vriad_lee

today i bought nostalgic toys at the weekend flea market. the tin soldiers are those my elder brother kept in his drawer, and we (me and my younger brother) weren't allowed to touch. after all, when my brother joined the army, we made good use of them and other items in his drawer and his room, and, if memory serves right, when he came back home he was sore at us specifically for the soldiers. but i might be imagining things now. when my brother came back from kamchatka where he served, he brought 'oriental sweets' and a couple of huge dried salmons with teeth along with him. he had a pine tree branch overhanging his bed and a map of soviet union or russia with all the places he had visited marked with red triangular flags. his room was and is the gloomiest in my parents' apartment. there was a time when i alone occupied it, when my younger brother moved in with my elder brother to live in moscow, and that might have been one of the best periods of my life, when i screwd a latch to the door to keep kids out and spent days in that room reading books. then i got married, moved out and started to make a career. i have an early memory of that room. i stand by the window, it's summer outside, sunny morning or afternoon. i'm holding a christmas tree ball, dark-red, marvelling at the distorted reflection of the dark room and the very bright street. and then my mind invariably jumps to another instantaneous memory: i'm on the asphald road below the reflected window, having just discovered for the first time a harm within myself. life is unfair, people hurt, and all i want is to go away, to leave them all, and at the same time - burning, overpowering, smothering desire to be begged to stay and forgive, to accuse them, complain to them bitterly. and on top of it all - desperate realization that i'm trapped, that i can't solve this one way or the other and let go of the pain. then, as a backdrop to this sensation, a lopsided vision of the lawn and my huge tin truck with blue cab and green dump body. there's also a barely perceptible trace of my cousin's presence in the memory. did i fight with her for the truck? i might just as well, but i don't remember.



also, my camera has developed monstrous backfocus