InsaneJournal

Current mood:	predatory
Current music:	Markha Kolbazova - Ho as sayna vexur vu

Marshallah mel haz ol co


Talking about marriage of all things the other day with Mikha, mostly in a joking way. It's decided that I'm going to dress up with a beshmet and a sword, kidnap him on motorcycle horseback, and carry him off in the traditional way.

Of course people still do this! Naturally it's just for show.

Of course, even though almost everyone I know is really cool (although I think that secretly my relationship with Ruslan and Akhmed gave Khassan palpitations), I don't think they'd much go for gay marriage, so that is right out. I guess if we ever got hitched we'd have to just do it at a government building where nobody can bother us. I can't think of anything more joyless and awkward than a traditional North American wedding in the Christian church. Whereas a Chechen wedding, we could all dance lezginka, fire off guns, all kinds of things, I'd feel like it was a real celebration with my brothers. For the first time in my life I wished that Mikel was a girl. Or that I liked women more. (I'm not above fucking them ... but love, no ... ) Honestly, how ridiculous would it look, to marry a man through the traditional ceremonies instead of a woman in a long white headscarf.

Then we talked about raising kids, again, mostly joking about it. I complained that if I had a choice, I would raise them way out in Siberia in one of those places that haven't changed since Stalin. (Absolutely what glorious future am I depriving my kid of? He can be poor in America or he can be poor someplace with better weather.) We would live simply, through hard work, and the bad influence of popular culture couldn't get to the kids. "Of course," I said, "there would be a problem with our, well, our attitude, our way of life." I joked about having to dress him up like a peasant woman, grow his hair out in braids and pin them back behind his head like the Ukrainian politician, whereas I would grow a big beard and hunt things. Then he got really serious and said, "Why would you want to live out there, then? They wouldn't acknowledge us as a family."

I got ticked off and said, "Look, I'm an American citizen and you're a citizen of Canada, the Russian government wouldn't want us that far from the cities, you don't speak Russian, I speak it with a strange accent, I have no money, we have no land, the settlements are absolute shit, and there are in general one thousand things preventing us from living out this particular brand of pastoral Soviet family life. Do you have to focus on that?"

Maybe I just don't want to live in some trendy, ultra-modern city where queer people run rampant just because I'm gay, maybe I'd just like to live my life as I would have otherwise.

Right now I'd really just like to go off to the steppes and ride horses with Ruslan and Akhmed.

My cough hasn't gone away completely (it's getting there), and I'm completely exhausted all of the time. If I tell Mikel he'll freak - he already thinks that I am dying of pneumonia. The way that boy frets over me! Like an old grandmother!

I miss Chechnya.

I fucking miss Chechnya.

Most days I just want to live the way I used to. Nothing but Afghan heroin and the mountains and the steppes. Sex with Ruslan and Akhmed. Instinct. Endlessness. Modern life doesn't suit me. I hate hanging out with the so-called intellectuals. They want to stay locked up in their ivory tower and wail on about art and philosophy. Who gives a shit, honestly? I don't like philosophy. I don't even like art. I only like to live. Dogs live and love and fight and fuck better than any human, but they don't know philosophy, don't know art. I'm a dog. Nokhchi bworz. Kavkazskyy volk, Chechen wolf. Ya tvoy nebelyy volk, skazal, ya volchok Mikela.

La illah ha il Allah.

What is it that I need? It's not freedom, but ferality. Some days I just want to let go. Do every drug I come across, fuck guys, fuck girls, get in fights. (Never take PCP and watch Fight Club in a room full of murderous Albanians.) Forget about everything. Forget myself. Forget my work.

It's my work. It's always my work.

Whatever else happens, I need to make these films, write these poems. That is still the first priority. I need to give up drinking and already I stopped experimenting with hard drugs. I just can't do anything that's going to risk that. I need to live a long life, finish my work, finish my work, finish my work ... And, what, what if I decide that in order to continue this I need to do something that'll fuck Mikel up? I'll need to go home to Grozny to film A Thousand Years of Peace. How long am I going to stay there? He can't come with me. It's too dangerous.

I wish I were a musician. Then I would only live and work for Mikel. I would write something like Beethoven, or like Mahler's Second Symphony, or Berlioz. That I would do for you, immortal beloved. But what garbage is writing, are films? Too complex, too pointless. Only maybe Tarkovsky and Majidi is not garbage when compared to music, or Makanin, that's it. Music is just sheer power. Instinct, instinct - it's instinctual, and therefore the highest form of anything, any human accomplishment. I have no respect for other - I don't know, what's the word, "artists," what a stupid word, I have no respect for us, only composers, musicians. I wonder what would happen if I tried? Learned piano or violin at this age. I am just nineteen, but it's already too late. Truly I would give twenty years off my life for music. I told him once that if I could sing I would go up into the mountains and sing nasheeds for the rest of my life. I wouldn't see or look at another human being, only Allah. Maybe it's a blessing that I have no talent at all.

The night I killed myself. (I forgot the "tried to." Let it stand.) Right before I went crazy, picked up a new surname, and fucked off to Grozny for a while. I tried to cut my own throat out. My boyfriend at the time, Sasha, called the cops. Ma yelled at him. She wanted me to die. They threw me in a mental institution. The first night I stood there staring at myself in the bathroom mirror, blood still all over me, and said, like Babel, "I am asking you only one thing. Let me finish my work."

Because of Chechnya. Because of that boy who still haunts me sometimes. Because of that mistake. Death fetish. Untruth, untruth, untruth. I am never going to know what happened to me when I was a kid. Where was I in Russia? What is this accent? Who fucked me when I was a kid? Why did I think I would know the truth if I went to Chechnya? Did I just go there to die?

So, what are you? Russian? Chechen? American? What?

Ruslan gave me a gun. Not because I would need it (inshallah.) Her name was Gloria. The night Akhmed died and we thought we had to run I threw her from the jeep. I miss her.

Do you know, I'm a pacifist? I came there because I wanted to know the truth. I came there because I wanted to forgive. Because I do not have my own truth, I learned theirs. Now Akhmed is dead and I can't shake the feeling that its my fault. I am grieving, but it is not for Akhmed. I am grieving, but I do not know why.

I should have killed that man. But instead I forgave him. Why did I do that? He really should be dead.

My work. Why is it the only thing I live for? I don't give a shit about that question and I never did. It's just the way that it is. I keep on working and whenever I think it would be better to die I simply think, "No, instead of dying you should keep on working" and this is what I do. It's nothing profound. I don't care if I get published, don't think I'm doing anything important, don't even know if it's good or not, don't care, don't care. When I was a kid, before I knew how to make letters (although the superstitious Polaks in my family say I was born knowing how to read, and in truth, I do not remember learning how) I wrote out stories with stick figures. It's instinct to me. I don't trust anything else but my own instincts.

This, at very least ...