May sketches
The Sulphur Baths
The marinating process has begun. I am cocooned in layers of shlopping and pattering sounds that reach me at different intensities, the ceaseless and formless sounds of water. It is a dank and foggy cocoon. I am melting in an eggy fug. The walls are like mud. The ceiling is domed like a church with a cylindrical crown on top where one would expect to see frescos. Instead, a grimy glow comes from a window that hasn't been cleaned for decades. I'm in a blue-tiled pot. Simmering, stagnating, steeping in sulphur steam. Flesh is all around. We turn into dough. Russian and Georgian echoes from the naked masseuses. I have deeply seeped into oblivion.
"Girl, come." I am laid on a concrete slab. I'm kneaded and crushed, slapped and stretched. I am scrubbed in coffee grounds. I feel like I'm in a burrow, condemned to damp gloom. No shame here. Legs wide open, women shaving pubes. Folds are lifted to access various crevices. The water splatters down. The bodies are like root vegetables, unsightly yet fascinating, distorted by life's service. Real bodies, where rippling tiers of shadow travel up backs of thighs and buttocks. An underworld of nakedness, we women stew in nonexistence, pausing our lives for the communal wash.
...Never in my life have I encountered in Russia or in Turkey anything more sumptuous than the Tiflis baths - Pushkin, Journey to Arzrum (1835)
The Chicken Livers
22:30 Giulia, my Armenian-crazy-cat-lady-neighbour summons me into her home. Rain rattles on the corrugated iron roof. I sip my tea. She's having troubles with her phone and needs help, mostly when watching Spanish baby video content on youtube. The phone's language is in Armenian and she has to translate it into Russian. We sort the problem after much head scratching and Armenian de-coding. Giulia rummages in a cupboard and stuffs crusty Soviet sweets into my hands (lemon sherbets and mints). Then she tours me about her flat, speaking of her beloved cats. We're now in the tiny kitchen, enamel pots on the stove, a hideously bright light above. Giulia opens a pot. She tells me that inside are chicken lungs. I'm sure they're chicken livers. Perhaps my Russian tech vocab is poor, but my vital internal organs knowledge is not. I express an interest. Minor error. Before I have a chance to resist, my teacup has been grabbed and chicken livers ladled into it. Bread? Go on, eat! Despite the late hour and remnants of lemon sherbets in my mouth, I oblige, wondering at the mighty force of bossy Soviet elders.
Didube Bus Station
I bring daisies for Manana the coffee lady. She's very pleased. Sat within a stall next door and drew among the wet seedlings in paper packets and jars of tea and beans. The stall holder points to me and tells anyone who'll listen that I'm English. I feel like a prize duck bought from a rare breeds market. He gives me five almonds, 'a talisman to keep you safe'. I leave with a bag of sweets.
Chats under the Almond Tree
It's thick and muggy and bright and breathy. Frogs are kvak kvaking and squelching in the ravine below and swifts wipe the air with their blunt arrowhead shapes. We go down to the ravine. Tortoises clatter through the grasses and orange snakes whip down to the river. We sit below an almond tree and crack the nuts with two flat stones. It feels prehistoric. Tiny insects land and inspect us. Each lunchbreak is an escape to paradise.
Morning run
I run past men putting down tarmac. The sticky globs fill the street with a bitter smell. I get lost and come to a dead-end under a mulberry bush. I eat some and then see a cherry tree. While I eat these too, I gaze at the next tree, a pomegranate, imagining the ruby globes in autumn. On the route back I smell honeysuckle and lime flowers, and then the smell of tar. No more men, no road signs, in Georgia, your safety is on you.
Crossing
I am walking to work and stop at a busy road. I see a man in a car who's waiting to turn. I can see that after the next three cars there's a gap and I'll be able to cross. I don't mind waiting. But the man seems angry, he suddenly swerves his car vertically across the road and blocks the oncoming traffic. He waves at me to walk. A crossing fit for a queen.
Snapping sunflower seeds
There's a contemplative value to snapping a sunflower seed. Or a way to boredom bust. The Spanish girls at school used to snack on these 'pipas' but I first learnt to do it on a balcony with two 13 year-olds. I like to sit with others and share a moment of communal clicking or to sit alone and savour my thoughts per each seed. Often, and more sad to see, there are the men at bus stations or the side of the road who snap and spit away the shells, remnants themselves, discarding the shells like the hours of their life, a lifetime of waiting for something to happen.
Multi-national meetings DRAFT
Lived with silent Japanese flat mate, who's learning English and Russian here in Georgia. To practice English, he watched clips of Boris Johnson and the Queen during coronavirus and Hermione Granger. He's a beginner, hats off to him.
In one day I met people from Jordan, Iran, Israel, Morocco, Egypt, France, Italy, Georgia, Japan, Russia, Germany, Turkmenistan.
