SIXTEEN: SAN JOSE //childhood and spicy coffee//

Katya Grokhovsky, San Jose, 2010

inner ability to not compromise,

you learn from your work not your life..

You shouldn't compromise.

San Jose: arrival: stay with old-time, Ukraine- time, childhood-time family friends.These people know me from birth.Once upon a time I grew up in Odessa, Ukraine. Side by side with a boy and girl and their parents. We shared our young lives, spent a lot of times together climbing trees and getting into general, common kid trouble. We looked after each other, we had no baby sitters, while our parents worked 9 to 5. We were happy and awaiting life. Eating green apricots and berries by large dirty handful to the point of extremely upset stomachs; house and guest under father's desk; be my guest, I'll make you a sweet cup of tea and ham and half-of-baguette sandwich, butter? yes, please. Playing a piano badly and with no interest, a piano, which both set of parents bought collectively and we all shared. Pink short cotton nightgown with small blue flowers on it; horizon of wheat and corn fields to freely run in, occasionally happily falling and scratching knees on the dry dusty dirt roads, bleached by the sun golden hair and dark bronze sweaty bruised skin; who can forget or not romanticize their childhood? It is inevitable. Gypsies? yes, they lived below us in an empty apartment, always coming and going. You were afraid? never. not of them. Others. Adults and their stale air of sometimes failed lives. I was afraid of them, I was afraid I will become like them.

Soft breeze through a chiffon curtain blowing hot wind onto my outstretched sleepy fatigued body on a large bed, white limousine outside, whose? Suburbia and soft. At rest. Simulacrum of some kind of home. where?

Russian style barbecue made by two Armenian men. Familiar. "Hysterical emotional Russian women".... I come from this. …spicy coffee …….she meets me in an orange mini dress and white leather stiletto heels…bleached dirty blond hair...I look like a western female in my little straw black men's hat, black T-shirt and torn blue jeans and snickers….she looks perplexed, yet very friendly. I tense up..what will we talk about?

So, what is it you do? what is it for? How can that which you do can be applied to life and to what function? No "useful" function? …I cannot explain anything at all…I try to humor it but I'm too tired and now, annoyed. Have I not learned anything?

It's hot and pleasant. I sleep till noon. I feel closer to home…this feels Australian already, plus the Russian, the memories the familiar vague ground of resistance is coming back…annoyance at not knowing how to talk to these people I used to be around all the time as a child.Then we had no problems. We are so incredibly apart now. I cannot contain it. My Russian tongue feels tight. I need to loosen it, I haven’t spoken it for a while..I'm going soon to my parents. Point zero. For now, California provides a transitional point and a cushion. Rest. Stop. Digest. New York is noisy, right? I have never been. Yes. And so is Chicago. You must be rich to be able to be so free? Rich? I try to politely drop the subject. No I don't make paintings as such, only as part of an idea, a project, no I don't make marble sculptures no I don't, I don't. What is it you do? Nothing. Who needs it? Where is the market for it, who buys it, what for? Maybe I shouldn't have come here.

I gesture towards the head and heart many times. That's all I have for now. Head and heart. I cannot remember the last time I sold my art. I can draw, yes. You can put it on a wall. Yes. I feel extremely aware and somehow, wide…something has happened, my world is larger than large….an Armenian man is suddenly interesting to me…this is not my world at all…he observes me, asks polite questions..nothing about my personal life until the very late in the night..and now we want to know…marriage? Family? Boyfriend? No I say, I'm not interested. Never been my goal to get married…he ponders. Yes. The right person, your person, will come. You are deep. I bet you love to just think.You see, you love to fly long distances, you use it well, you think, digest. We cannot wait until it is over, we drink and waste our "nothing" time, whereas you treasure it. Am I right? He is right.

I rub my hands with glee over flying time..the time of transition….my time to win and win back…….Yes, I murmur. How strange….yes. I'm never bored. Boredom? Irrelevant, my boredom, if exists, is a subject matter. My thoughts fly me over far.

It is a strange compulsion to observe and not take part….I feel like a child when I do that, observing the adults, wishing silently and angrily to grow up soon as possible..I'm too smart to be a child, I remember thinking…silently watching, hardly speaking. Suddenly a tiny unlikely leader of our courtyard and boys…our dusty streets and wheat fields….corn fields..stealing corn, owned by no one.Falling of bikes and leading boys into freezing water in an outdoor kindergarten pool….getting pneumonia the next day…nearly dying..breaking limbs ice skating…twice…painting watercolor still lives in private lessons in an artist’s studio… We exchanged our one room place outside of Odessa and my grandma’s one bedroom apartment for a 3 room place and moved in together…..

Until I was 15 and then …suddenly: Australia.. not so sudden. 2 years of painfully immigrating; slowly…A process. I didn't understand it . It was too surreal to fully take into my head.….I kept telling my girlfriends I'm moving to Australia ….no one believed it..it can't be…how can that be..that doesn't exist…although we studied its geographical location and history…it was a place in my textbooks where nobody lives. Right? Wrong.

The van is coming for us in 2 hours.....Someone’s birthday party and furniture is being taken out of our apartment day by day. I'm watching a Brazilian soap on TV: The rich also cry…..they come for the TV….and the chair I am sitting on…I go out to the street and meet my friends..walk my dog…some girls cant say goodbye…they come to the train station, from which we take the train to Kiev. It is the last time I ever see that street where our apartment was. Just a gloomy street full of communist apartment blocks, balconies with glass and clothing and jars…my first kiss... my cheeks burning with desire…he was a gypsy…he came everyday in a new stolen car; he told me he was 16; he was 18 and one day ended up in jail..his brother came by my apartment one day and gave me a message ..I never saw both of them again…..that was my first love and a fist disaster. It followed on from there…

Never wait for your Prince on a white horse….Never. All are prostitutes….some do it for money some do it for dinners some do it for houses, jewellery….careers…?

Reading Topol… "Russia in bed".

The world of brothels……hatred of men.

Anywhere. How did I ever make it out of all that?

Mirrors catching sunlight….flying around the kitchen as a frantic reminder of movement….and life.

Desperately glamorous….going to a supermarket in your heels and lipstick. You never know. Never know what?

Remember yourself? Where were you going?

Sensing freedom..somewhere else….where there are no weddings at 16 ..

Watching Beverly Hills 90210 on stolen cable network and dreaming of that made-up, fantastic paradise. Oh California...

Those days of dieting and hungry sleep; running twice a day; wishing for a very thin body: starving my brain; almost fainting..dressing up into extremely tight clothes and dancing on stages at Russian discos…

...breaking free eventually.