I've had this thing for years and haven't done anything with it. I was reminded of it a few weeks ago when my cat meowed at me until I followed him into the kitchen early one morning. There on its back in the middle of the room was a dying cockroach, probably the victim of the misdirected hunting instincts of our feline: he has no rodents to chase and he is above killing mere insects, usually only injuring them before meowing until someone comes to finish the creature off. After I was spraying some anti-roach spray in the basement another dead one turned up. While sitting in my home office afterwards I saw my icon of St John of Kronstadt and incredulously thought of the phrase "icons and cockroaches" and how it should be an attractive metaphor for Russian history of even life in general and not just a description of things that happen to be in my home at any given time. That led to "Hey, didn't I start a blog a while back named something like that"... and now here I am.
I think there was some intent to talk about Russian culture or books on the blog, and thus stealing Trotsky's phrase about pre-revolutionary Russia and repurposing it seemed appropriate. There was also a vague notion that the phrase reflected life being both horrible and beautiful, though I live in America now and life here is usually too mediocre and beige to rise up to either beauty or horror the way it occasionally should. I think that's a paraphrase of something Leontiev said. There, we're back to Russian culture and literature. Maybe I'll make it a blog about books.
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