"Ordinary people had dreamed it up and put it together, building towers on rafts in swamps and cross frozen spines of mountains. They'd waded through rivers and babbled in trigonometry. They hadn't dreamed in the way people usually used the word, but they'd imagined a different world, and bent metal around it. And out of all the sweat and swearing and mathematics had come this... thing, dropping words across the world as softly as starlight." Terry Pratchett
Ovechkin established his reputation within the Dynamo Moscow system by scoring 56 goals at the age of 11, surpassing the previous record held by Pavel Bure, who had scored 53 goals.
imagine ilya breaking records at 11, thinking the mhl is a possibility, really getting known in moscow so young that even the minister of sport (svetlana's dad!) reached out, he just had to keep it up a few years and he could bring his mom over to north america when he got drafted...
HEY WHY WOULD YOU SAY THIS
ok here's what i'm imagining:
------
alexei waits for him after the game, even though ilya knows the way home. ilya's hair is still wet and curling onto his forehead, so he shoves his hat in his pocket along with his hands. alexei's quiet, which suits ilya fine; when he blinks there's still motion burned into his eyelids, lanes closing and opening up, the straight shot into the net.
"you broke the record," alexei says after a while. "bure's. most goals in a season."
ilya's known for a month he was going to do it. his coach had squeezed his shoulder when he got back on the bench, nearly too hard. "so?"
alexei kicks a rock down the road. his fingers are twitching in his pockets; maybe he's stolen one of mama's cigarettes again.
"they said you could be the next larionov," alexei says. "can you believe that?"
"who?"
"some old guys at the game. how the fuck should i know?"
there are more old guys watching ilya every time he plays. "i don't want to be the next larionov," ilya says. "who cares? i'm gonna be the first me."
alexei scoffs. "you think you're better?"
"why not? i already beat bure."
"what about federov?"
this gives ilya pause. "i don't know," he says cautiously. "i'm going to try, anyway."
"that's ridiculous," alexei says, which ilya doesn't bother responding to, so there's just wind and quiet for a while.
they're nearing the alley where the cat comes sometimes. it's shy but when ilya leaves herring there it'll be gone the next day. sasha says they could make a trap and catch it. svetlana called him stupid.
"so you want to go to america?"
ilya blinks. beside him alexei's chewing on his lip, even though papa keeps telling him to stop. "they're all there," he points out. federov, kozlov, fetisov. "the mlh. it's where everyone goes."
"uncle maxim says america's for degenerates."
"uncle maxim is crazy," ilya says. he goes around wearing his medals and yells a lot. "mama likes america. american movies. american music." she used to turn the radio on in the kitchen and hum under her breath because she didn't know the words. when ilya came home after practice she'd kiss him on the forehead and pick him up, spin them both around in big circles, but then he got too big. "the mlh pays a lot of money," ilya says, electrified by the thought that comes next. "she could come with me."
"what?" alexei says. "no way. what would she do in america, watch all your stupid games? she doesn't even do that now."
ilya bristles. "she gets tired," he says. she gets tired a lot. "but she won't have to do anything in america. i'll have a cleaner and a cook and she can just--"
"ilya, idiot, she won't know anybody!"
"she'll have me, won't she? and she can make new friends." there used to be people in the house all the time, drinking tea and gossiping until mama's eyes were creased from laughing, but now there aren't, so she won't miss them, probably. anyway, there are phones. if she wants she can call. in america she could do anything.
"she won't want to," alexei says. his face is turning red. "you can go, okay, but mama's staying here. she likes it here. america is--" he waves a hand, words failing. "she won't fucking like it."
they're nearly home. "she will," ilya says spiteful, "let's ask her," and marches into the house. alexei thinks he knows everything, but he doesn't know mama. she doesn't like it here. she gets so sad. in america she can dance in the kitchen again. in america--
"mama, you'll come with me, right--"
"mama, ilya's being stupid, tell him--"
mama's still sleeping; she doesn't move. "mama," ilya says into the quiet of the bedroom. "mama, wake up."
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And yes I DO think that Shane was velcro baby with Yuna and I think she let it go on just a little too long. In my mind, Shane is a rainbow baby several times over and Yuna just...never quite gets past that with how permissive she is of him as a young child. So yes Yuna IS going to pick up Shane from daycare at ten-thirty AM on a Tuesday because the teacher called and said he was having a difficult time calming down after drop-off. And yes there is a stretch of six months or so when Shane is six and struggling with nightmares during which Yuna and David do not have sex one single time because Shane is in their bed like clockwork by nine PM every night. And yes Yuna continues picking Shane up and balancing him on her hip until she literally cannot do so anymore. And she cries, somewhere where nobody can see her, the first time Shane doesn't reach out to hold her hand in the grocery store anymore--and he's already too old to have been doing it for this long but fuck. Fuck. And from the day she brings him home from the hospital to the night before he moves out of her house permanently at age nineteen, if he is sleeping under her roof, and if she wakes up in the middle of the night, she cannot go back to sleep without cracking open the door of his bedroom and checking to make sure his chest is rising and falling.
Sometimes, occasionally, on random nights, she'll wake up and she won't know why and she has to call him to make sure it wasn't some kind of sign. And she knows it's probably bad and she knows it's probably not fair to his sleep schedule or to whatever personal life he may be trying to have but she just can't help it. And usually she only has to call once for him to pick up, voice bleary and sleep-deep, and he'll just say, "I'm fine, mom, go to sleep," because he knows her so well, her velcro baby.
And then once or twice it's two in the morning and it takes three calls for him to pick up and by the time he finally does she's pacing in the hallway in front of her and David's bedroom and the sound of his voice, slightly out of breath and strangely awake for this time of night, strikes her with icy relief.
"Mom," he sighs, "Sorry, I'm fine, I was just--I was, uh, asleep. And I didn't hear my phone."
"Oh, that's okay," Yuna says, even though she can tell he wasn't asleep and isn't sure why he's lying to her. She's been encouraging him to, like, live a little. Go out for more than just team bonding. Be a little fucking wild--be a twenty-something in one of the most interesting cities in the world. Surely he knows she wouldn't judge him.
And then she hears a rustle of sheets and a clearing of a throat that sort of very clearly didn't come from close enough to the phone for it to be Shane's throat it came from. And as soon as she hears it she knows that she shouldn't have, and that she needs to forget she did, and so she does.
"A-anyway, Mom, I gotta get back to sleep," Shane says. "We're on ice first thing in the morning and Coach isn't gonna go easy after that shitshow tonight, so..."
"Theriault always makes it personal about Boston," Yuna muses.
"Yeah, well, it's Boston. So, um. G'night and I love you and tell Dad that I'll see him on Thursday after his, uh, banquet thing."
"Will do. Love you too, sweetheart." There's a beat during which Shane should be hanging up the phone, but he doesn't, because he can probably tell that she has more she wants to say.
"Mom," he says, a little impatient, but he doesn't hang up. Sometimes, Yuna is glad that Shane is her only baby, because she genuinely doesn't know where she would fit twice as much love in her body.
"Just--are you...I mean..." She wants to ask are you happy, are you lonely, are you WITH someone right now and if you are please just tell me if they take care of you--
But, of course, she can't say any of that because Shane really, truly is not the baby in her arms or the child wrapped around her leg anymore, and she has to make her peace with that even if it means not knowing if he's okay.
"You know you can always talk to me, right?" she says finally.
And Shane just sighs, still a little impatient and frustrated, but his voice is gentle when he says, "Yeah, mom, I know."
I love this headcanon because mine starts from the opposite place -- that David desperately wanted a baby, that Yuna Second Wave Feminism Hollander wasn't so sure and HATED maternity leave and the infant stage and basically shoved Shane at David as soon as he walked through the door in the evenings, that she and Shane didn't truly bond until he got old enough for hockey and talking but after that they were utterly inseparable -- but it ends in the same one, with phone calls out of nowhere and obsessive maternal worry and certain filial understanding and appreciation of that care.
The world’s passenger railways — 852 notable train routes on one map, from the Trans-Siberian to the Shinkansen. No basemap: the rail lines alone draw the continents. Interactive version, free: https://trainrouter.com
As today is the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, it’s a great time to revisit Dinah from Devon’s memory of this historic event. And yes, still makes me laugh.
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buzz aldrin and neil armstrong liked to do a thing where they’d tell unfunny jokes at parties about being on the moon and when people were confused they’d go “guess you had to have been there”
Architecture of return, escape (The British Museum)
2022
Pigment and acrylic on deer hide, 36 x 55 in. (91.4 x 139.7 cm)
Nicholas Galanin
Born 1979, Tlingit/Unangax̂
"Galanin’s work engages themes of persistence, power, and survival in the face of settler colonialism and its legacies of institutional racism and collective amnesia. Here, the floor plan of the British Museum is painted over a blue field. Pictograms of baskets, masks, woven hats, weapons, tools, and textiles reference the contested objects held in the museum’s collection, while a red line maps an escape route for these examples of Indigenous cultural production. In many Native cultures, hide paintings relay histories across generations and objects embody lineages; in referencing both, Galanin is proposing a getaway plan for his ancestors."
Sue Tilley was 35 years old and working in a London employment office when she disrobed and let British artist Lucian Freud paint her in the nude. On Wednesday, one of Freud’s four nude portraits of her sold at Sotheby’s London for $39 million, the third-highest auction price for the artist.
“Mona Lisa wasn’t alive when she became famous—but I am,” Tilley said of the interest in her 1995-96 portrait, “Sleeping by the Lion Carpet.”
(I don't have a subscription to WSJ but I'll link the whole article anyway.)
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kind of weird how parts of your soul are left in various locations without any warning… like yes i’m always at the top of that hill, sitting at the bus stop, in the cool light of the Japanese restaurant, standing at the pier etc etc
there is a double standard where public transport is expected to bring profit, but roads and highways are treated as a common good and are built and maintained (e.g. patching holes) through taxes
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a thing about me is i basically never notice a wig or other kind of hairpiece in tv/movies. it has to be party city territory for me to even twig it. people will complain about characters' wigs looking bad and i will nod along but there is like a 90% chance i did not notice for a second while watching. i consider this mostly a blessing.
Cate Blanchett on Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries loll ❤️
I perceive your vision! To be precise, I drained a glass of iced water about your vision. She is a glamorous aviatrix who comes to Phryne because she is convinced (correctly) that a series of recent mishaps are the result of sabotage. This turns out to be because her weaselly cousin is trying to assassinate her out of her inheritance, which is currently sitting unused because she refuses to fulfill the sexist conditions of her grandfather's bequest. Who needs an inheritance when you can swan around cleaning up prize money and successfully counting cards at the gaming tables?
