5 August 1996

Under My Thumb

My pillow has a map of the world. In a case of life imitating art, the fabric of the Soviet Union is coming apart. Last night in my sleep I put my thumb through the fabric between Ufa and Samara (or Kuybyshev as it was called between 1935 and 1991).

It is hard to hard to survey the damage without thinking of all the cold war rhetoric of my youth. All the talk of coming under the CCCP's totalitarian yoke never came to pass; the USSR is now under my thumb. And since I don't sew, I am afraid it is now time to consign the pillowcase to the dustbin of history.