Weddings and Bombings

A quick personal note

Hey everybody,

My Russian trip, which is only midway through, has thrown me off my writing schedule. Please forgive me for not responding to your letters in a timely fashion—I’ll get to them soon.

I am gathering a lot of material though. Russia is a weird, weird place right now.

I got married last Thursday. The drawing above is a wedding present from an old friend.

There was a big letter Z, the not-quite-swastika of the current Russian regime, on the front of the marriage registry building. Inside, my wife (then bride) found a copy of Orwell’s 1984 on the guard’s desk.

At an afterparty for a different wedding, at about 1am, standing outside an apartment building overlooking the Neva river in St. Petersburg, I took a toke and passed the joint to a person next to me.