My life has changed a lot since our cat Seymour got cancer.
We've passed the $6.000 mark in his vet bills, but we're still not giving up. For example, yesterday, I spent the whole day laundering a lovely but old house to earn some extra money. Unfortunately (sorry, not sorry), this opportunity in the form of my neighbor fell on me so unexpectedly that it ruined all my art work plans.
Another story wasn't published yesterday here on Substack.
But I believe you can help me fix it today, right?
Halloween is just around the corner, and there's a story constantly spinning in my head, making me smile non-stop. It continues the topic we started last week about the difficulties of translation.
It happened in those days when my wife Oygul and I lived in New York, and I worked in a large grocery store in the middle of the Russian community on Brighton Beach, also known as "Little Odessa" and "Little Russia."
Here begins the prehistory, which you can shamelessly flip through without losing the plot.
I had an exciting art project at work about Russian immigrants at that time. It was called "People on the sidelines."
So I spent four hours a day on the subway trains, getting from our apartment in Astoria to my workplace in Brighton. I drew that project, had breakfast and dinner, and slept on the subway trains on my way to or from work.
I wanted to immerse myself in the lives of those who changed the country but couldn't assimilate and become part of their new life.
And so I ended up in a grocery store (the size of your local Walmart), the only one who speaks English.
It was Halloween eve. All employees were dressed in costumes of various wickedness. My colleague in the Bread Department Sayid and I dressed up as charming zombies.
Even though we worked in the center of "Little Russia," no one canceled English-speaking customers.
We baked bread right in the store, so when people saw the ovens behind us, they immediately wanted to get a fresh hot loaf.
They asked, "Can I get something straight from the oven?" Then, seeing that Sayid was wrinkling his eyebrows, trying to understand the question, they added, "Fresh and Hot!"
We worked from morning until evening. "This is not America for you! There are no morning, afternoon, and other shifts!" our manager said.
So I got to the stove at 7.30 am, worked until 9 pm., and had time to teach Sayid the English language.
The first words we learned were hot and fresh, of course. But here, the fact that Sayid was born and raised in Uzbekistan came into play.
The Uzbek language is very soft, and Sayid couldn't pronounce clearly "fresh." We practiced daily, but still, instead of "fresh," he got "flesh."
But let's go back to that Halloween eve, when we, dressed up as zombies, stood behind the counter of the Bred Department, and Sayid loudly shouted to the whole store in a deep bass, "Flesh! Hot flesh!"
Of course, he meant to say "fresh and hot," but it turned out that we didn't sell a single loaf of bread that day, and Sayid received a reprimand for the fact that many customers left the store as soon as they heard his loud howl about "hot flesh," because who knows these Russians, right?