in guiding young illiterates to the light, educators often make use of a simple but effective graphic organizer called the "Venn" diagram. these two intersecting circles are meant to make blooming minds understand how separate entities or concepts can be disparate while nonetheless retaining some conjunctive qualities. that's the story of my life. i have two names for this one body - my given, Christian name, which my Slavic-minded (or simply phonetically agile) friends call and know me by, as well as an amero-anglicized reduction of the first syllable of my real name which everyone else in the world knows me as. how can i possibly live by one name that is so regal and beautiful and conjuring of images of medieval queens in one language, and invoking of bald Jewish men in another??? as if first-generation discombobulation weren't bad enough, where does one truly find the peaceful center of these two intertwined circles in this humanoid case, and why does it have to so painfully extend to just about everything i'm aware of, from personal hygiene to politics? hair does not ever need to be washed, hair needs to be washed every day. Americans are awesome, Americans are annoying. Europeans are awesome, Europeans are morons. I'm American, I'm European. I'm European, I'm American. I'm everything, I'm nothing. I'm nothing, I'm everything.
i remember learning that Anna Akhmatova, the famous Russian poet, who wrote such devastatingly beautiful...words, considered herself half whore, half nun. i remember thinking how perfect that was, that i didn't want to live life any other way. someone draw up a Venn diagram on that.
