Translated from, as I wrote it then, "that bizarre form of drunk garbled Russian that is my native tongue."

I remember a cafe near the spectre of a medieval tower in downtown Moscow, my head wrapped around medieval monks and definitions of sins and punishments. I wonder; What was I trying to get at, there? What does the timbre of that cafe represent, that sense of Moscow's cold and early spring? I convince myself that I can reinterpret, and renegotiate, those meanings. I convince myself that a sincere writer can't worry about what is en vogue (a question for the opportunist and worst kind of literary critic).

I can't fill in all the gaps of the void. There must be silences while I still decide upon which side the divine hammer's (Tolstoy-is-God-construct-the-writer-is-dead-Tolstoy-is-dead-God-is-dead) blow must fall. There can't be synthesis, can't be ultimatum, only --

He asks, "What will you write about today?"

I say, "Probably I'll put her through the same situation I'm in."

He says, "That's a horrible thing to say. That's doubly hurtful."

The Wrathful Poetess said her poetry workshop became sick of love poems. I'm scared my workshop will be sick of discontented male aesthetes.