Moscow or Bust!

[Ooooops]

Sculpto, actually I've been to SF many times (we were even considering moving there few years ago) and I have lots of friends there.   So I'm somewhat familiar with the city and it's lifestyle. 

As for your girl - your posts remind me the story of Pygmalion and Galatea       Sounds like you dreamed up this girl and the real one may be very different from your imagination...

[Sculpto]

Oooops,
You might be right.. but I am not going to know by sitting in front of a computer..

[Ooooops]

but I am not going to know by sitting in front of a computer..

Of course, not.   And in the worst case scenario you still can enjoy yourself in Russia - Moscow, St Pete, Golden Ring - there is much to see and to do.   

[Sculpto]

a little more than three years ago.. just before I went to Ukraine the first time.. I decided to contact a long lost love.. "the one that got away".  This was a girl I met the summer after I graduated from art school.. we had a great summer together and spent the next several years being a couple over summers and schoool breaks since she was a couple years younger than me.  Finally we lost contact.. I had moved to Mexico to work on my art and be an explorer in the jungle.. and she had moved to Boston to find a husband I guess.

Well.. she had always been on my mind.  For 15 years I thought about this woman.  Finally, one day I decided to try and find her.. I ended up finding out her parents lived in the same house and had the same phone number.  So, I called and spoke with her Mom.  She remembered me and immediately gave me the phone number of my long lost sweetheart.  It turned out she lived in Vegas, so, I arranged to go see her over the 4th of July.  

We decided to meet in the Bellagio in front of the garden.   When she arrived I barely recognized her.  She had added easily over 100lbs.  Now, I am not going to sit here and tell you I am some kind of perfect specimen of a man.. but.. other than the hair loss and maximum of 15 lbs I look pretty much the same.  Some might say I look better because back in those days I looked like a total hippie.  Anyway.. I immediately decided at that moment not to judge her by her weight gain.  It was her spirit and soul that I missed and had dreamed about all those years.  

Turned out she had been married, became a plum farmer for a few years in New Hampshire  (really she is a psychologist).  Her marriage was not going well so they decided to make a change and for some reason decided on Vegas.  He went out ahead while she took care of selling the house and so on.  By the time she got to Vegas he was gone.  She never had a word from her husband except to get the divorce papers served to her.  She never recovered.

During that first meeting with her things went from happy to see you to her telling me "don't wait for me tomorrow" within a few hours.   I had tickets to Cirque Zoology so we went ahead and saw the show.  The sexuality of the show apparently got her going and afterwards she was all over me.  OK, so two hours ago she wanted me to leave and after seeing some frankly boring acrobats in leather with lots of skin showing she suddenly wanted me.  Well.. I smelled a nut case and declined the invitation to spend the night with her.  We hung out for two more days during which she never relented trying to get me into bed with her.  But, that sweet sould that I had missed all those years.. the sweet soul I was searching for.. well.. that never appeared, all I found was a woman with a broken heart and so much selfishness she was completely unaware of how she was affecting me.

After I came back home I got an email from her.  a 40,000 word email.  In this letter she laid out exactly what she thought would happen between us and when.  down to the details of who would go to the grocery and who would do the laundry.  

Well, it is obvious what I decided.  

My point is.. it is entirely possible to build someone up in our mind.  We see them as we hope they will be.  Knowing this in advance and throughout my current AOLOVE relationship with Miss Siberia there only leaves one thing that will settle it.. seeing her in real lilfe.  Given the multi colored flags that have appeared in the last few weeks and the simple fact that I am looking for a sweet soul.. not a beautiful face and body.. I should be quite resistent to material/physical influences.  If I feel anything is not right I will not put myself into a position of making excuses and bending over backwards to please her.  I have enough self respect not to make an ass of myself and end up in a dead end relationship with a woman from another country.  I have a month to establish a solid backup plan in Moscow.. my friends in St. Pete are now aware I will be in Moscow and are bugging me to come visit them also.  All is good.

[Ooooops]

Sculpto, I think you'll be just fine...   

[Misha]

Imagine being something of a prodigy having achieved a certain amount of local notariety/ recognition for your work as an overly opinionated and controversial editor, who, by most standards is too young to have so much power.  

I am curious, have you seen this newspaper? Odds are that it would have an online version. If it doesn't, did she send you paper copies of articles that she has written?

[Sculpto]

Misha,
yes i have seen articles she has written.  We got into a big argument over one of them about 8 months ago.  There is no online version.  It started out as a student campus newspaper and evolved into a weekly for general distribution.  Frankly it is an inflamatory sensationalist type of paper that follows a Kremlin orchestrated line of thinking, though, by exposing her to liberation movements in Latin America where i have a lot of expertise, especially the Zapatista movement in Chiapas since 1994 and the student/peasant rebellion last year in Oaxaca, as well as some good US based blogs her editorial prose has changed a lot.  It remains highly patriotic but she has asserted editorial independence and is no longer engaged in scapegoating.  Oddly that is from what I understand why she ended up being invited to do something in Moscow, because her writing style matured.

Some of you may be aware that the Kremlin did a lot of work to prevent an "Orange Revolution" in Russia from ever starting.  Her work started out along those lines, revolution prevention, but, it has morphed into something original.  I like to believe it was my critique and influence that helped her along, though, I might be giving myself too much credit.  Now she writes a lot about human rights and environmental issues and especially against xenophobia and racism. 

[mendeleyev]

Now she writes a lot about human rights and environmental issues and especially against xenophobia and racism

Good way for a budding Russian journalist to get into trouble.  And a very short life span. That would be a complete '180' from what she appears to have been writing earlier.  Quite a change and usually not one which would have her welcome in Moscow if she was previously popular.

Given your description of "campus newspaper turned regular tabloid" writer, it sounds like she may have been involved in Наши (Nazhi), the ultra nationalistic youth movement.   Наши would be translated as "Ours!"' (as in "Russia for ethnic Russians"), a government-funded youth movement in Russia.  Latest figures have it numbering about 120,000 members aged between 17 and 27.

The organization is seen by most Russians as Russian President Vladimir Putin's version of the Soviet Komsomol and it is often compared to the Hitler Youth. Their latest move is to tackle Russia's rapidly decreasing population trend, and Наши conducts large "group weddings" of young people who wed at summer camps and are charged with replenishment of the ethnic Russian stock.  Highly structured, very disciplined, and non-democratic would be understated descriptions.


A look at Наши:  .

Brainwashing 1: 

Brainwashing 2: 



If she was part of something like this and then completely changed, the last place on earth she needs to be is in Moscow.