New sprouts rising from the broken stem.

Winter... a dreary, sulky weather where we all sit and lie, hibernating on the inside, expecting a sun beam to pierce through the ever-hanging clouds and shine upon us.

Winter... fog and myst, hindering the way ahead. Put your lights on, son. Once again we fight the white cold flame licking at our ankles and neck with socks, scarves, coats, ear muffs, gloves, vests, lipsticks. Fighting fire with fire... we will face our very own loneliness and pettiness before Nature by blending hands and lips with some significant other, so the fire inside does not die. Yet the land lies ready.

Winter... a grown, wrinkled man groping for his glasses amidst the darkness. It broods in, he can hardly gasp for air as all his leaves have fallen to the ground, the time has come and he is not ready, one is never ready for that final stroke, for the end of the road, the plunge into the deep. Yet he encloses the seed inside himself..

Winter is when we win, despite the freezing wind. The Sun soon is to shine upon the seeded earth, and our new self is freed to roam upon it, rejoicing the spring of the New that's come knocking at our door.

New Land In Sight

Is there anything more meaningful than moving to a place where the idea of revolution still hangs in the air?

The sense of subversion, breaking on through?

Well, it is happening to me. I am a month and a half away from a turning point in my life, the beginning of a journey where I will most definitely redefine, reshape and recreate myself as some of you know it.

Not only should you say that I will become more reddish than I am already, you need to look me in the eye and behold the turbulent merging of the old and the new in the Muscovite air, the violent surge of ancient modernised feelings, the struggle of the will, the repression of the collective and the common sense. Superstitions, arrogant Ferraris leaving a trail of opulence, a folk song in a crescendo of sound and fury, scientific minds, tea, the red flag of Komunista!, orthodox icons, the hammer, the politburo, the numbed press, the throngs of a starving, maddened crowd, a Farbeget egg, a Matryoska.

By floating eagerly at a mer du noms, a sea of words, strangely shaped and scented of musical tones, I most certainly make what makes me inferior my superiority, what seemed to be the weakest link a super power. Russians have achieved great things from their inferiority complex, something that we still have not been able to cope with properly. They have paid a price, and yet, they have become respected, recognised, even feared, as a most convenient demon for the Western Capitalist Civilisation. Most importantly, they have got a memory of who they were, and who they want to be.

Boiling red as the blood shed over decades and decades for something (immaterial to us) called "the Motherland".

Blue as the presumptions of the ever-decaying aristocracy and the newly-risen "new money", spilling litres of petrol over a restaurant bill in "Red" London.

White as the plains of an element that may freeze and burn, expand or melt, harden or soften to touch... it all comes down to how you will approach them.

That is a fair share to me. Dostoievski is by my side, smiling grimly.

Curtain call!