Traveling in a Confused World
That evening my wife found me lying on the floor in the living room. Hands tossed aside, gaze unfocused, my breathing heavy. Lying next to me, she gently put her arms around me. “What happened”, she asked. “I think I’m having a panic attack”, I told her. It was the first of many.
Continue reading “The Breakdown of an Immigrant Brain – My Neurotic, Year-long Journey to a Life Without a Country”
Symbols have power over us. When two seemingly unrelated events occur at the same time, our brain unwillingly makes a connection, and strange conclusions follow. That’s how I know for sure that my youth has ended in the last days of October of 2013. Continue reading “The Day I Knew My Youth Has Ended”
Last Saturday, as usual for Saturdays, I took my son to my parents home. We had lunch consisting of mashed potatoes and meat cutlets – the staple dishes in my parents’ Russian cuisine. My dad read a couple of children books to Ayan. My mom reminded me of my commitments the next week and worried that I don’t exercise enough. All as usual. The same familial ritual that occurred hundreds of time before. But something was different. I wasn’t in a hurry. As a matter of fact, I wanted to stay longer. Continue reading “How Leaving Home Awakened Me To What I Missed All These Years”
About two years ago, my father started writing a memoir. Being an action-oriented man, it’s a straightforward autobiography, filled with dates, locations and people, laid out in a chronological order. Memories of the significant events that shaped his life. Continue reading “Who Will Read My Father’s Memoirs?”
My wife and I have lived most of our lives 6,000 kilometers away from each other. Our meeting, unlikely as it was, has led to a close friendship which turned into a marriage. We are what you may call an interracial couple – I’m Ashkenazi Jewish and Oxanna is Buryat-Mongolian. But while many interracial couples have to cope with cultural differences, for us it isn’t the case. Continue reading “Why Marrying a Non-Jewish Woman Is The Best Thing That Happened To Me”
This may have been the longest year in my adult life but also probably the most memorable one. As our son just turned one recently, I thought it’s time to share some of the things I have learned and discovered about parenting during this year. Continue reading “One-Year-Old Parent – Notes from the Field”
In 32 years of my life I haven’t created anything of lasting value. Nothing that would last even during my lifetime, insignificant as it it. Have you? Continue reading “I Was Creatively Bankrupt… Until I Did The Most Unimaginative Thing of All”
After 1 month of having a newborn in my life, I want to share my first thoughts about parenting. In a shell, it’s much harder than I imagined, but also surprisingly more satisfying.
Here are 10 things I now know: Continue reading “10 Things I Learned from Having a Newborn in My Life”
On my 18th birthday I felt pretty bad. Even though everyone was telling me that it was a special date, and that I am supposed to be excited about it, I was confused, anxious and depressed.
I felt old. Continue reading “Being Young but Feeling Old”
My parents always wanted me to marry a Jewish woman. So when they found out that I’m getting serious with someone who isn’t Jewish, they were quite upset. I tried to understand their point of view, but was struggling to do so. I knew that their objection wasn’t religious – having lived all their life in atheist Soviet Russia, they are distinctly (but typically of their generation) secular people, and immigration to Israel didn’t really change that. So what was it that made it so difficult for them to accept? Aside from the usual caution we keep for strangers who don’t fit into our familiar world, there was something that disturbed them on a much deeper level. The answer lied in their past. Continue reading “Echoes From My Tribe – Story of Intermarriage In Israel”
I never thought that turning 30 will be so painless. Just two years ago I dreaded this date, vaguely aware of the existential void it would unveil. Last year, having departed from most certainties of my life, I was coping with the realization that my life lacked any clear direction. Continue reading “Turning 30, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Start Loving”
Just a couple of days ago I returned from a ski vacation in Bulgaria. Not only it provided me the much desired opportunity to learn and practice skiing in a real European ski resort, but also the dubious pleasure of enjoying the sole company of myself. Since my vacation was bounded to specific dates (after discharge from army, before beginning work), and my budget restricted my options to Bulgaria’s ski resorts, I couldn’t find anyone to join me. Continue reading “Going to Vacation Alone (And Surviving It)”
I have never given too much thought to questions of nutrition, healthy food, eating habits, etc. Being skinny isolates you from the world of calories-counting and diets. But as I have discovered, no one is safeguarded from the advances of excessive fat, especially after certain age. After gaining 10 kilos in 6 months (apparently living alone can have this side effect), I started to think that maybe I should start noticing what I eat. But I wasn’t ready then to do anything about it. Continue reading “My Experiments with Transformation”
Birthday has always been a sad business for me. Surely you get to feel ‘special’, you get greetings and presents, your friends come to your party – all those nice traditions we grew with, lift your spirit. But something inside always brewed and disturbed me during this time of year. Continue reading “Birthday Neurosis”
Lately I have been thinking about the burden of freedom. What I mean by freedom is not the civil freedom of being out of jail, but an existential freedom: freedom from unfulfilled desires, from debilitating illness, from time-consuming commitments, from limiting beliefs. The kind of freedom that makes you wake up on Saturday morning, have your breakfast, come into the living room and think to yourself “no one expects anything from me today, I have the whole day to myself, to do anything I want. So, what should I do?” Continue reading “How I Have Come to Face Freedom”