The girl with the world on her side.
Posted by Kristina Yenko , Tuesday, December 29, 2009 4:45 PM
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At Dawn
Posted by Kristina Yenko , Wednesday, December 9, 2009 12:03 AM
No one lights a lamp in order to hide it behind the door: the purpose of light is to create more light, to open people’s eyes, to reveal the marvels around.
I am going back, or, rather, part of me is going back to that world where only what we can see, touch and explain makes sense. I am in no hurry to get back to the world of speeding tickets, arguments with bank cashiers, eternal complaints about the weather, to horror films and blackouts. But only partially.
This is the universe I’ll have to live with for the rest of my days. I’ll walk many steps into the path of age, and the past will become a distant memory, which will in the end, make me ask myself: How could I have been so blind? How could I have been so ingenuous?
I also know that, at night, another part of me will remain wandering in space, in contact with things as real as a packet of cigarettes and the glass of gin before me now.
Sometimes I wonder, what if one never woke from that space, never left it. What if you spent days walking, eating, moving, but you weren’t there at all. Your mind is restless, you hear your thoughts of another taste, another smell. Confusion slowly creeps into your skin, through your teeth, up your hair. You sit behind closed doors like a night owl and write notes to self, but it’s all mangled, or either the pen is faulty.
Equilibrium
Posted by Kristina Yenko , Thursday, September 17, 2009 2:38 PM
Before the surface dries out
Before the basement burns down
Before the world is overwhelmed
Don’t tell me you give in.
To find it floating in my static dream,
This dream that colours life
And I’ve finally turned to my last page
To see you are stainless
To see you are living
Even though I am dying
My war is over:
Many things left unsaid
With no resurrection
With footprints caving in
But only in my sleep.
Humid
Posted by Kristina Yenko , Wednesday, September 2, 2009 9:20 AM
What is it about evening light,
that has the air laced with sweet perfume
Bare neck and shoulders bathed with gold
And dandelions almost too rich to stand tall
The sky was painted over, a perfect uniform violet
Soft little bugs bumped into each other
and I breathed in the brimming fluid of life
Two strangers turned into dust
walking along empty ghost roads,
still warm from the day before
Then the last thread of sun melts along the curves
of hills, soaked in hungrily,
Gone.
What is left, is that small moment.
Just one memory.
The first night of spring.
Nocturnes
Posted by Kristina Yenko , Friday, August 7, 2009 1:25 PM
Woken neither by sound nor light
He leaves the house
And stands outside
To look at the empty
Drawn by impulse
He doesn’t understand
But it doesn’t matter
For he is no longer there
He has grown tired and
Death speaks for the last time.
Irkutsk
Posted by Kristina Yenko , Wednesday, August 5, 2009 8:47 PM
I counted the wooden panels above my head. There were six. I couldn’t sleep. Distant voices crept into the compartment and it was then and there that I decided that trying to rest on this hard bunk bed was futile. I rolled off the edge and stood up, peering into the neighboring bunk across from me. A man was breathing heavily, his moustache twitching as he exhaled. He must have joined us at a stop-over during the night. Moustache rolled over and let out a snore.
Snow. It was everywhere. The train window was small enough for a child’s head, but nonetheless it fuelled the curiosity of travelers to peer through it greedily, hungry to soak in the vast plains of Siberian forest. I grabbed my jeans and made my way to the nearest toilet. Old babushkas pushed past me, their voices harsh and aggressive. I slid the cubicle open and was greeted by an angry face. Angry spat toothpaste out and abruptly turned to fire some rude Russian my way. He didn’t like to be disturbed. Perhaps he should lock the door next time. I lost count of how many unfriendly locals made it clear of their disapproval for westerners.
Breakfast was interesting. The restaurant carriage was full, most tables taken by loud families, vodka bottles at hand. Toast? They couldn’t understand my attempts from my handy pocket language book. I pushed the pickled herring around on my plate and decided I would wait until we reached Irkutsk for something less intense to stomach.
Moustache was still snoring when I returned. I sat on the edge of the bed and watched the blur of mountains and sky that rushed past. I don’t know how long I sat there, transfixed, with the occasional snore interrupting my thoughts. I must have fallen asleep for I woke up with a jolt when an officer hammered on our compartment door. The train had stopped. Moustache was already gone. I grabbed my bags and slid through the exit, showing my credentials to the inspector and stepping out onto the train platform.
For a moment, my face felt as if I had been whacked with a pan. The cold was immense. I hastily wedged my gloves onto my hands and followed the crowd through the terminal. There were so many people. Children, with so many layers of fur on that they started to resemble a bear themselves; old couples clutching bags of groceries; young mothers pushing prams laden with blankets; men in balaclavas and business suits. They all eyed me with suspicion.
I heard shouts behind me. Some officers caught sight of me and beckoned me over. They asked for my passport, my ticket, my bag. They searched through all the pockets, and then they felt through my clothing. I couldn’t understand what was happening and my feeble attempts of Russian went ignored. They seemed satisfied that I posed no threat and left me there tying my laces back up.
I watched them as they marched off and searched a couple of young men, American by the sounds of it. My spirits lifted when I heard the English words peppering the terminal. But something was wrong. An officer pulled one of the guys in real close and gave him a solid punch. He brandished a passport and threw it at his colleague.
“What’re you doing?!”
“It’s valid!”
They must’ve thought it was a fraud. Fake passports can lead to only one thing: drugs. The officers roughly steered the two men into another corridor ignoring their protests. I looked around: nobody seemed to notice what had happened. All eyes were fixed on their own business.
“You’re lucky to still be standing here.”
I turned to find a man standing next to me. He extended his hand.
“Oleg,” he said.
I shook it weakly and muttered my name.
“You see, if the passport is new, it is most likely fake,” he explained. “You’re not from around here, and they will always assume about you. Good thing they didn’t find anything on you though or you won’t be seeing your own country again.” His thick accent lingered in the air and with a grin he shuffled off in the opposite direction.
Uneasy, I resumed my walk to the platform, my eye out for more officers. It was light outside now and I could see market stalls being set-up on the platform. Searching for some loose change in my coat, I bought a pastry-looking thing that smelt something like potato; a varenik is what it was called. It warmed my throat and I realized how hungry I was. In the waiting room I sat flicking through a pamphlet of Moscow. The glossy pictures of perfected buildings and sculptures stared back at me, waiting for me. I swallowed the last of the varenik and closed my eyes. The train was coming soon and with it an adventure.
La Condition Humaine
Posted by Kristina Yenko , Thursday, July 23, 2009 4:43 PM
The shadows melted rather than stretched on the ground, bathed in bluish phosphorescence; the last flash of the superb evening that was being staged far away, somewhere in the infinity of worlds, of which only a reflection suffused the earth was flowing faintly through an archway with blackened ivy.
Almost alone in the bar-room of the little Grosvenor Hotel, Grinko was revolving an ash-tray on his out-stretched forefinger. He crumpled a piece of paper on which he had just been making an imaginary gift to each of his friends.
In spite of the vast reaches of the night, Kyo felt near to him as in a closed room.
“Has this lasted long?”
“Very. As long as I can remember. For some time it’s been less frequent. And I only remember… those things. I hate memories, as a rule. And I seldom have any: my life is not in the past, it’s before me.”
Silence.
“…The only thing I’m afraid of- afraid- is going to sleep. And I go to sleep every day.”
A clock struck ten. Some people were quarrelling, in short Chinese yelps, deep in the night.
He was silent.
“Do you dream much?” He went on.
The window condensed from their breaths. Kyo stood up and left his stool warm. Grinko was motionless.
People passed them by. Back and forth. Back and forth. They carried umbrellas and wore raincoats. Their heads are bent against the relentless weather and against their relentless lives. It will take more than bad weather to silence the human mind. Maybe so. But then we were people living in the darkness, now we are people dying in the light. Which is better? When you kill off all the demons, those angels might die too.
Illumination
Posted by Kristina Yenko 12:21 PM
Lately I’ve been asking myself questions.
I suppose you could call me Neurotic- Absurd, even. But of course, everybody would like to think they are Unforgettable. A name. I need a name. Amory Blaine or Anthony Pach- clever onomastics thought up on a whim. But no, let you know me as I am.
Through days of anguish, months of torment, years of longing to lead myself back there where no idea is stale and passion cold. Oh those nights drowned in liquor, stretched for days. It was there that I moved silently through my world, drifting between people and places; dissociated from any surrounding. Conversation: muffled, distorted.
Twisted houses, washed with age, wade in pools of dust, spuming clouds of charcoaled smoke. The distant ghastly creak of a train sliding into the station. Adrupt, with an unsightly fizz, the crimson glow of suburbs fade and simpers against the obscurity of ashen fields. The horizon ebbs and flows as the stagnant browns of a Sydney dusk stain the dimming sky.
I explore the house with verve of naivety, shouting echoes to greetings and chasing my own shadows past candlelit rooms where bodies grind tangled in honeysuckle. Outside the cigarette smoke wafts like steam from the surface of a boiling tub, swirling and swinging in the soft summer breeze, and melts into the haze of powdered white faces. Bathed in a sickly yellow of a dying sun, guests bob and sway like rubber ducks in a sinful pool of bottles and music. Bubbles of beer ooze up from murky suds, sinuous and soapy; they rise high above the greasy garden and burst with a resounding wheeze.
The kitchen is tight: all the guys and girls arranged in clusters, conversational bouquets. Not a solitary figure, not a lonely face but mine. The surest cure to vanity, as I understood it, was loneliness. They would pin their meals with steely forks- tearing flesh with boiling teeth and spitting sin like a sumptuous sauce while I tried desperately to eat soup with a fork. Photographs of sickly white wisps hung on rosed walls- the narcissist mirror of families with too much.
Words float through empty rooms, unabated; they drift eternally away from meaning. The corridors gradually fill with silence as the early morning drifts in waif-like strands. Tiny lights soak through the lace curtains. For everyone, this is where another chapter ends. All that’s left now is a cold apartment harboured by sour walls.
Alone.
Autumn
Posted by Kristina Yenko , Tuesday, May 19, 2009 11:24 AM
Everything begins to slow down, or rather, the process of decay speeds up. The world around has to smother itself in layers to keep warmth in, to keep life. Ironically, trees shed their bright, crisp coats of delicious reds and burgundies, Kissing the monotone pavements with their dried up flames. Autumn is my peak season. It is where the two polarities meet: summer and winter. It is where winter begins to win the war. The skies cloud over, birds nestle themselves away for slumber. It is where many faces are tucked into thick scarves and feet into ankle deep leather. Fall. You would wonder why it was even called that. Surely, the way leaves dance gracefully to the ground is not a mere ‘fall’. Many find the colder months to be a time of reflection and solitude: getting to know yourself better, or perhaps tweaking certain pieces to make your puzzle work. Having been experiencing such intense emotions during the spring and summer months, I only wonder what the leaves will bring me now. Today is the first step I will take, and I simply cannot anticipate much longer. I am embracing to depart for this adventure, for this journey. Enveloping oneself in autumn is as exhilarating as stepping of a pool edge, being completely swallowed in another world of liquid where you cannot distinguish whether your skin is dry or soaked. I will ply the waters of these creative worlds. In my photography, I will try to capture the essence of autumn into my subject’s world. I want to take them on a little trip where ‘impossible’ is even possible. Where imagination is. We can step onto little paper airplanes and fly straight into the heart of change, our breaths condensing from dry lips.
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