I feel like I should explain, because I can't remember the first eight years of my life

Before I left for Belarus, I had thought that I would start an e-mail list that would inform everyone interested (or pretending to be so) of my daily activities, my observations, and my ever heightening knowledge of life and living as perpetuated by foreign culture. Instead, I find myself tangled up in dozens of correspondences, individual, and exhausting (already, though it’s only been a week). Somehow, I think this is much more rewarding.

I live here, hazily. I still don’t remember anything, but I look at objects, and I touch objects, and they feel familiar. Now, because I am so aware of a gap in my memory, and the magic that I have tried to refill it with (only after being culturally conditioned as an American, though), I look at things a little bit longer. I try to remember specific scenes, so I can recall the time that my grandmother invited her neighbor over to show me off. And how before the neighbor came over, my uncle tried to introduce me to his friend "going into business". And how she fed me soup, and she and her neighbor sat next to each other, wearing house dresses, and sharing bread, hot dogs, and tea. How she accidentally tried to drink her neighbors tea, and the other one didn’t mention anything and insisted it was ok. How she asked me if I wanted chives in my soup because she wasn’t sure and she didn’t want to just put them in because she didn’t know what I would like.

In my apartment, I pick up objects and I recognize them, though I have not been able to recall a single interaction I’ve had or moment in which those objects had significance. I can’t remember my parents walking through the house, I can’t remember my parents eating dinner. I remember when the closet in the little bedroom split the room so that I could sleep on a couch, and my brother could sleep in his half of the room, with only a semblance of privacy.

Today, while watching the Watchmen, I remembered that I was here when my great-grand-mother died, and I think I went to her funeral, and I think I might have met her once. There was no reason for me to remember that. It was during the scene in which they are burying The Comedian. Despite the fact that I saw the movie in English, I had felt it was in Russian.

In a drawer I found a fanny pack. I am certain it is one that my mom wore in England, though I don’t think, again, that this is from remembering. It is from a photograph I must have seen.

When I was at my grandmother’s house, I almost didn’t recognize any of it. In the living room, I remembered playing with my little cousin once. We pretended to be hiding in an elevator. That elevator must have been a cupboard. I think I know which one it was.

My apartment building has a familiar smell. I think it might be urine, or dirt, or something like that. It’s indistinguishable, but familiar. It’s not very pleasant.

On the balcony, I saw a box that I recognized. I don’t recall what was ever kept in it, but now, I just noticed a pair of glasses. When my grandmother and aunt came over to see me, my grandmother mentioned losing her glasses. I looked in the box after that. They must be her glasses.

My brother laughed about how I kept asking the train attendant for more noodles on our way to Moscow the last time I was there. And how I locked myself in the bathroom to put make-up on, an hour before arriving, much to the dismay of the other people on the train who needed to use the bathroom - they lock the bathrooms thirty minutes before arrival. I didn’t know that.

I don’t remember any of those things. When we asked the train attendant if they had any noodles on our way home from Gomel, she had no idea what we were talking about. Eight years later, I have no taste of what that memory would have felt like.

I went on a walk with my brother on my second night here. We went to the same park we went to together the last time I was here. Last time, we fed birds by a canal. This time, we did the same thing, in the same place. Different birds though. The last one was a raven, or a crow. This time, it was ducks in the water, and then, just a bunch of pigeons.

My brother asked me if I had seen Kill Bill. I told him I was waiting for him because that was the last movie we were supposed to watch together when I was here last. I remember that.