Going Native

Well, faithful readers, you may have noticed many references to cats and dogs sprinkled throughout my posts.  The truth is, I don’t even mention all the animals that stir my emotions.  There are so many strays here, I'm torn between wanting to befriend them and not wanting their fleas.  Yesterday I saw an old lady on her way home from the market stand outside our pad, as four kitties lined up and she fed them all chunks of fresh fish.  She told me their names and most striking character traits.  This is something I’ve noticed: people adopt stray animals and care for them without inviting them into their homes.  Interesting compromise, eh?

My cultural excursion yesterday was to the Ukrainian National Art Museum.   It is very beautiful and engrossing, especially if you like eastern orthodox iconography, which indeed I do.  I like to challenge myself to identify the different saints and apostles.  I’m fairly good with the really recognizable ones, St. George for example, but then I’m pretty hopeless with, sadly, the female saints.  Also, anyone know what the Old Testament Trinity is?  They were all over that museum, and seem to have something to do with fish...

So the museum is organized both chronologically and thematically.  That is to say, it begins with the oldest religious art, then moves through more modern and then old non-religious art.  For a museum that took under two hours to traverse, they have a very impressive avant-garde collection, including some Rodchenko, Archpenko and many others whose names I had never heard.  In fact, my favorite pieces in the whole museum were by two artists with whom I was unfamiliar.  One had a name like Zhvuk and the other, hanging right next to it, had a longer, and hence now forgotten name.  There were whole galleries by single artists and others that showcased groups.  I also really enjoyed paintings by Taras Shchevchenko, who seems to be Ukraine’s Pushkin.  Not to mention paintings of Shchevchenko by all kinds of different artists that were sprinkled throughout the museum.  All in all, a great time.

That evening, we went back to the nearby market, which seems to be a daily habit.  It was a chilly day, which gave me a perfect excuse to make lentil soup.  It came out great, but in that huge market, I couldn’t find celery.  Maybe it was because I talked shit about celery the day before...  Anyway, we’ve been jamming on these red lentils that maybe taste the same but just look so exotic.  At night we drank wine and watched It Happened One Night.  It’s no Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but still great.  Then I managed to sleep almost 12 hours.  Today it looks like it’s gonna be another lazy, chilly day, with lentil soup leftovers, old movies and a trip to the market.  I’m starting to feel like my friend Ailey’s tshirt, “Don’t go loco, hug a local!”