Ein Gespenst geht um in Europa - das Gespenst des Kommunismus.
I spent part of my childhood on the outskirts of a minor city, a labyrinth of concrete monstrosities. Some find Brutalist architecture claustrophobic. I find it liberating. I cannot imagine how constricted I would have been if I resided in a place as baroque as the Bolshoí Petergofskií dvorec, where I would constantly feel compelled to maintain decorum.
There is a certain worthlessness to Soviet architecture. I had no compunction about scribbling crude drawings on the grimy walls or tracking dirt through the poorly lit corridors. The stairwells were off-limits after dark. During the day, there were always two or three unemployed youths smoking on the steps.
I was unusually taciturn even as a child. I would spend hours drawing in my room while our neighbor engaged in colloquies in Dari with my mother - a dialect she never bothered to impart to me. Our neighbor's daughter was around my age and took an immediate dislike to me. She was slovenly. She had a propensity for spitting on the sidewalks and disposing of her detritus by throwing it off the balcony.
Neither of us had a father figure. Hers had died of cancer, mine absconded - technically, he impregnated an underage teenage femoid and eloped. The most embarrassing memory of my childhood involved her. I once told her that I envied her and that I wish my father had also perished from cancer.
Do I regret it? I only regret that my father had not actually perished from cancer.
I would occasionally see her share a cigarette with a Belorussian teen on the front steps when I returned from running errands. It was a disconcerting sight, a prepubescent girl taking a deep drag and blowing it right in your face. It had never occurred to me to grass on her since I despised any form of social interaction and was loathe to communicate with her mother, whose grasp on the local language could only be described as tenuous.
My family immigrated to the Occident a few months later. Any recollection of her was subsequently buried beneath years of trauma-induced lacunae in my memory for approximately a decade. Our paths would never cross again, though they would meander exceedingly close for a brief moment. Like us, her family eventually moved to the West. She ultimately got an arranged marriage to a man I intermittently saw around at the local masjid.
Nothing lasts forever. Her mother and husband died in a motor accident. She began a romantic liaison with the culprit and absconded from the country, leaving her son under the guardianship of her aunt.
It is impossible to hate her, because I only reserve emotional cathexis for the worthy. Through no effort or contrivance was she a degenerate. It was merely ingrained into her nature. Only those who are skilled in their treachery are deserving of my hatred. The true tragedy in any grand misdeed is not the act itself, but the debasement of acumen.
Anger is the most invigorating emotion. I truly feel alive when I sense the adrenaline course through my veins. In contrast to my baseline emotional torpor and quotidian despondency, it makes me feel pure. I am cleansed.
I spent part of my childhood on the outskirts of a minor city, a labyrinth of concrete monstrosities. Some find Brutalist architecture claustrophobic. I find it liberating. I cannot imagine how constricted I would have been if I resided in a place as baroque as the Bolshoí Petergofskií dvorec, where I would constantly feel compelled to maintain decorum.
There is a certain worthlessness to Soviet architecture. I had no compunction about scribbling crude drawings on the grimy walls or tracking dirt through the poorly lit corridors. The stairwells were off-limits after dark. During the day, there were always two or three unemployed youths smoking on the steps.
I was unusually taciturn even as a child. I would spend hours drawing in my room while our neighbor engaged in colloquies in Dari with my mother - a dialect she never bothered to impart to me. Our neighbor's daughter was around my age and took an immediate dislike to me. She was slovenly. She had a propensity for spitting on the sidewalks and disposing of her detritus by throwing it off the balcony.
Neither of us had a father figure. Hers had died of cancer, mine absconded - technically, he impregnated an underage teenage femoid and eloped. The most embarrassing memory of my childhood involved her. I once told her that I envied her and that I wish my father had also perished from cancer.
Do I regret it? I only regret that my father had not actually perished from cancer.
I would occasionally see her share a cigarette with a Belorussian teen on the front steps when I returned from running errands. It was a disconcerting sight, a prepubescent girl taking a deep drag and blowing it right in your face. It had never occurred to me to grass on her since I despised any form of social interaction and was loathe to communicate with her mother, whose grasp on the local language could only be described as tenuous.
My family immigrated to the Occident a few months later. Any recollection of her was subsequently buried beneath years of trauma-induced lacunae in my memory for approximately a decade. Our paths would never cross again, though they would meander exceedingly close for a brief moment. Like us, her family eventually moved to the West. She ultimately got an arranged marriage to a man I intermittently saw around at the local masjid.
Nothing lasts forever. Her mother and husband died in a motor accident. She began a romantic liaison with the culprit and absconded from the country, leaving her son under the guardianship of her aunt.
It is impossible to hate her, because I only reserve emotional cathexis for the worthy. Through no effort or contrivance was she a degenerate. It was merely ingrained into her nature. Only those who are skilled in their treachery are deserving of my hatred. The true tragedy in any grand misdeed is not the act itself, but the debasement of acumen.
Anger is the most invigorating emotion. I truly feel alive when I sense the adrenaline course through my veins. In contrast to my baseline emotional torpor and quotidian despondency, it makes me feel pure. I am cleansed.
