2012 A Happy New Year!

I have been away for a while. I have been busy researching the notion of insight, inner eyes and finding a new vision for the new year. It turns out that all you need is a good surgeon, an over-worked imagination and some Shakespeare. For more on this, you can read the above new page An Inner Eye.

Meanwhile, my new year’s resolution, emerging fully formed from my recent experiences, is simply to KEEP CALM – no matter what happens.

I wish all my readers a happy, successful, healthy, beautiful Dragon year; full of fun, wisdom, insight, the ability to see what you need to see and be seen when you want to be.

From the Invisible Woman with Love. Happy 2012!

Ruslan and Lyudmila

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(Letter from Russia, No.1) Dear Ruslan, Like the lady Lyudmila, I have learned the art of not being seen. A turn, a flip, a tilt of the wizard’s hat (she knocked it flying off his head in a scuffle,) and … Continue reading →

Home from Home

“Are you going home for the summer?” a colleague asked me.

A perfectly innocent question, but difficult to answer, because of the word ‘home’. After a small hesitation, I replied that my family and I are going to England for a month. Shifts in language and changes in vocabulary are significant in relation to changes of thought, feeling and cultural position. I suppose this means that I have begun to truly consider Russia as home. That’s a huge idea to hide within a four letter word.

Shortly afterwards, I was invited onto Sam Gerran’s radio show ‘Home from Home’, in which he interviews foreign expats living in Moscow about their lives in Russia. He has his own fascinating stories to tell, and I wish I had managed to get around to asking him if he considers himself Russian now. I wonder if a foreigner ever truly feels a part of the country he or she is now living in?

Our conversation is here – Home from Home at Voice of Russia:
Home from Home: Sam Gerrans talking with Sarah Semyanik

If you listen and you like it, please add your vote – just below the link there’s a click to be clicked. And if you are an expat, and do (or don’t) know where Home is now, I’m really interested in your comment here on this post; please feel free to leave one.

A New Vision

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Look out – I have super-vision now! Like the bionic man, my eyes now have a zoom-lens accuracy, and can focus across great distances, although without his sound effects, thankfully. Since my second cataract operation, I am a new woman … Continue reading →

Seeing Eye to Eye

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Perhaps we never truly know people until we lie next to them in bed? Or in other words, if you really want to get to know Russian people, spend a night in a Moscow hospital and sleep alongside them. There … Continue reading →

Thresholds

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My favourite place in Moscow is one particular flagstone, just outside Red Square, with the Bolshoi Theatre distantly and invisibly at my back and to my right, Jukov upon his horse, incessantly cantering into battle. The most magical feature of … Continue reading →