Babooshkaed.

Itemization is King, and the bullet wears the crown.

• Instead of "push" and "pull" the doors here say, well, some gibberish in Cyrillic, but it turns out that what it means is "to yourself" or "from yourself." Though innocuous, I think it is an important difference. These doors make no assumption about your intent; they do not demand action, only inform you of their function. "I open towards you, but, you know, only if you want me to." Nothing is required, you sign no metaphysical agreement, and there is no breach of contract when you look at the door, read the sign, and then choose not to go in. It's the difference between a popup ad and a hyperlink; there is no act of volition, no conflict of wills required to refuse it. It makes for a less harrowing existence, at least, for those who don't have something better to be harrowed by.
  
• Amidst my philosophical meditations on the metro as a metaphor for all human interaction (see: last post), I frequently find myself on the wrong train. There are only three stops between here and the IUM, and they are, in fact, the same stops each day, so every few weeks or so I develop a wholly natural sense of confidence in the route and stop looking at the signs or listening to the announcements. Inevitably it crumbles; the engines of history and character chug inexorably on, mulching my independence to fertilize a fresh plot of self doubt - I step off a train into an entirely foreign place, pause, and wonder "Where am I?" But the real question is not where but who, and I am me, not a man who can tell you how to get from here to there, but rather a man who flies free of the strictures of only one left and one right. I lose my way in a return to self.
• Speaking of the metro, in the afternoon there's a train which has had half of its seats removed and replaced with art. Two days ago I caught it and was transported.
  
• Today at the laundromat I was, suddenly and without warning, babooshkaed. Laundry is not my area of expertise, and I try to avoid it - only in a whisper will I even admit the necessity of clean garments. Although I have been doing my own laundry for the last 12 years, it has been in a purely utilitarian and grudging fashion: I know which hole takes the clothes and which hole takes the soap. Like a young man before Internet porn, I can visualize the basic mechanics of the operation but the intricacies, the small details that turn it from a struggle to an art, are to me as magic to a muggle. I do not know what temperature anything should be washed at; if you asked me what effect the temperature had, I would say something stupid, or mumble, or change the subject, maybe throw in some science words - perhaps all at once - "It warms the clothing and then changes the ph content of my color stratum which, say, did you see the Padres game?" I would try to brush it aside and if you didn't let me you would find proving my ignorance only a Pyrrhic victory as you fell forever into its dark chasmic depths. I buy color-safe bleach not because I know the difference, but because the word "safe" comforts me. Laundry is a ritual I approach carefully, the same way each time, my chants and symbols warding off any malevolent gods. But here in Russia, they do not practice the same laundry handed down to the western world in a direct line from the ancient Roman lava-toga, no, as in all things they are positively Byzantine. Idols line the wall, Easter is a week later, and there is a machine that comes between the washer and dryer (warding off the evil spirits that occupy the scarce trodden realm between wet and dry). A Russian grandmother, seeing my ignorance of the Orthodox ways, spoke to me in tongues and with a wild gesture proceeded to do my laundry for me. Спасибо, бабушка, спасибо.
• There is no strategy to Russian Scrabble because you are only allowed to use the nominative singular. If you know both what that means and why that matters there's a good chance you don't have a tan. Also, nothing is bullet worthy without italicization.