A note from our correspondent out at Cape Fligely:
The fine spring continues as the glaciers collapses around us. It seems almost like a happy tune, or perhaps the exact opposite thereof. I am reminded not only of Napolean's last words but also of his third words. If only I could get an internet connection here like I could in Omsk!
The woman I love she loves another man. Although this is not why I have stationed myself at the extreme end of my beloved Russia, like a Greenpeace tanker relieving itself seventeen leagues from the protest site. No. As a chronicler, I must chronicle. As a note taker, I must take notes. As a Hemingway fan, I must fan Hemingway. So too it is with the War On Sailing.
A chap called Gordeyov comes by every other fortnight to make sure I am not a chronicle-sicle. He's a well-mannered but it's obvious his most recent sexual partners have walked on four legs. I am not, to be sure, talking about Chernobyl survivors, but the local flora. A man's needs must needs to be tended to, to be sure. If only he & I spoke the same language!
Doubtless you would find this as charming as the Nova crew, which came & went in less than seventy-two hours, didn't. I don't spend every waking moment entirely awake, but I have stared into the sun that doesn't rise, nor fall, depending on the time of the year, & I have been collecting (as you requested) the vital links between Upper East & Right-Hand-Corner West which may prove valuable to someone when the smoke clears.
To wit: nearly no one here knows about the show "Two & A Half Men." Despite a fundamental love-hate relationship with Vladimir Putin, the townsfolk on the cliff down the lane instead choose to spend their time ironing, washing, bickering & dickering. When I even attempted to introduce a simple transistor radio into their homes, I was forced to endure a lecture about salting fish that still burns in my ears today!
Is this the colloquial village which Erasmus alluded to? Or is this the creepy colony which Lovecraft forced to put all its clothes back on? I don't want to die as a didactic dilettante, so I will spare you the extra allusions I've collected during the Writer's Strike - I want us to appreciate this scenery for the pre-apocalyptic milieu it truly is. We can live most anywhere they'll deliver pizza - why not live somewhere where all the stoves are the size of pizza ovens?
There are doubtless other things to report - I've got a hell of problem with a bird that might be an erne but I don't really know if ernes exist, as I only know about them thanks to New York Times crosswords. But a dispatch from a small fire a world away from the front should alert everyone that the War On Sailing waits for no one. Indeed, it is rather anxious & needs to get going.
My love to the bookkeeper!
