Russian in my blood : and a long and winding river.

La Luna by Melwitz Folino.

Tomaso Landolfi......an Italian author once wrote a story about folklore in southern Italy.
The story was about to wolves who stole the moon and hid her in the flue of a chimney in their broken down old house.

The wolves wanted perpetual darkness and the only way to achieve this was to hide or murder the one thing that lit the night skies.......La Luna.

She had been lassoed from above by them and their wild hessian rope, and dragged down the muddy hill and thrown into the black narrow shaft of the chimney. Her soft luminous body was secreting a harlene substance.....and she faded fast and her light went out......murdered by the darkness.

When I read this story....I was visiting Moscow for the first time. My boyfriend was Russian and his family were from Kiev.....he did not come along as he was busy working.......he told me where to go and I discovered remarkable unseen forests and nature ...was the purest I had ever seen....they are great nature lovers the Russians.....built houses without nails by pigeon - doving wooden dowel together.

The wooden churches of Russia are unique to their culture....so utterly transfixing to observe.

I have always loved the culture of the old U.S.S.R and its massive contribution to the arts....its icons and wild totalitarian art works painted on a monumental scale for their people to be reminded of all that was there's, and there's alone........even though life was hard and uniform...the natural world and its rich and abundant resources....made the country.....one of the most powerful not seen by the rest of the world.

My man was a natural man....loved the river at the back of our house and could make almost anything out of nothing....a dexterity not seen much today......when he died I went to see him in his casket...his hands still big and beautiful....clasped with some sandalwood beads....the smell for all nature lovers.
On this day my love ........the smell lingers....in loving memory of Ross Zufer.