it’s now when we’re both married!”

“Oh well maybe if I had said it more we’d still be together.” I said, “Good thing I didn’t!” (Slight awkward pause for comedic timing on her part then cue laughter.)

The flow of the conversation moved on to more extravagant and ostentatious reminiscences and by the end of it, it was clear to me that any dregs of past attraction that I had been savoring had long since been drained by her. Nevertheless, I want to capture in frozen prose the remnants of my past emotion, to prevent it as long as possible from dissipating like so much barren smoke amidst the fogs of time. Now, having described both my muse and my intentions there is little left to do except begin; a task that I am both excited and nervous about.

***************

In literature’s best beginnings the author (after a sufficient amount of pre-amble) starts by describing a meeting between two characters. As I was studying literature at that time I might endeavor to reproduce the same effect now, having done the pre-amble above I can get right to it. In this story, I (playing the “Noble Byronic Hero”) was sitting bored and alone amidst a sea of empty chairs and chattering people waiting for the lecturer to arrive. Instead of opening my workbook and preparing for the copious amount of notes that are required for true learning to be achieved, I was staring idly out the window at the assorted people walking between classes.

The lecturer entered the auditorium like he was about to receive an award and was greeted with a heavy silence underlined by the whispers of continued conversation. He made a small throat clearing bark while he was adjusting the lectern’s positioning and the silence became total.

He began reading from a loose collection of pre-prepared notes, speaking in a unique blend of French, Russian, and English accents, “Russian Literature as a notion, an immediate idea, this notion in the minds of non-Russians is generally limited to the awareness of Russia’s having produced half a dozen great masters of prose between the middle of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth…”

Despite the mesmerizing rhythm that the trilingual blend lent to his speech I (or the arrogant little shit I was) soon lost interest in the subject, having already become familiar with the half dozen great masters over the break. After nearly 2 hours of quite condescension on my part the lecture concluded and those students who had scheduled tutorials afterwards gathered around the lecturer while the others left. We were dissected into groups then turned outside armed with some tedious readings and pressing assignments. My group consisted of me (smug and self-satisfied), her (bored and busy), and one of her friends (forgettable and not really part of the story).

A straightforward and bland conversation was struck up as we debated the best approach to our shared homework. In protest of the tedious nature of the discussion, and since I was feeling somewhat bashful in new company, I spent most of my time trying to come up with the opposite answer to any question asked. (Sample: What is something that you are thankful for in modern society? Clean drinking water. Cue laughter.)

“Come on man, take this seriously. There’s no point if you’re just sitting there taking the piss,” her friend said.

“Fine, what’s the next question?” I asked.

“It says here to outline the role that the various cultural, social, and theological influences have played on the development of Russian literature throughout the 19’Th century,” she said.

“Alright, I trust that we are all aware of the cultural and social influence that my boy Pushkin has had?” I said. “By the way have either of you read Eugene Onegin? It’s fucking good.”

“Of course I’m aware of Pushkin and I’ve read Eugene Onegin,” exclaimed her friend.

“What self-respecting person who when studying Russian literature doesn’t read Pushkin?” she said. “My only regret is that I couldn’t read it in Russian. I’m confident that what makes his style so beautiful is lost in translations.”

As I continued to expound my “unique” theories about Pushkin and his influence on literature my reservations began to drop away and soon we started having a real conversation. I’ll spare you the details I was in my twenties my comments weren’t profound. However, after I finished talking the discussion moved away from the assigned work and we started to get to know each other as we told jokes, made fun of classmates, talked about exams etc.

Soon I discovered that I shared most of my classes with her and we began walking together on the way between them. I watched as our relationship grew in the broken time between lecture and tutorials and like any functionally hormonal teenager as soon as we started to spend any regular amount of time I became quite enamored with her. We smoked cigarettes outside in the sun, we worked on essays together in dusty library halls, and I told lots of bad jokes. I savored every moment that we were together and when we weren’t I was thinking about ways to make her laugh.

One bright evening as we were returning from a particularly trite lecture delivered by a particularly trite lecturer we stopped at a University Bar in order to do the only thing that people who go to University Bars do, forget the lecture that they just sat through. We sat down in a corner booth drinks in hand, there was some god-awful student band hammering out a cover of For Whom the Bell Tolls (a classic bar anthem), but we ignored them.

I started throwing out a bunch of half-baked observations and I noted that despite not being drunk my voice came out in a sort of slurred mutter, “Oh no, your other friend in literature is definitely at least a little bit gay. He has the accent. It’s a peculiar phenomenon I’ve noted, when you’re gay you get assigned a new accent.”

“Shut up! He is not!” she said. (Author’s Note: the friend in question came out earlier this year. A bit late but vindication! After 20 years I told you so!)

Reflectively, leaning back like an elder statesman confronted by a new scandal, in a slow voice I muttered, “If he was, I’d hit that.”

“Oh my god!” She laughed.

The conversation continued in a teasing jocular style for the rest of the evening. The band changed and instead of Metallica we were treated to Billy Joel. Time (and by proportion drinks) sped away and soon it was closing time. We ended up taking a cab back to her apartment and under a shared fantasy became lovers. I shall not describe with sensual derision or racy brags the details of our first night together that would altogether cheapen it; I shall keep it locked privately inside an ever receding tomb of memory.

***************

How is it I can describe, with so short a story, the thousand moments and reveries that make up a relationship? Should I describe our first date? How after a while we spent every waking moment in each other’s company? Perhaps I could keep using rhetorical questions as a device to further a floundering paragraph while I try and think? I could describe the general contentedness that fell over me, I could even spend the next few pages describing the time we spent laughing over nothing. But I think that, that description would ultimately be meaningless, cheapening the experience, and reducing the emotions I felt to mere words on a page to be read and forgotten. That time has become in my mind like a fine fabric and pulling at the stands to recall a few parting moments might cause the whole thing to unravel. Perhaps I’m wrong, I don’t know, but I feel any such descriptions would make her seem less real, just a nameless character in the dark who when described is never seen again. I’m going to move forward to the conclusion as I could well be rid of those memories but I’ll take with me the knowledge of what I felt.

After the initial glow of our relationship faded what remained solidified into a concrete routine, a useful habit that slowly suffocated. We would meet in class to ingest the readily forgettable inanity of the lectures, then move onto a quick lunch, and after sneaking cigarettes outside we went back to the classroom to wait for the time we could retire to an apartment somewhere and be alone. This rapidly became unbearable, that magic intimacy I had felt during our first night together was gone, and I began to fantasize about ways to escape. I spoke to some friends who had more experience in these matters than I did and they convinced me that the best course of action would be to come clean and break things off like a mature adult, which was what I did.

I was lounging on a bench thinking about the little speech I had prepared and listening to her complain about some essay that we were meant to be working on. Amber rays of light where broken between the trees, inciting warm shadows to drift across the park, and causing her eyes to look even more like gleaming gemstones. Eventually she ran out of things to say and the moment stretched out awkwardly as I worked up the courage to speak. I started talking about our relationship and from my tone it would have been clear to anyone listening what I was about to say. Nevertheless, I continued my way through my muddled thoughts until the final inevitable words fell with all the weight and severity of a Judge’s gavel. After I had finished she got up and left leaving me alone with my reflections.

We continued to see each other throughout the last few weeks of the semester but the connection that had existed between us was gone. After the course ended we agreed to schedule next year’s classes at different times so that we wouldn’t be together. Occasionally I would see her walking through the campus, sometimes with friends sometimes alone, and after a while we stopped even acknowledging each other becoming two strangers passing each other in an empty corridor.

***************

I left the reunion and sped off into the darkness. I said goodbye to her, again, for perhaps the last time and watched as she walked away with her husband. Now that I have emptied my emotions out onto these pages I am already starting to think clearly again; the tarlike memories that have been circulating inside my chest have been scooped out, properly analysed, and the findings reproduced here in print. In a way I feel like I have relived an entire chapter of my life and as a consequence my muse has lost the nostalgic charm that made this project seem so appealing in the first place. In the morning I am going to incinerate this manuscript and watch the ash dance on the wind like so much fiery decay, as these memories slip quietly away.

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[tinyshe]

Garden Report 19.08.25

I can feel Autumn in the air. It has a different smell. The light is different. The energy is different. I feel more contemplative. This is the time that calls for some LOTR  or Pushkin in the early evenings. Autumn angst. Squirreling instincts. Daydreams. Star gazing. Moon watching.

Harvesting loads of elderberries -- so many, I don’t know what I am going to do with them. Maybe time to get out the mehu liisa, use up the gravenstein apples that need processing and juice with the elderberry for the freezer/ hot bottle bath. Could do a liquor but we just don’t use that much alcohol. We still have jars of blueberries in brandy from last year.

Planted my green bean starts and put in willow hoops. They aren’t really willow wood but plum and pear. I save the bigger pieces like some people use bamboo stakes -- just using/repurposing what I have. These are from last season so no worries about the plum growing. Need to move the wood pile that we use for summer/autumn evenings fires (burn pit/dish) so we can start on the summer house as soon as the greenhouse closet is completed. I have a little wood burner stove I would like to install in the summer house.

The pea starts were munched just as they started to break soil. The lingon berry starts are looking fine. Next year should be a fine crop if I can get them in the ground so they can spread out.

Started to put in hoops over the grow boxes but decided I wanted something bright. O! How I love spray paint >;) especially now they have so many that take to plastic (my large grow hoops are just pvc cut to length and bent across).  I am still vacillating though between the ‘hammered bronze’ or fuchsia or turquoise or maybe a red … maybe I should let my collection of spray paint dictate the colours. Or maybe just leave them white … they would need to be hung to spray, etc etc work-work-work.

Lots of little zucs. We snap them up once they are the length of the hand. The golden cherry plum tom is misery giving us one fruit every two days -- like some auntie not wanting to spoil the child but we can see what there is while waiting and grow impatient. Few blackberries off the bramble hedges. More scratches and pricks than fruit.

Uncovered some wrought iron garden art and ceramic pieces I forgot I had. Things had grown so wild and I had forgotten -- neither are hard to do in the garden! Now, to move or stay. Sometimes I envy those ancient gardens where nothing moves, always the same except the seasons.

[topmixtrends]

JOURNEY INTO the Mind’s Eye by Lesley Blanch (1904–2007) was first published 50 years ago. It begins with “the Traveller,” an unnamed family friend dressed in a fur-lined overcoat, who repeatedly breezes into young Blanch’s nursery, proffering gifts: a silver cigarette case from the Caucasus, a chunk of malachite, then, another time, a Kazakh fox-skin cap, all the while recounting legendary Russian tales of Ilya Mourametz, the heroic bogatyr (a kind of Slavic knight), and Konyiok Gorbunok, the little humpbacked horse.

It is a curious, rambling travel book. Within its pages we go to Paris and Siberia, but really it is a love story and, as the title suggests, an internal voyage into the imagination. The Traveller ignites in Blanch a deep and lifelong love for Russia, especially the early 19th-century Russia of Alexander Pushkin, which becomes a giant metaphor for her adult appetites, all pursued with a “drug addict’s intensity.”

Blanch begins writing love letters to the Traveller as a schoolgirl. Then, aged 17, she is seduced by him on the Dijon Express (although in her mind she pretends it is the Trans-Siberian). Later he disappears, and she searches for him frantically.

On publication in 1968, one reviewer dismissed this glamorous, oddball tale as “pomegranate prose.” But given Blanch’s fondness for the jewel-like fruit — and for the “moon-faced and wasp-waisted” dancing girls who juggled them in harems — I like to think she didn’t take offense at this kiss-off. After all, the Traveller had told her that within every pomegranate is “one seed from Eden.”

Romantic and whimsical, yes, but Blanch was no starry-eyed daydreamer. Running just below the surface of her glossy writing is a good deal of common sense and a brazen appetite. Despite working as features editor at British Vogue, she had a strong dislike of killjoy dieticians and freely indulged her “faiblesse” for suet puddings. Aged 99, she claimed that she was still capable of devouring “a Christmas pudding at midnight.”

Journey into the Mind’s Eye, which casually melds fact and fiction, was the first Lesley Blanch book I read, and it left me craving more of everything she had to offer — unabashed exoticism, humor, and lively, pomegranate-laden prose. It was to her food writing, her sketchbooks of culinary adventuring, that I turned to next. These books travel paths equally luscious to the one covered in Journey into the Mind’s Eye, because just as Blanch was a superior traveler, she was also a superior eater. “Travelling widely and eating wildly” was her motto.

Whether in Mexico or Egypt, the Balkans or Yemen, mealtimes were the lifeblood — and often the goals — of her adventures: food was first culture, then code, and, finally, trophy. Moveable feasts. The ultimate mementos.

Her first culinary travelogue, Round the World in Eighty Dishes, was published in 1956, coming out two years after the end of Britain’s postwar rationing. It was the era of Queen Elizabeth II’s Coronation and the Suez Crisis. Blanch’s exuberant journeying to such faraway shores, rendered in verbal Technicolor, would have seemed impossible to most. She describes this book, seductively and wonderfully, as her “kitchen-window peepshow.” Like two other great female writer-cooks of the same epoch, Patience Gray (1917–2005) and M. F. K. Fisher (1908–1992), Blanch had an instantly recognizable voice. She was also refreshingly funny and frank, caring less for accurate recipes. “Timidity and prejudice should have no space in the kitchen,” she wrote. How good to hear. How Lesley.

A third of the way into Round the World in Eighty Dishes, Blanch unleashes some particularly honeyed prose for paska, a Russian Easter bread that is, she assures us, “delicious at any time.” In the lengthy introduction above the method, we are taken to Russian Easter services in Nice, Copenhagen, and “even Los Angeles,” but the memory most vividly recounted is in the 8th arrondissement of Paris, at the Russian church on the Rue Daru (that is, the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral). There, she recalls, she was:

[S]o carried away that I set fire to myself with the candle I was carrying, and was rescued by a dashing-looking stranger who beat out the flames, and later, taught me my Russian alphabet in icing sugar letters, for he was an émigré who said he’d been a head pastry-cook at the Winter Palace.

Even the most prolific collector of cookbooks would be hard-pressed to find a recipe introduction that could compete with the exoticism of that anecdote.

The opener of From Wilder Shores: The Tables of my Travels (1989), her second food book, begins with a dedication “to my Digestion which has nobly supported so many surprises, trials and unwise indulgences throughout our long years of travel together.”

In Arabia, coffee is drunk from egg-cup-sized finjans, sugared heavily during festivities but unsweetened during mourning periods, “bitter as grief.” In the Balkans, she notes how pure water collected from certain sources and wells is coveted as if it were vintage wine. In Bavaria, driving back from a Wagner festival, drunk on sound and revelry, she considers the diet of mad old King Ludwig, who would eat breakfast at sunset. She also discovers a dish as “rich as Wagner’s music.” It is “Cheese Muff,” and she provides the reader with a recipe — little more than 100 grams of cheddar, butter, breadcrumbs, and eggs — as well as with the suggestion to serve it with dry biscuits and coffee, as “the Muff is on the heavy side.”

In the chapter “Meals on Wheels,” we find Blanch focusing not on “trolleys carrying hot food to the needy” (heaven forbid) but rather on the “whirring and clash of steel on steel — the wheels of express trains hurtling powerfully across limitless tracks.” To read her descriptions of restaurant cars belonging to bygone eras is to weep into your concourse-bought sandwich and Styrofoam cup of coffee. Here, naturally, Blanch recalls her Trans-Siberian train journey, where five days on-board meant “round the clock relays” of stews, fish soup, caviar, black bread, vodka, and Caucasian champagne, kept going, of course, by endless cups of tea from the gurgling samovar. When I undertook that same journey, two years ago, there was vodka, and, of course, tea, but mainly there was greasy, thin solyanka served in a somewhat glum on-board cafe with red faux-leather chairs.

Blanch remembers that when the “satiny expanses” of Lake Baikal came into view, the dining car collectively sprung to their feet to toast the “Holy Sea.” I too paused there, in the depths of winter, to walk across the lake’s frozen surface — but my abiding memory is of that evening, back in the overheated carriage, when the air hummed with the pungent fishy smell of smoked omul carried on-board by almost all of my fellow passengers. Blanch tackles omul in a later chapter of From Wilder Shores, entitled “Russian Traditional”: “Omul is so good that it requires no fancy treatment.” I beg to differ, but that is the situation affecting taste and memory — of course omul is good served differently. As to alcohol, only Armenian brandy seems capable of slaying her. “My hang-over lasted two days and left me in a state of Dostoievskian repentance,” she wrote of it.

I like the fact that even today, in Odessa, at its spectacularly baroque opera house on the Black Sea, one can obtain the same snack between acts that Blanch purchased in Moscow in the early 1960s, namely, “a thick square of white bread with a dollop of caviar on top.” As she rightly says: “Those theatre snacks […] were easy to handle, sustaining, and added a festive touch.”

Back home, or “en poste” with her diplomat-novelist husband, Romain Gary, Blanch travels in her kitchen. “Sometimes I make manti/pilmeny and munch lovingly, recalling both the Afghan wastes, and my journey across Siberia.” Although the more sensitive reader might want to forgo the kicker at the end of the recipe: “In Turkestan the sauce was a rather rank goat cheese, thinned down.” But then, Blanch’s were “cookbooks” unrestricted by their recipes. She could write about mealtimes, food, and eating in a manner so luxurious that the reader need not attempt the recipes at all.

Blanch understood the values attached to cuisine as national identity, knew that behind each dish lay “centuries of history, travel, exploration and adventure.” She also understood that where tourism heavily treads it eclipses culture in its path. For her, it was in the kitchen, and at the family table, where traditions were cherished and fiercely protected.

In re-creating Afghan, Uzbek, and Moroccan dishes — national cuisines so à la mode in the West today — in her books and in her kitchen, Blanch unintentionally proved that she was ahead of the curve. And she offers fitting substitutes for our most faddish of food trends, too. Rather than “smashed avocado toast,” try Blanch’s “Avocado Summer Soup,” mashed with lemon (rather than lime), whipped with yoghurt, stirred through with a “breakfast cup” (no idea) of water, and then chilled over night. Delicious.

This summer, NYRB Classics has rereleased Journey into the Mind’s Eye in paperback, with an introduction by the author’s goddaughter, Georgia de Chamberet. If only a publisher would refresh Blanch’s culinary books and kickstart a revival of her food writing. Her culinary prose is so enjoyable and so unique that it cries out to be introduced to new generations of readers. Blanch believed, absolutely, in the power of an open mind and a good appetite. How well she applied this adage to all aspects of her long, globetrotting life, and what useful advice it still is to us today, wherever we choose to travel.

¤

Caroline Eden is a UK-based writer contributing to the Guardian, BBC Radio 4, and The Telegraph. She is the author of Samarkand: Recipes and Stories from Central Asia and the Caucasus and the forthcoming Black Sea.

¤

Banner image by Michael Himbeault.

The post A Kitchen Window Peepshow: Eating Wildly and Traveling Widely with Lesley Blanch appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

from Los Angeles Review of Books https://ift.tt/2AFisJN

[ageofwrathrpg]

Name: Wonda Lazlovna Repina Age: 35 Ability: Intangibility Faction: CITIZEN as a LAWYER Faceclaim: Elodie Yung Availability: OPEN

THE STORY || CW: Alcohol, Divorce, Transphobia

Before Wonda had the chance to be a child, she was an academic. In her earliest years, she was already studying as quickly as the wheels in her underdeveloped brain could turn. With the same determination as the alphabet, Wonda studied her father’s words – all bitter and ugly like the omnipresent stench of alcohol on his tongue. She studied the perpetual furrow in her mother’s brow, which aged her features and publicized her grief. She didn’t have to explain to Wonda what the word ‘divorce’ meant, nor did she have to explain the why. When her parents split, Wonda understood it wasn’t the ‘right’ option; it was the only one. Not even a year passed before her mother began dating a new man, married him, and had a child with him. Considering their love miraculous was a grand overstatement that everyone seemed to be making aside from Wonda, who recognized it for what it was: desperation born of loneliness. Although she hesitated to revel in her mother’s new relationship, loving her new sibling was immediate and inevitable. Yuri was their name, and since the very beginning, they held Wonda’s heart in their tiny palm.

Together, Wonda and Yuri took the world by storm. They rebelled against bedtime. They stole biscuits from the kitchen. They played along to their parents’ strict conservatism, but secretly made faces at one another in the church pews. In their awkward adolescence, Wonda was the first person Yuri came out to as genderfluid. Her love for them never faltered, and she protected them from their classmates’ intolerance with maternal ferocity. She was completely devoted to her sibling. Only when she left for university did she part from Yuri’s side. And the apocalypse that followed hardly came as a surprise.

Sudden and sharp, Yuri vanished. To see her young sibling’s face on missing person signs was the most surreal and devastating experience of Wonda’s life. Worse than death was the not-knowing. Were they safe? Were they hurt? Her parents threatened to disown her if she abandoned her studies to search for Yuri. And so Wonda worked. She read her school books until her eyes burned. She stuffed her brain with information until it threatened to overflow. Studying law became her escapism. There was something attractive about rules separating man from monster, about carving optimism out of a badness. When she attended law school, she graduated at the top of her class and was immediately offered positions in firms across Russia. Everywhere but Moscow, where she was born, raised, and where she knew the answer to Yuri’s location was somewhere hidden. She begrudgingly accepted a position in Samara, where she was recognized for her excellence as a lawyer and was offered client after client. She officially made a name for herself when she successfully defended the innocence of a war criminal at 30-years old. Having garnered enough prestige, she relocated herself to Moscow by founding her own law firm. For 6 years, she’s been working there – defending her clients with the same ferocity that she defended Yuri – and she’s been scouring news articles and the streets for any clue to her sibling’s location.

THE CHARACTER

Wonda daydreams of another world where order prevails and pain is imprisoned. She knows it’s not realistic, but that doesn’t stop her hopefulness. Hope is all she has. Her friends and family have all instructed her to stop searching for Yuri. But Wonda can’t bring herself to give up; defeat was never her style. Wonda lives her life with unashamed confidence, and perennial tenacity. She loves what she does and she knows she’s good at it. When given a case, Wonda spends hours inventing intelligent one-liners and toiling over logistics. She takes great pride in fixing the lives of strangers. She puts them back together to disguise her own damage.

CONNECTIONS

Yuri Lazlovich Repin - It goes without saying, but losing Yuri was like slitting a throat. Just as fast. Just as finite. There are times that Wonda doesn’t ache so badly; these are the days where she feels Yuri’s presence at the nape of her neck, whispering encouragement, spurring her on. But there are also times that Wonda’s yearning is as large as the world. These times, she can either drown in work, alcohol, or sorrow.

Abram Petrovche Sharapov - When she moved back to Moscow, she discovered an up-and-coming Kafe Pushkin, which she visited out of curiosity, then began to frequent daily. 5 years later, and it’s still her favorite cafe, and Abram’s her favorite barista. Each time she visits, they greet her with a warm smile and confirms with a subtle nod that she wants her regular order: a cardamom coffee with extra cinnamon. Sometimes if she looks particularly stressed, Abram will throw in a generous slab of chocolate cake free of charge.  

Foma Alexandrovich Zharkov//Project M - More recently, Foma started becoming a popular client at Pushkin’s. It didn’t take long before – in his blindness – he accidentally joined her at a table. She introduced herself, and he reciprocated and apologized for his obliviousness. Neither of them were particularly busy, so they sat in each other’s company and became quick friends. Now whenever she visits Pushkin’s, she looks for Foma and joins him if he’s present.

Erik 'Prizrak' Volkhovovich Nechayev - She knew she was renowned in Samara for her prowess as a lawyer, but was unaware that her fame extended as far as Moscow. She came with the assumption that she would be sacrificing her fame for the location, but her notoriety was more universal than she’d anticipated and Erik was the final proof. Within the first week of her relocation, he contacted her and offered any sum of money to know that she would represent him when needed. His glaring use of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’ perturbed her, but she accepted in the reassurance that she would be guaranteed business in Moscow.

Rashid Javed Bashir - It was a bad night and she was exhausted. Rashid was helping a woman cross the street and against herself, Wonda became furious. Her delirious mind reasoned that while people like Yuri were missing, police officers were busy helping women across streets – like boy scouts! She resolved immediately that she hated Rashid, and has ever since. Sometimes she sees him in public and can’t help but to scowl.

[[ More Connections ]]

ETC

In law, Wonda was taught that history repeats itself and that it’s her duty to memorize the patterns. Every breath of information is considered equally important, and the extreme emphasis on documentation spurred her obsession with journals. She has dozens scattered around her home brimming with photographs, quotes, and musings.  

She’s fluent in Latin.  

Despite the fact that she dislikes her father and he doesn’t keep in touch, Wonda is still interested in her Cambodian roots. She has a black krama in Bokator, which she learned for self-defense and a means to study her culture.

Wonda’s work has made her quite wealthy, but you wouldn’t guess it by looking at her. She opts for simple clothes and a humble standard of living. She sees no need for fancy furniture.

She has terrible vision and needs glasses or contact lenses to see 5 feet in front of her.