I gripped my breath

I gripped my breath in self-ironic hand:

No drop of ink should show that I am hurt.

That is widely known as an anticlimactic end:

This stupid me that tried to get to word –

And, I´m afraid, was well and clearly heard –

And he just fled.

Historian draws_ Rachel Crowdy

Sometimes when reading for research – or watching documentaries – I can get carried away by the authors – or actors in the story. And so I google – and sketch away.

This time is Dame Rachel Crowdy, a chief of Social Issues Section to the League of Nations.

I could write you a beautiful poem…

I could write you a beautiful poem,

yet one more,

as those many, my goodness, so many

I had written before.

.

It would run, sacramental and touching,

of your eyes,

that I dearly yearned to see glancing

Back at me – I hoped once.

.

Or this scent of yours. – Probably lilac?

and my want…

But, apparently, I can keep loving

All of you only then, if I don’t.

Historian draws_Yuri Andropov

Sometimes when reading for research – or watching documentaries – I can get carried away by the authors – or actors in the story. And so I google – and sketch away.

Today – Yuri Andropov, a long-serving Head of the KGB and then a GenSec of the USSR.

Andropov is one of those controversial, ambivalent figures in history, revealing both – obvious – traits of a repressive „strong-hand“ leader who suppressed opposition and free thinking in his country, and still tried to pull through reforms that were overdue – reforms without reforms, I might say. Andropov´s personal story is also of interest: a story of loneliness and decades he lived and held back to his severely ill spouse. Personal loyalties, one might say…

Historian draws_Raisa Gorbacheva

Sometimes when reading for research – or watching documentaries – I can get carried away by the authors – or actors in the story. And so I google – and sketch away.

Today – Raisa Gorbacheva, the spouse of Mikhail Gorbachev and the First Lady of the USSR in its last years. I was deeply touched by Gorbachev recounting on him first meeting and falling in love with this remarkably intelligent, vibrant, and purposeful woman.

Video footages of Raisa Maximovna remind me of my grandmother, too – who, in her turn, once went very thoughtful as we spoke on the last First Lady. „I used to dislike her back then, – she said with quiet surprise in her voice. – We all disliked her because she was so visible. Unlike all other wives of previous GenSecs she was there, she was talking, and we were not used to that self-confidence we took for bossiness“. My grandmother was, as the matter of fact, very much alike – an epitome of positively strong-willed, self-confident, intelligent woman in a leading position – who performed and overperformed not because she wanted to prove anything, but because it was an inherent part of her sovereign identity. I think she knew then, that she and Raisa Maximovna were very similar in this concern.

 

 

Historian draws_Mikhail Gorbachev

Sometimes when reading for research – or watching documentaries – I can get carried away by the authors – or actors in the story. And so I google – and sketch away.

Today – Mikhail Gorbachev in his years as the last GenSec of the USSR.

Historian draws_Vladimir Pozner

Sometimes when reading for research – or watching documentaries – I can get carried away by the authors – or actors in the story. And so I google – and sketch away.

Today: a magnificent journalist and intellectual Vladimir Pozner. – a person of remarkable fate, self-reflection worth all respect – and a legend.

I had an honour of attending his lecture – just one of an endless number he is giving – in Orenburg in 2008 or 2009. I was young and naive, and struggling to put into words all the subtle complexity of controversies I saw around me. Pozner´s talk was a turning point for me.

 

Akt nach Man Ray

Historian draws_Alexievich & Solonin

Sometimes when reading for research – or watching documentaries – I can get carried away by the authors – or actors in the story. And so I google – and sketch away.

 

Here come: post-Soviet Historians Marc Solonin and breathtaking Svetlana Alexievich (those who haven’t read her books I would root Oral History, please do! She is unique)

 

Famous blue raincoat – part 1

 

He made me so aware 

Of the nods, and edges,

And witty shingles of my

Queerly shaped uneven spirit

And body that reacted bluntly and 

Shun itself into exhaustion.

He made me yearn for easiness of being with him

While I would never be but a flake

Of his illuminated life.

And though I hurt to be a flake,

He made me live at once.

Indeed, he took the trouble from my eyes…