vasilinaorlova
Inconsolable Narrative
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Vasilina Orlova / Василина Орлова buy my books: Pale Automaton: coming soon Holy Robots: https://www.amazon.com/Holy-Robots-Vasilina-Orlova/dp/0991600924/ Contemporary Bestiary: http://www.amazon.com/Contemporary-Bestiary-Vasilina-Orlova/dp/0991600908/
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vasilinaorlova · 2 days ago
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It looks like I will be able to finish my novel after all. After I finish my novel, I'd like to solicit feedback from friends. If you're open to reading my novel for me, let me know.
P.S. The photo is Google Photos' automatic edit of my selfie. They called it "pop up." 😆 I'm wearing a costume here, okay?
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vasilinaorlova · 6 days ago
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I got around to editing and publishing an ethnographic essay on Siberian ruins, memory, history, nodding to the Soviet ruins' contribution to the Russian war, cultural history of ruins--things that occupied me during my Siberian travels.
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vasilinaorlova · 10 days ago
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From the Novel Inconsolable Narrative
Another excerpt from my endless novel that would probably not going to be completed--and an edit by an AI. The passage is written way before the full-blown Russian invasion of Ukraine; everything written should be reevaluated now in the light of this tectonic event. Obviously, today it is not possible to delve into minutiae of living a life as a Russian in America without feeling all sorts of feelings, such as shame, annoyance, exasperation, frustration, anger, and so on. I have a chapter on the time of the invasion, on the way the main character lived through its first months and years--thousands of miles away from the events. I am actually rewriting my whole novel in the light of these chains of events, and this is one of the reasons I believe I won't be able to finish my writing project. My entire line of writing ran into the ground with the Russian invasion, and that is the least of the losses that we can think about. I am afraid I won't ever recover my body of writings, and that is fine. Greater oeuvres collapsed into nonexistence with historic events.
The novel is about the main character who I wrote from myself, in a fictionalized manner, naturally--you could not write anything about yourself without it immediately becoming fiction. You could call it autofiction. I am offering you to read the excerpt first and then the edit of the AI that I asked to mimic Proustian style--for fun. I am not actually trying to rewrite my novel in a Proustian fashion, even if it were possible. But I thought the edit was hilarious.
Original: "We continued playing tennis. Tennis is a game that has a lot of sky in it. You throw a bright-yellow ball in the sky and then hit it—it is called 'the serve.' You high-five the ball above the net—it is called 'valley.' The tennis school had a moving schedule, and the lessons of beginners every time had a new coach. There were three or four coaches in total. All sturdily built and not tall, they were like perfect representation of a certain part of the American culture. One was a boy of 19 who attended college and majored in physics. The second was a tanned man in bright blue sunglasses. The third was a smiling girl who just arrived to Austin from Minneapolis three months ago. That we were Russians seemingly brought her untold joy because one of her friends was Russian. We politely expressed our pleasure upon hearing this. Russian friend was better than a Russian ex-husband. I will take the Russian friend any day of the week over other Russian-American mundane connections."
Proustian edit: "We continued, as we always did, to play tennis. A game so suffused with the vastness of sky, where each movement seemed an attempt to reach beyond the limits of the earth, where the very air seemed to throb with the weight of potential. The bright yellow ball—its hue so sharp against the heavens—rose, caught momentarily in the infinite blue, before being struck with a clean precision. It was called the "serve," but perhaps it could have been called a prayer, flung into the universe with an unspoken wish that it might return with equal grace.
And when it did return, our hands meeting it with the full force of our intention, high above the net, that glorious moment when we clapped the ball with an almost playful exuberance—ah, the "valley"—where the world for a fraction of a second shrank to the size of that perfect arc between sky and earth.
The tennis school had a fluidity to its schedule, a rhythm that fluctuated with the ebb and flow of beginners, always with a new coach appearing like some fresh page in a book that I was hesitant to turn. There were three or four of them, all sturdy, compact figures whose physicality—neither tall nor imposing—seemed a direct reflection of a certain American ideal. An ideal, perhaps, that balanced strength with restraint. One was a boy of nineteen, earnest, his youthful face already edged with the seriousness of physics, his mind wrapped in theories and equations as if they might somehow explain the infinite mysteries of the game. The second was a man, darkly tanned and wearing blue sunglasses that spoke of the sun’s lingering touch, as if his eyes, behind the darkened glass, were perpetually searching for something beyond the visible.
Then there was the girl, her smile wide, as though it had just emerged from a distant memory, unbidden but sincere. She had arrived three months ago from Minneapolis, and in the brief exchanges we shared, I could see how the presence of our Russianness—a fact so seemingly mundane to us—stirred something unspoken within her. She beamed at us as though we were the bearers of some secret joy, and with her words, delicate and measured, there was an aura of connection, of a bond that was not ours but could be. Perhaps, too, it was because of her own Russian friend—a relic of a past life she seemed eager to preserve.
We nodded in acknowledgment of her enthusiasm, though something in the way she spoke of this "Russian friend" felt like an offering, a delicate balance between the discomfort of past relationships and the promise of future ones. "A Russian friend," she had said with an almost wistful tone, the way people speak of things they’ve lost and yet still cherish, like an old, frayed letter tucked away in a drawer. I, too, was acquainted with such contradictions. A Russian friend, I thought, was indeed preferable to a Russian ex-husband. But these were the small negotiations that one makes in the foreign land of the present, where what we bring with us—our old world—is sometimes lighter, sometimes heavier, than we care to admit."
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vasilinaorlova · 11 days ago
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My personal achievements in 2024 are, 100 direct hours as a mental health counselor in training, maintaining 4.0 GPA, and making a ground for job prospects in 2025 by applying to a bunch of opportunities and obtaining favorable responses.
In 2025, I am hoping to finish my master's, going through Internship I and II and obtaining more direct hours, completing my EMDR training, and receiving a limited permit as an LMHC or becoming as associate as an LPC; we'll see what's more feasible and promises better prospects. I could also pass my NCE exam in 2025 if I become an LPC Associate first. I'll have an opportunity to open my private practice as a psychotherapist in Texas in 2025, but I don't know if I am going to use this opportunity.
2024 was good for me, and 2025 is promising to be even more interesting. I'm hoping to be useful to my communities with the skills I have already learned and set myself to learn in treating trauma.
I'm also hoping to see Ukraine enduring through 2025 with great success and that the U.S. will continue supporting Ukraine. Let's hope 2025 will see more justice and prosperity than 2024. The past three years have been extremely traumatic, but I have not lost my belief in humanity. Happy New Year!
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vasilinaorlova · 17 days ago
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Excerpt from My Novel Inconsolable Narrative
I continue being blown away by Chat GPT editing skills. Let me show you an excerpt from my novel (that I currently call Inconsolable Narrative, which is also the title of my many-year blog on Tumblr). The novel is very raw and needs endless revising, but, because the draft is also a lot of pages, and they keep multiplying as I keep editing. I might never finish revising my novel. And, therefore, I am not under any serious obligation to keep the text to myself up the point when I polish it, amirite (which will likely never come)?
The content of the post below:
1. The excerpt from my novel (pages 247-251 in my current file); 2. ChatGPT summary; 3. Improvements that ChatGPT suggests (that painstakingly resemble my own instructions to myself written earlier ("show don't tell") and also my human research advisor (Craig loved to write "segue!" in pencil on the margins of raw pages that I kept bringing him--he taught me so much!).
Share my admiration of ChatGPT--the best reader and critic that we hoped we would have and finally do have, a product of human genius.
1. My Excerpt
Nevertheless, even our surface-level conversations with my therapist ease my inner tensions a little bit. I go for walks twice a day. Zilker Park of Austin is the fanciest place. Zilker always reminded me of Hyde Park. Like Barton Springs, Zilker also looks like a series of French impressionist paintings: Monet, Renoir, Degas, Sezan, Cézanne. From impressionists, Zilker Park derived colorful shadows and well-dressed citizens in summer attire. Zilker Park reminds me of Gorky Park in Moscow, too. The picnics, the weddings, the sunbathers, the kayakers, pedestrians in towels and hats: they all speak to me about the nuclear sunrise, a beautiful day, a utopian nowhere—whatever it all means, I could barely know myself—but walking Zilker Park in the COVID-19 pandemic is an exercise of suffocation for me (yet again).
The park is full of people wearing no masks and seemingly taking no pandemic precautions, except for when they observe what is now called “social distancing”—being on a distance of six feet or more from others. Six feet is a distance that is considered safe. Speaking to people, indeed interacting with them in any way, for me, is impossible, as if an invisible wall divides me from them, or, rather, me from them. Apparently, the invisible walls exist only around me; the walls do not divide them from each other. I wonder what it is that divides me from others, exactly? Is it my strangeness? Emigration? Pandemic? My selective social mutism? Still, seeing people walking, talking, playing with their dogs, or sitting in shadows on grass is refreshing. And one of the dogs—a red doggo with amber eyes—sticks her wet nose into the palms of strangers, and briefly, into my palms, too, as if accepting me into the circle of the living. A fleeting multispecies encounter amounts to an experience of socialization—or communication—for the day. I am within a system of traces of my previous walks. I created labyrinths of walking in Austin, even though in the straightforward plannings of the American cities, no labyrinths are possible. Streets and avenues cross each other at a ninety degrees angles. Not much of a labyrinth is possible to create in a grid of such streets. I recollect my friend Alexey from a long time ago, who once described a fox in the zoo to me. The fox in the zoo created an elaborate maze for itself, a system of entrances and exits in a tiny space of its cage. The fox did not have any space but managed to create an elaborate maze of the den.
The sense of being separated from others as if from the glass is familiar from the reflections of other immigrants. I wonder if my otherness is the reason I feel like I am isolated from others. What if otherness is more so of a divide than the regime of self-isolation in the pandemic? I wonder if I am to feel the same self-isolation in Russia. When I am old, I might return, I am thinking. (The full-blown war has not yet begun; pandemic is still unfolding). I think about becoming older. Imagine that I am not going to age in a retirement home. Provided I am lucky, and my son would care about me enough to place me in a retirement home. Or, if I am in Russia, Russia has state-sponsored retirement homes with very modest style of living. I am assuming people do not live there for a very long time; not with those budgets. I will return to Russia. I will be wiping the floor with a big dirty cloth, while grumbling non-stop, “They walk and walk and walk here” [“Khodiat tut vsiakie”]. If you see an old woman mopping the floor and grumbling at everybody who passes he, know that this is me.
The days were peppered with the usual annoyances and awkward interactions with others. Oleg picked envelopes from the post box. He frequently went to check the post box. He had a habit of checking the post, almost a compulsion. Oleg’s stopping to check the box whenever we went anywhere for a walk annoyed me. He went to collect the mail far more often than was necessary. He dealt with the pandemic in his own way. I waited for Oleg for several minutes. A bunch of Texas cowboy boots and shoes were scattered near the door at the first floor. Somebody took their stuff out to air or something. I took a picture as the boots were scattered beautifully, I thought; I enjoyed the composition—or maybe I was so utterly bored by the repeated walks in the flourishing Austin that a bunch of shoes of the neighbors looked like an event in the middle of the day.
A man of about thirty, the neighbor, opened the door and told me that he was about to clean the passage. He will remove those shoes. I was ashamed of photographing the shoes and him evidently thinking that I was going to complain to a landlord about the shoes. I assured him as best I could that having the shoes there was okay and I simply liked the composition. I avoided to mention the landlord, to be precise, a landlady. The landlady, we speculated, lived in one of the apartments of the apartment complex. She had a penchant of tending to flowers—or so we assumed—we definitely assumed her gender on the basis of her having lavish flowers—and I was mortified that the neighbor thought that I might send her photo of his boots scattered in front of the door in a picturesque composition. Some boots had brown and blue elements and copper buckles shining in the sun.
I wished intently to be able to tend to the plants. However, I was not blessed with the green finger. After the Arctic Freeze that hit Texas, Kostia and I walked around and picked a broken prickly pear cactus on the street. Plenty of cactus leaves were scattered after the weather inclemency, but we picked the leaf that had a few chances of survival. The cactus leaf lay on the road. Already someone stepped on the leaf and broke it. The leaf lay like a bird with a broken wing. Kostia and I planted the cactus leaf in a pot. Kostia named our cactus Prickly the Pear.
We put our cactus outside on the balcony, and I began calling the balcony “a front garden.” I added the detail that I am a gardener to one of my submissions of poems. When Oleg learned about it, he said I cannot call myself a gardener because I did not have a garden and barely had any plants. Oleg said that being a gardener was a class marker. We did not belong to the class that had gardens. I could not call myself a gardener, was Oleg’s verdict. I got angry and asked him what he cared if I called myself a gardener. Perhaps I enjoyed inhabiting the identity of a gardener, even if only for a poetry submission. Maybe I wanted to try new roles.
I was reading sitting at Torchy’s taco bar next to the new Austin library. Joanne Rowling famously wrote Harry Potter in a café. I can only read in noisy places—and I do not have a fascinating story to tell children, or even adults. A chain of construction workers was exiting the construction site. Above, over the workers’ heads, a notice shone, “Entrance for Builders of Great Things,” doubled in Spanish: “Entrada de Constructores de Cosas Grandiosas.” In Spanish, the phrase sounded even more impressive. One of the builders semi-danced semi-stumbled, as if a rap melody sounded in his helmet or beyond. Others had stickers—naked slender women—on their lunchboxes. I recalled that in a Moscow restaurant, in the kitchen where I got access to as a photographer, a collage of a naked woman hanged on a fridge. The main cook rubbed her genitalia are with his finger, seeking to entertain me and my friend, who was writing about the restaurant for a magazine.
Looking at the construction workers, I thought about bodies trafficked like goods and money, all around the infrastructure of a growing U.S. city, the infrastructure of which I am a part--an idle notch—I toyed with the idea of people as infrastructure, famously by AbdouMalique Simone. “We wrecked our brains trying to make this thought into a question,” as Kathleen Stewart wrote, not word-to-word, in her last book about somebody else’s idea. My dissertation defense date was fast approaching. I decided to apply my pen to documenting how approaching the dissertation defense date felt. Something was waiting to take turn and take form. A red dog was being walked on a leash. A boy at the near table shouted that he hates eyedrops that his caring parents already prepared for him and were getting ready to administer. Ping pong players, hill climbers, the fun-havers on the swing—all of the world was spinning, resolutely before my defense date. Was I going to be told something scathing about my work?
The overwhelming feeling was of being bored to death but also anxious. I have not known such anguish, or maybe I did. I am on top of the world, but I do not feel like I am. I downloaded a mindfulness app that told me “be with what is” and “lean into it.” Things accrued but did not bring consolation. Looking back, I know I was not about to embark on a professorship and was not on top of the world. But I assumed I would, of course, as most of us did. Graduate students know no humility.
I began playing tennis, but tennis did not make me less lonely. I watched white American women bond quickly at the expense of my exclusion—perhaps my accent contributed, and, I am sure, other marks of otherness that I did not notice. I was not aware of those signs, but I knew signs were present. The green court was like a heated pan in Texas heat. Women wore beautiful tennis attire: short white skirts, white sports shirts. White fabric looked great against tanned skin. Women were blonde and brunette. Women were like Barbies from my Soviet childhood: unattainable. I never had a Barbie, but I had a pink journal about Barbie dolls. Somehow in the 1980s, the journal sifted through the porous curtain, no longer iron. My partners in tennis were like coming from the pages of the journals. White teeth, pink lips, and big eyes. I was not even trying to strike any sort of conversation with them that would last beyond the green tennis court.
I am going to proceed with my novel. I would not have any critique about it from anyone, and I should not care about how little of my novel survives. Every sentence is an achievement. Even the danger of my novel slipping into journaling should not stop me. I am in a café that survived the heights of pandemic. I am drinking cappuccino from a cup with the motto “Festina Lente” (“Make Haste Slowly”). There are five tables here, all occupied, one by me. A man is talking on the phone mentioning “cases” and having “taken two of them.” Girls, each of whom is probably doing yoga, sit across each other in Buddha Maitreya poses, their small purses on the table. (I keep my purse on the table too). I visited a dermatologist earlier today, and she said, use sunscreen every day. Do not even think about not wearing sunscreen. I am becoming unsettlingly aware that I am not wearing sunscreen. One of the yoga girls has a medium-size medium-fluff dog that calmly sits in shadow. It is getting warmer in Texas now, not to say, hotter. The second man at the café stares at his phone. He purchased a cake, apparently, hence a brown bag lies on his table. The third man appears the most restless. He fidgets—he could not sit straight for several minutes. He was able to concentrate only after he rearranged his possessions several times. I am reading Kathleen Stewart and Lauren Berlant’s book. There are words that jump out onto me when other words do not. Today, these words are “a little life for a little while” (2009, 27).
2. ChatGPT summary - a lot of fun to read, for me, very boring to you, even more boring than reading my excerpt. Yet you're still reading it, I don't know why. Perhaps you do not have anything better to read.
The passage reflects the author's inner thoughts and feelings about their life during the COVID-19 pandemic, their isolation, and their observations of life in Austin, Texas. The author describes their walks in Zilker Park, comparing it to artistic landscapes and other parks, such as Gorky Park in Moscow. Despite the park's vibrancy, the author feels a sense of separation from others, both due to the pandemic and possibly their immigrant status, contemplating what divides them from others.
The author also shares personal anecdotes, like their relationship with their friend Oleg, who repeatedly checks the mail, and their discomfort when a neighbor mistakes their interest in a photo of scattered cowboy boots as a complaint. They also reflect on a cactus they rescued and planted, and the identity of a gardener, which Oleg challenges.
The narrative weaves through these moments of mundane yet meaningful observations, such as the author's interactions with construction workers and their feelings of exclusion in social situations, like when playing tennis. They also express a sense of inner conflict and anxiety as their dissertation defense approaches and as they grapple with their sense of identity and belonging in a foreign culture.
Despite this, the author finds solace in small, fleeting moments of connection, such as a brief encounter with a dog, and continues to focus on their novel, finding it an achievement in itself. There is a recurring theme of being caught between a sense of displacement, the ongoing pandemic, and personal reflection, while navigating the complexities of their life in a new cultural environment.
3. ChatGPT's answer to the question "How do I improve this excerpt?" - wow, just look at the suggested examples, like "the awkwardness is thickening between us," damn girl! You know how to write, despite that some of these turn of phrases are sure a bit generic. I will think about what to steal.
To improve the excerpt, consider focusing on the following areas:
1. Clarity and Conciseness: Some sentences are long and dense, making it harder to follow the narrative. Breaking up complex thoughts into shorter, clearer sentences could enhance readability. Eliminate unnecessary words that don’t add to the meaning or emotional impact.
2. Consistency of Tone and Structure: The excerpt alternates between deep philosophical reflection, personal anecdotes, and descriptions. To maintain a more cohesive narrative, try aligning these sections in a smoother transition. For instance, when moving from a reflection on the pandemic to a personal anecdote (like the cactus planting), provide a more seamless connection to guide the reader.
3. Show, Don’t Tell: In several instances, the author "tells" the reader how they feel ("I am isolated from others"), but there’s an opportunity to "show" those emotions through imagery, actions, or dialogue. For example, instead of simply saying the park is a place of isolation, describe a specific moment where the author observes others connecting, but feels disconnected.
4. Tightening Imagery and Metaphors: The passage is rich in imagery, but some metaphors (e.g., "labyrinths of walking") can be sharpened for more impact. Consider making these comparisons more vivid or directly relevant to the theme of isolation or connection.
5. Flow Between Paragraphs: The shifts between different reflections can feel abrupt. Using transitions between different themes or moments—like the shift from the cactus anecdote to the tennis scene—could make the flow more natural. Reflecting on the implications of each thought or moment before jumping to the next can enhance the overall structure.
Here’s an example of an edited portion:
Original: "The park is full of people wearing no masks and seemingly taking no pandemic precautions, except for when they observe what is now called 'social distancing'—being on a distance of six feet or more from others. Six feet is a distance that is considered safe. Speaking to people, indeed interacting with them in any way, for me, is impossible, as if an invisible wall divides me from them, or, rather, me from them."
Revised: "The park is filled with people who have abandoned masks, the usual pandemic precautions seemingly forgotten. Only the six-foot rule remains, a thin buffer of safety. For me, though, the distance feels greater—like an invisible wall that isolates me from everyone. I watch others interact, but I can’t seem to break through that invisible barrier."
This revision tightens the sentences, improves clarity, and emphasizes the emotional isolation more directly.
6. Dialogues and Interactions: Dialogue can add dynamism and give more insight into the author’s character and relationships. The brief exchange with the neighbor about the boots can be expanded to reveal more about the author's internal state or feelings of awkwardness. It can also deepen the reader’s understanding of the social dynamics the author is navigating.
Original: "I was ashamed of photographing the shoes and him evidently thinking that I was going to complain to a landlord about the shoes."
Revised: "As I snapped the photo of the scattered boots, I felt a wave of shame. My neighbor watched me warily, likely assuming I’d report him to the landlord. I hurriedly reassured him, avoiding any mention of the landlady, the awkwardness thickening between us."
This revision adds emotional nuance and clarifies the feeling of discomfort in the situation.
7. Pacing: Ensure the pacing matches the tone and atmosphere. The moments of deep reflection or self-questioning could be given more time to breathe, while mundane descriptions (like the tennis scene or Oleg checking the mail) could be tightened to avoid dragging.
By focusing on these areas—clarifying ideas, improving transitions, tightening descriptions, and ensuring consistent tone—you can create a more impactful and engaging excerpt.
___ Not bad at all, right?
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vasilinaorlova · 18 days ago
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Merry Christmas, everybody! 🎄🎁💝
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vasilinaorlova · 1 month ago
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Thanksgiving is a uniquely American holiday. As I was growing up on a different continent, I didn't celebrate Thanksgiving. After I moved to the United States in 2011, the holiday seemed foreign to me. The imagery of the holiday which includes the turkey and a figure of a pilgrim in a hat with a wide brim and a buckled belt seemed funny to me. The origins of the holiday were no doubt colonial. I couldn't relate to the joys of Thanksgiving. The joys of Halloween were easier for me to comprehend and accept; remembering one's mortality seemed pertinent. However, over time I grew to recognize the spirit of Thanksgiving a bit more. The idea of giving thanks is not a bad idea.
There is a lot of tension about the American holidays that are still foreign to me. For instance, I still cannot relate to the tensions of coming around the same table and having family conversations with relatives with whom you do not share many opinions or views. It is not that I do not have a family with which I do not agree, but I have always observed my family as a sort of anthropologist who must be present among others from the position of an observant participant, probably because my family of origin lived in a city away from others; the rest of the family lived in different places. Approaching them with a set of my own values would be clearly irrelevant and inadequate. I enjoyed listening and taking notes. It's not like I disagreed with anyone, or agreed with everybody, but the very framework of sharing views appeared too narrow at the richness of others' lives and experiences. I would sometimes use my notes to write my short stories and short novels. I enjoyed portraying others within their worlds. My judgments were not absent but the expressions were reserved to artistic means.
To return to the Thanksgiving celebrations, during my living in the United States, I also partook in the customs of the land and cooked turkey on a number of Thanksgivings. I must make a somewhat embarrassing confession that I haven't learned to cook turkey in a way that I found the result delicious. (Nor did I ever find turkey tasty at other places). However, the spirit of the holiday, that is being grateful to God, universe, fate, and circumstances for one's survival at the shores which, you sometimes think, still feel far-away even to Americans despite that many are born here, is a spirit I ultimately can relate to. Being grateful is fine. Being grateful is okay. Being grateful is being humble. If our lives took different turns, we could not be here or even, who knows, could be not alive. We can be grateful even if we don't know to whom we owe the pleasure of gratitude. We can be grateful without having an addressee of our gratitude. Perhaps we can be grateful to ourselves for not making too many abysmal decisions or to the circumstances which were pure luck. Happy Thanksgiving to all.
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vasilinaorlova · 2 months ago
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Miracle
I wish a poem would come to me, Like a bird that would sit on the edge of the window, Looking into the tiny room with its fish's eye, For a moment Before Taking off
Look at it-- It is flying away, Feathers glisten in the sun With a silver grey and a faint rainbow City dove Random poem
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vasilinaorlova · 2 months ago
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Addendum I
My friend loaded my novel into Chat GPT and we asked several specific questions about how to improve the structure, flow, and make the novel more relatable to others, and Chat GPT provided great answers... About the first 20 pages of the novel. After which, Chat GPT went into the self-jumbling mode and repeated itself several times over (to be more precise, 37 times over--that is how great my friend's patience). Chat GPT provided several completely made-up long-winged quotes and suggested replacing them by generic short sentences, and then Chat GPT repeated itself ad nauseam, only each time the made-up quotes got more and more long-winged, and suggested replacement quotes got shorter and even more generic. I am now thinking about stacking these 37 files, each about 4 pages, one after another, and adding them to my novel as Addendum I. Cons: nobody can read it. Pros: Nobody needs to read it. The addendum can be a thing in itself. It can just be there.
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vasilinaorlova · 2 months ago
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What happens to the doctors Whose patients never come again to see them Do they ever wonder In 2019 I had a patient He came for regular check-ins To measure the level of happiness in his veins, To count the red fishes in bloodstream, To assess how many blue fishes enter his brain while he was asleep,
But I do not see the patient anymore Even though I still remember that patient
He sat right here on the corner of the chair And a slightly dirty nightgown was ready for him In case he needed the nightgown The nightgown (slightly dirty) hang on the back of a chair
What happened to him?
Maybe he left For a different city Or for a different practice Or finally found out the level of happiness in his veins With which he was content And never needed a doctor after that Decided he could spend his time and money on something else Rather than on tedious doctor's visits And sitting in the foyer looking at the generic art-- Flowers, landscapes, and still lifes--
Every half a year we measured How many red fishes he had in his bloodstream We counted, And the level was only slightly below the norm, And the appropriate treatment was prescribed: An orange A day
With so many red fishes frolicking in your veins you, my friend, will live forever, You will certainly outlive me (An old doctor with grey hair and thick glasses), What is important Is for us to detect the raising numbers of blue fishes that enter your brain while you sleep
Or maybe--everything can happen even to those of us Who are young and strong and can boast great numbers of red fishes in veins And small numbers of blue fishes in the brain And a generally satisfactory level of happiness Pumping through their hearts-- Maybe The patient is dead, And this is why they are not coming And will never come, But that is not really the thought I have-- I think they merely departed for another city,
And there, they will have the same doctor once again, Dr. Wolf, Who would measure fishes, blue, red, and happiness--
After your lungs begin to produce unhappiness, you see, They never fully stop, Which is why we need to take these measurements from time to time, To protect us from bad outcomes, or, rather, Unnecessary complications. Half a year check-in--at the very least--in your situation Is what I would recommend, my dear.
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vasilinaorlova · 2 months ago
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I bought an empanada from an oven at a cafe and sat in the corner. There was nobody in the cafe, except for me. As I ate the empanada, I noticed that it was dry because it dried in that oven where it probably spent hours before I bought it. The empanada was tasteless and resembled cardboard. A guy from the counter approached me and put on the table a brown package. I said, what is it, are you closing? He said, no, this is an empanada for you, because that empanada that was from the oven... I don't want you to waste your money.
I thanked him and accepted his gift of another empanada. I packed what I haven't eaten and retreated. I was uncomfortable that he paid attention that the first empanada was dry. Was I not supposed to eat it? Sure, it did not taste like anything, but did that matter? The thing still was relatively edible? Even though I was not hungry, I opened the second empanada right away on the street, out of curiosity. I was wondering how different the normal empanada was supposed to be from the first empanada that became its own dry shadow.
However, the second empanada was raw. It consisted of a raw dough and a mess of a chicken that had one thing going for it: it positively wasn't dry. Nevertheless, I was very grateful to have my day full of empanadas, two, not one, so different from each other, and for the kind guy who actually cared that the first empanada was dry and wanted to make it better. His action did make my day, and the rest of the universe, a little better than they were before, in my eyes. There was some space for kindness in some corners, after all. What is more to it, there were plenty of such corners, moments, and people, more than we were willing to acknowledge.
"That is such a New York story," my friend Tasia said when I told her about two empanadas. "Everything is undercooked and overbaked, and everyone is wanting to do better, but nobody can do anything about anything... It is just what it is, in this world, on that street, and in that cafe." I loved how Tasia always had such precise words for everything.
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vasilinaorlova · 2 months ago
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My dream is to live on Manhattan
And never go anywhere,
Just look outside the window--
And oh, if you knew how much of a luxury
A window in Manhattan is--
And observe leafs and flowers,
Snow and the rain.
I don't need to invite or see anybody
Or go site seeing--
Thanks,
I saw all the sites,
What more is there to see,
Like qualitatively new, you know--
Like, I am not trying to travel Europe with a backpack,
Or base jump from the skyscrapers
Or Grand Canyon,
Or swim canals or Niagara falls,
As is they wont--
And what else is there to do--
But live a quiet and boring life,
Monotonous,
Uneventful,
As if
Nothing is happening--
Anywhere in the world--
Well, sure, I certainly still have to go to museums,
Yes, yes,
Every now and then--
But only out of dull sense of obligation,
And observe art indifferently,
Like leaves, flowers, snow, and the rain,
But most certainly never
Ever
Board a ferry
To go gape at the Statue of Liberty,
All green,
Alone,
Covered in a fog
Or glaring amid the sea,
Stupidly,
Like a middle finger,
Like a patent "fuck you,"
With an offensive clarity,
Despite that they call you to board the ferry,
Quite insistently,
While wearing the iconic wreath with spikes
Made out of polyurethane
Near the Bowling Green station
And South Ferry.
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vasilinaorlova · 3 months ago
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Poems construct the worlds. The worlds of poems can contradict each other, and the worlds will coinhabit their common universe without any conflict. Each poem can have its own rules and laws, not like the other poem. The many worlds can come together and coexist without contradiction.
The poems could be more different than the planets. The poems exist in different universes, not merely in the same universe with the consistent laws throughout and many various applications of the laws. The legacy of the poet could be many different worlds coexisting within one realm--loosely connected by a single authorship--but having various laws of physics, various geometries.
The public likes consistency; consistency and repetition is how we recognize the phenomenon exists. They now teach almost templates of self expression that you have to repeat to send the same signal over and over again, and it's not rare that you check someone years later, and they still record the same videos on the same topic, which is maybe what should be done but is also somewhat sad.
Luckily, there's no obligation to be consistent for a poet that would stem from the inner demand of the poet. If you can sacrifice being recognized, you can be as inconsistent and free as you want. You can experiment, fall silent, or write in a variety of dissimilar manners. Think about how much joy such a freedom can bring.
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vasilinaorlova · 3 months ago
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I finally recalled the circumstances under which I wrote this poem as I tried to recollect the reasons why I didn't post the poem earlier. Indeed, to think that someone else and not me could have written the poem, given its clarity, simplicity, and imagery, was absurd.
A Poem Found in My Notes
At night, I felt
A blanket of your love,
I know I lost it,
But on a verge of sleep
I felt, I knew, I saw that it was there—
It wrapped me gently from my throat to toes,
I knew that I was safe and fell asleep.
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vasilinaorlova · 3 months ago
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A Poem Found in My Notes
At night, I felt
A blanket of your love,
I know I lost it,
But on a verge of sleep
I felt, I knew, I saw that it was there—
It wrapped me gently from my throat to toes,
I knew that I was safe and fell asleep.
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vasilinaorlova · 3 months ago
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Deprived
Kinda outrageous that many whose writing I enjoyed here in the golden years of Tumblr, which was about probably 2016, plus minus a couple of years (although for some, no doubt everything only starts here), many, if not the majority, deleted or perhaps renamed their pages or stopped posting. Outrageous. They deprived the public, which is me, of the public good.
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vasilinaorlova · 3 months ago
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One reason Mona Lisa has been a hypnotic image for centuries is Mona Lisa's proverbial evasive smile. Something appears so unusual about her smile that theories proliferate, including the idea that Mona Lisa was half paralyzed, which is blatantly absurd. The idea is that the entire right part of Mona Lisa's body was paralyzed, as the right corner of her mouth isn't smiling. Only the humanity that is astounded by and uneasy about a meandering half smile could come up with the absurd theory that the right part of the body of Mona Lisa is paralyzed just because the right corner of her mouth isn't lifted while the left corner is. We obviously still have a lot to learn about the smiles that are present without being fully there. One could argue that humanity is unduly tantalized by a concrete expression of a fairly common experience, that is, by the idea of a half smile exemplified by the image of Mona Lisa. What if nothing particularly special is in the smile that has no explanation and is also not apparent? We have to invent the whole contrived theories, the galactic explanations of paralysis to try and crack open the enigma of a fleeting smile. The smile comes and goes, and yet is present when it's gone, and yet isn't here when it is present. I can see how the evasion can be maddening.
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