Carmerella > Recent Status Updates

be serious. You don’t think the press might be interested in the fact that a human bone has been found to form part of a sculpture made by the late, great, reclusive, enigmatic Vanessa Chapman? The same Vanessa Chapman whose notoriously unfaithful husband went missing nearly twenty years ago? His body never found?’

…as it turns out, one can revisit the past quite pleasantly, as long as one does so expecting nearly every aspect of it to have changed.

Why after so many years of longing for home did these sojourners abandon it so shortly upon their return? It is hard to say. But perhaps for those returning after a long absence, the combination of heartfelt sentiments and the ruthless influence of time can only spawn disappointments.

After decades of wandering the seas and overcoming all manner of deadly hazards, Odysseus finally returned to Ithaca, only to leave it again a few years later. Robinson Crusoe, having made it back to England after years of isolation, shortly thereafter set sail for that very same island from which he had so fervently prayed for deliverance.

—a moment in which all that has happened to us suddenly comes into focus as a necessary course of events, even as we find ourselves on the threshold of a bold new life that we had been meant to lead all along.

our lives are steered by uncertainties, many of which are disruptive or even daunting; but that if we persevere and remain generous of heart, we may be granted a moment of supreme lucidity

For while in the classical tradition there was no Muse of architecture, I think we can agree that under the right circumstances, the appearance of a building can impress itself upon one’s memory, affect one’s sentiments, and even change one’s life.

As it was his day off, at seven o’clock he had an aperitif at the Shalyapin where he marveled at the arrival of summer with the ever-attentive Audrius. And at eight, he dined at table ten in the Boyarsky. Which is to say, he treated the day much as he treated any other.

on the twenty-first of June the Count rose at his usual hour. He did five squats, five stretches, and took five deep breaths. He breakfasted on coffee, a biscuit, and his daily fruit (today an assortment of berries), after which he went downstairs to read the papers and chat with Vasily. He lunched in the Piazza. In the afternoon, he paid a visit to Marina in the stitching room.

an example of courageous perseverance in the face of impossible odds

Showing a sense of personal restraint that was almost out of character, the Count had restricted himself to two succinct pieces of parental advice. The first was that if one did not master one’s circumstances, one was bound to be mastered by them; and the second was Montaigne’s maxim that the surest sign of wisdom is constant cheerfulness.

the lights of the city seemed to burn brighter with the electricity from the first nuclear power plant in the world.

For what matters in life is not whether we receive a round of applause; what matters is whether we have the courage to venture forth despite the uncertainty of acclaim.”

“What were they going to do to Count Alexander Rostov—member of the Jockey Club and godson of a counselor to the Tsar?”

When the Count addressed the visitor, he had to resist the temptation of getting down on his haunches. “How can I be of service to you, Mr. Frinovsky?” “I am here in regards to your daughter,” Frinovsky explained, taking his little hat from his head. “Sofia?” asked the Count.

Almost nine months later, on the third of March 1953, the man known variously as Dear Father, Vozhd, Koba, Soso, or simply Stalin would die in his Kuntsevo residence in the aftermath of a stroke.

“One must make ends meet,” confirmed Audrius matter-of-factly, “or meet one’s end.”

“I’ve never played an instrument in my life, but I understand something of music. To have played the opening measures of that piece with feelings so perfectly evocative of heartache, one can only assume that you have drawn on some wellspring of sorrow within yourself.”

My conclusion: the most gloriously expressive mind, usually possess an overwhelming amount of sorrow.

For all the varied concerns attendant to the raising of a child—over schoolwork, dress, and manners—in the end, a parent’s responsibility could not be more simple: To bring a child safely into adulthood so that she could have a chance to experience a life of purpose and, God willing, contentment.

“Hollywood is the single most dangerous force in the history of class struggle.”

The musicals were “pastries designed to placate the impoverished with daydreams of unattainable bliss.” The horror movies were “sleights of hand in which the fears of the workingman have been displaced by those of pretty girls.” The vaudevillian comedies were “preposterous narcotics.” And the westerns? They were the most devious propaganda of all

“Who would have imagined,” he said, “when you were sentenced to life in the Metropol all those years ago, that you had just become the luckiest man in all of Russia.”

“Our churches, known the world over for their idiosyncratic beauty, for their brightly colored spires and improbable cupolas, we raze one by one. We topple the statues of old heroes and strip their names from the streets, as if they had been figments of our imagination. Our poets we either silence, or wait patiently for them to silence themselves.”

“Yes, silence can be an opinion,” said Mishka. “Silence can be a form of protest. It can be a means of survival. But it can also be a school of poetry—one with its own meter, tropes, and conventions. One that needn’t be written with pencils or pens; but that can be written in the soul with a revolver to the chest.”

That is, if a man woke no later than six, engaged in a light repast, and then applied himself without interruption, by the hour of noon he should have accomplished a full day’s labor.

And what did these old friends talk about? What did they not talk about! They talked of their childhoods in St. Petersburg, Minsk, and Lyon. Of their first and second loves. Of Andrey’s four-year-old son and Emile’s four-year-old lumbago. They spoke of the once and the was, of the wishful and the wonderful.

“Then you must trust in her. And even if she is single-minded to a fault, you must trust that life will find her in time. For eventually, it finds us all.”

Part of Speech: Adjective. Definition: Lasting for a short time; transitory; fleeting. Synonyms: Transient, temporary, evanescent, momentary. Transcription: /ih-fem-er-uhl/

Never again would he walk Nevsky Prospekt, however they chose to rename it, without feeling an unbearable sense of loss. And that is just how it should be. That sense of loss is exactly what we must anticipate, prepare for, and cherish to the last of our days; for it is only our heartbreak that finally refutes all that is ephemeral in love.

Always to shine, to shine everywhere, to the very depths of the last days . . .