Spring in Moskva

During Dmitrii Petrovich's lecture on contemporary Russian literature, I gazed out the window and followed the crows' nest-building ritual. For Dmitrii Petrovich himself had said in the first class, "We will never learn all the functions of our phones - let alone read all the books in the world." When a classmate returned after a week's absence, and asked me what he'd missed, I said, "The crowlings were born."

Later, walking from the University to the garden about the Opera, I saw a frying pan lying face down on the sidewalk of the Садовое Кольцо - the Garden Ring Road. Someone had burned the egg that broke the camel's back.

In the train to Kiev, some man made a fresh remark to a woman about carrying her to bed. "Where else can a man carry a woman," he said. "По магазинам - around the shops," I interrupted in a New York deadpan. He threw up his hands in horror. So many times I said America when I meant New York.

In the church frescoes, Judas always faces away, because no one wanted to serve as the model for him.