Story #5.

Story #8 "The 5-Second Rule"

It's a CPE-based book review of "The 5-second rule" by Mel Robbins.

Prompt:

A literary magazine has invited readers to submit reviews of non-fiction books. You decide to submit a review of a book that has influenced you greatly. Your review should briefly describe the book, explain what aspects of your life have changed after reading it, and assess the importance of non-fiction literature.

What if somebody told you that you are just 5 seconds away from a totally different life? From having a better job? From being a better parent? From succeeding in business? The answers to all the questions above are explored by Mel Robbins, an Ivy League-educated criminal defense attorney, in her book “The 5-second rule”. Given that the only thing standing in your way is yourself, Robbins, with her quick wit and fiery opinion, hands over to the readers a simple way to break the habit of hesitation and set a scheme for a better life.

The essence of the five-second rule is in the so-called metacognition tool that enables one to trick the brain into things it wouldn’t normally do. Once you receive the impulse to work towards something, start counting backward, and then physically act on it. The moment you miss that five-second window, your mind shuts down, as it is designed to stop you from doing anything uncomfortable, uncontrollable, uncertain.

I wish I could say that to me, the book was nothing short of an epiphany. That I could trace back every single problem and complaint to hesitation and silence. That applying Robbin’s concept to my day-to-day life presented me with a prospect to push through excuses to procrastinate far enough to see how much more life had in store for me. Nothing supernatural happened though. Nonetheless, following the scheme given in her book, I managed to set my perfect routine to have just the right amount of time to go over my morning procedures, make breakfast, take the kids to school, and embark on a working day with a smile on the face.

Robbin’s 270-page debut is like a shiny new thing that attracts lots of attention. That notwithstanding, it is a prime example of why non-fiction books should probably slim down. They all have pages and pages of testimonials turned into riveting, albeit juvenile, and overly repetitive stories. Aside from that, they are heavily seasoned with pretentious advertisements, giving readers a feeling of being marketed to, on each page. That’s precisely why services like Blinkist can summarize such books succinctly into fifteen-minute reads. You may be tricked into thinking that you are handed over a tool to enrich your life; however, for jaded readers, it might be no more than an old pseudo-psychological trick wrapped in a new package.

Story #65 is something to be said about bones.

“Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.”

Said Henry David Thoreau probably talking about finding your vocation and yada-yada-yada. Sitting in a wooden gazebo of my mother’s country house and looking at our twelve-year-old orange ball of a Pomeranian gnawing at a raw steak bone makes that quote a bit of a joke.

What does it take to know your own bone? How do you even know if that fucking thing is your true bone? Damn right. This is where you had to start, dear Mr. Thoreau.

I wanted to be a forensic pathologist. No, seriously. I thought I was going to cut skin and muscles and all. Literally. I would slice and dice and get to the very essence of a bone.

A human’s body is a temple, so often vandalized and violated by a few who believe they’re omnipotent - criminal offenders, abusers, perpetrators - doesn't really matter what you call them. By unraveling the mysteries of the body's destruction and gathering all the clues it left behind, I’d solve the puzzle and bring the body its dignity back. Restore it. Make it whole again. Make it more than just a set of bones.

I never became a queen of an autopsy bay. Somewhere along the way, I took another turn to explore my other obsessions. The writing was one of them, and this time it’s all down my bones.

The thing is, I didn’t recognize my bone when I first saw it. Sometimes it takes years to find it. It may take a few more to understand that it, indeed, is your true bone. However, one thing Mr. Thoreau was right about is, whatever your bone turns out to be, once you find it – gnaw at it. Gnaw at it with all your might. 

Story #17 which is a CPE article about traveling.

That was based on a prompt that asked to describe the experience of “Traveling with a companion who spoiled your vacation”.

Imagine a pretty woman in her prime age traveling worldwide five times a year. Imagine her sacrificing tour adventures for such mundane things as raising a child. Imagine the woman jumping on a plane and flying to the seaside after three years of home-locked existence. Wasn't she all that excited? I bet she was! Well, I am that woman. 

After my long-standing maternity leave, I was finally ready to head off somewhere to dig my toes into soft ivory sand and feel the vanilla-scented breeze. I envisioned myself with damp hair sticking to my neck and sun-kissed cheeks, jogging along the beach at the crack of dawn and buying strawberries in a Styrofoam cup at the local market. The only thing dissimilar from my past pilgrimages was my infant daughter Ann standing as my travel companion. I thought ahead of everything: a hotel with high junior chairs, an allergy-free menu, and a childcare center nearby. My suitcase was filled to the brink with diapers, pacifiers, soft packs of fruit smoothies, and formula Ann was still sipping first thing in the morning. There was nothing I failed to consider. Or that's what I thought. 

Our private paradise ended abruptly on the third day. I remember reaching for Ann at night, wincing suddenly as if my hand had been burnt. I've never felt her so terribly hot trembling as if she was close to having a seizure. Next several days we would have spent in a hospital. On the 10th day, the GP gave her a clean bill. On the 11th we left for home. 

It could be argued that our situation was no more than an "unlucky" break, but there is something I have to say if you are a parent traveling with a kid. Take it easy. I bet if you try, try really hard, you’ll be able to find something good even in that seemingly terrible predicament. Good memories are priceless. For everything else there's MasterCard.

Photo credit: Marissa Grootes (Unsplash)

Story #76. Based on the prompt: 'Surprise!' They cried, leaping out from behind the door.

“Surprise!” They cried leaping out from behind the door, and the glass of water she was holding, slipped out of her grasp and shuttered.  She bolted down to clean the mess and peered sideways at her unsolicited guests shifting from one leg to another. One of them, Tom - she recalled vaguely - tiptoed around the shards and intercepted her hand, reaching for paper napkins in the bottom drawer of the desk. 

“I’ll do that, don’t worry.”

The words broke the spell, prompting others to hurtle towards the couple on the floor. Flowers were put into vases, cake was set on the desk, candles were lit, and presents were stored in the corner of the room. 

“Didn’t mean to scare the shit out of you.”  Someone offered and the woman huffed a laugh.

She took a moment to meander around the office, gauging mentally whether she’d be able to take all the wrapped-up boxes and bouquets to her car in one go and then backed up and plonked down on the chair. A high tower of a cake leveled her eyes. 

“Make a wish,” Tom encouraged.

I’d like this day to start over, she said in her head and blew the candles.

Story #7 "David Duchovny"

What can you do in three minutes? In three minutes, you can boil water for tea or eat a banana. You can make a phone call, brush your teeth, or take an extremely quick shower. If you are on the subway, you can hop on the train and travel to the next not-so-far station. Three minutes seem to be just enough. Three minutes might take forever if you’re waiting for an answer from a girl you finally summoned up the courage to ask out. If you’re a defendant in a court waiting for the jury to reach a verdict, three minutes might drag on agonizingly slow. One hundred and eighty seconds of tickling as if a bomb is about to set off. All-in-your-head ticking.

However, if you talk to someone like David Duchovny, a person you were dreaming of having a conversation with, three minutes pass in the blink of an eye. Literally. You blink and then it’s over. David says that they are counting on us, and it is nice to see you again and then he’s gone. You are left with a mixture of euphoria and disappointment but unable to process it at the moment. It’s four in the morning and though you are so tired you cannot see straight, sleep is elusive. Your emotions are too raw to let go and grab so well-needed rest. So instead, you do some writing, keeping in mind what David has just told you - it’s all about discipline. And you write till letters start jumping on the screen and everything gets blurry. And then you brew some more coffee. A real thing. Not that decaffeinated crap you bought on a whim convincing yourself that this is what mindful people do. For they say it’s healthy. Sure. Fine. Whatever.

I got over my Duchovny crush in my early twenties, too busy to lust after anyone but my first-time-ever long-term boyfriend and struggling to major in English and Law simultaneously. Once my puberty was complete, I forgot about “The X-Files”. I didn’t think about David until I turned 33, which was 2018, the year when we moved to Moscow. It was a period of boring days dragging one after another in nothing but taking round-the-clock care of kids. Being acutely aware of my routine existence and suffering from the lack of babysitters, work-related stuff, and English altogether, I tried to fill an expanding void with books and series. I could read up to hundreds of pages a day and binge-watch Netflix every single minute whenever I had free time. It was my sea of tranquillity, and I was literally drowning in it.

I started watching Californication, the series I’d been deliberately neglecting for a little over 10 years (first released in 2007), due to my reluctance to shape Duchovny as anyone else but Fox Mulder. One more year later, I stumbled upon the news, that two more seasons of the X-files had been shot. You are so out of the loop, girl, exactly my thoughts. What are you? Some freak, living off the grid? How could you miss it? For what it’s worth, I loved it.

One day, almost accidentally, driving along the city center, I caught a glimpse of the billboard with his name and the word concert next to it. A concert? What the hell, the guy is an actor! Well, also a novelist now, but what does it have to do with music? Upon my arrival at home, I googled him thoroughly only to be struck by the fact that David indeed was a singer and it wasn’t even his first album. The same day I bought a ticket, including the meet-and-greet session pass, downloaded some of his previous tracks, and just like that, my affection was resurrected.

That first meeting we didn’t really talk. I remember my shy “May I hug you?” and his encouraging coarse “Yeah”. I remember warm strong arms around my shoulders. We took a photo, he sighed whatever it is I had on me to sign. It happened to be a tiny red notebook as nothing else seemed to fit in my lady’s purse. And then, there was an hour of pure bliss as the concert began. He may or may not be a good singer. If truth be told, it’s probably the latter. But he’s full of the heady dark intensity that shakes you to the core and makes the overall experience simply unforgettable. I could only hope that it wouldn’t be the last first time.

But then. Pandemic. It brought several good tidings, albeit being a catastrophe of the world. Virtual interaction is still booming. Back in the day, you either hoped that the flame of your heart would honor your country with a visit, or traveled over the ocean for the slightest chance to get a glimpse of them. Now all you need is broadband and a cell. Well, and some extra bucks on you. Virtual meet and greets, zooming, 1-on-1 calls, livestreams. You can get up to 10 minutes with the celebrity of your choice. At times, you can enter raffles they organize to raise money for charity, and then it’s a chance to win up to half an hour of a private talk. How cool is that?

So, the question posed, is it expensive? You bet. Is it worth it? Every second of it. Will I see him again? Well, I might. But then again, I might not. After all, I’ve already seen him three times. And two out of three I had a chance to talk with him. However, since we’ve already established that it was worth doing, I could only add that anything that is worth doing is worth doing well.

Story #39, CELTA 2022

I’ve been wanting to take the course for the past three years or so, but somehow I couldn’t answer to myself “to what end”? And then it just clicked. So here I am.

I didn't want to do a full-time 4-week offline CELTA. Since we live in a digital age where people Zoom this and that, you don't even need to leave your apartment. Maybe even your bed.

My CELTA is a 12-week online course in ITI Istanbul.

We have a multinational group with people from Turkey, Iran, Russia, Japan, and even Argentina!

The workload is pretty heavy, but all the tasks are quite doable, and if you manage to organize your time properly, there’s just the right amount of time for work, side projects and family errands.

All the tasks mentioned below are compulsory; however, only the first two are assessed.

What it consists of: 🦋4 written assignments (up to 1000 words); 🦋8 45-minute lessons; 🦋6 hrs of teacher practice observation (including your tutor); 🦋7 weekly sessions; 🦋30 units of coursework on the Cambridge platform; 📛nerves, sweat, tears unlimited.

My teaching practice is starting at the end of November and finishing somewhere around December, 30. (Alas! no teaching after the New Year’s Day). The last week is dedicated to wrap up all the loose ends.

This should be the first step for taking DELTA afterward… so we’ll see.

Story #51 is The X-Files fanfiction story.

Read it on AO3

Story #4 "Up is like down..."

Up feels like down when one day you get back home with a bottle of Merlot and a bouquet of her favorite pale pink peonies, excited and all to celebrate a well-deserved promotion, only to find the house devoid of your loved one. Somehow you know she's not just out to the supermarket. You feel sweat start trickling down your neck under the collar of your freshly starched shirt. Your knees feel wobbly and you have to lean on the wall still jangling the keys in one hand and trying to balance the bottle and the weighty bouquet in another. All of a sudden, it is too much. The smell of flowers assaults your nose like they’re poisonous. It’s perfume. Eau de betrayal.

Of their own volition, your legs drag you into the bedroom where you stand frozen in front of the closet. Fear, gut-clenching and heart-pounding, holds you tightly in its grasp. The door is slightly ajar, and you are scared out of your mind to grab the handle and pull it all the way open. You know it will be empty.

You are glad she’s not here, coz you are not sure whether you want to hug her or slug her. She never was a gal who had airs about her. Or that’s what you thought.

“Au contraire, my dear Katherine!”

You scream into the empty room and the walls vibrate in unison with your anger.

“You are one hell of an arrogant bitch! Fuck you!”

You stride into the hall, grab the seemingly forgotten bottle and throw it to the wall with all your might.

Much-much later, you’ll start recognizing the signs of the looming storm you have been oblivious to. You just let it slide. As you were working your ass off up the career ladder, your wife was working her way down under another man. The moment you least expected it, she stabbed you in the back and filed the divorce papers. Being a trained analyst and observer, never missing a single detail, you were surprisingly slow on the uptake.

You slip your hand under the shirt, to the place where your heart seemed to beat. Past tense. Because you can’t feel it beating anymore. It actually feels like she’s just ripped it out. Or maybe she punctured your lung and you can't breathe. Or shot you point blank and the bullet hit an artery and you’re just bleeding to death on your pristine white kitchen tiles. You press the hand against the wound and groan in pain. You let the sobs overtake you.

At that moment your world has narrowed down to nothing more than a little ball made of bits and shards of pain and broken dreams. She would have said that you were reaching, and you are ever so covetous of that thought. You’d spring for that hell of a stretch.

You can think all you want but here you are, trapped in your inner turmoil, with your barely-moving chest, rasping incredulously “It doesn’t have to end that way. It wasn’t supposed to end that way.”

Story 48 "Metamorphosis vs Parabiosis"

This story came to me in a creative writing club I'm currently participating in.

The theme of this season is “Metamorphosis.” It is inspired by Kafka’s novella of the same name. The first sentence of the novella goes, “One morning Gregor Samsa woke in his bed from uneasy dreams and found he had turned into a large verminous insect.” (Translations vary slightly). 

The prompt: 

Write a story that begins with the sentence “One morning [Name of Character] woke in his bed from uneasy dreams and found/realized/saw he had turned into/become … .” 

___

“So one morning I woke up in my bed from uneasy dreams and found… you there,” he grinned at her and she couldn’t suppress a smile of her own.

“You believe in fate?” he snorted at her words, and Ani poked him with an elbow under his ribs.

“What else would you call it? We were broken and then suddenly we weren’t. This is a quintessence of a metamorphosis.”

“We are past that phase, Ani. We are more like a part of a parabiotic experiment now.” M. finished his drink in one gulp and put a glass on the coaster with a muffled thump.

“Parabiosis,” he raised an index finger to draw Ani’s attention. “That’s what it is. Remember how we met?” under the table he put a hand on her bare leg, his fingers brushing the soft skin near the hem of her skirt.

M. had big pale hands, which stood in stark contrast to the rest of his body – tanned, tall and seemingly fragile as if he was a good ten pounds below slim. Exactly the way when she first had seen him at the entryway of the intensive care unit. In a narrow hallway she brushed arms with a beautiful stranger, oblivious to the world around him. A silent sorry slipped past his lips and when their eyes met she couldn’t look away. Unable to move sideways, glued to the man standing at the door, she just kept staring, confronted by the pain etched on his face. His sharp hollow cheekbones and purple shadows under the bloodshot eyes did a poor job at masking his beauty. He looked like he was holding the weight of the whole universe on his fragile shoulders, yet he had found the strength to wind up on his feet.

Without giving it much thought – any thought – she caught his trembling hands and intertwined their fingers. In retrospect, it had been a bold move, the one she would never find an explanation for. The man didn’t flinch or pull away, just stirred Ani closer and encircled her with his big hands breaking into wrecking sobs in her embrace. He was tall and she barely reached the middle of his chest encased in a plain gray t-shirt, her forehead pressed into his pectoralis major, her lips against his heart, contracting two hundred beats a minute. He smelled like medicine, coffee and sunflower seeds.

Whatever his ache was, it echoed her own, and she stood there quietly, absorbing his tears with her hair and his sorrow with her soul.

She could never forget his frenzied kisses as he’d mapped out her luscious curves with his big pale hands. As he’d pounded into her, his body slick with sweat. As he’d bawled pressed to the sharp cut of her clavicle in the aftermath of his climax. As the sobs had racked his body and she kept rubbing soothing circles over his back.

Her heart clenched at the memory. M. reached over to wipe off a lone tear trickling down her cheek, the sea blue of his own clouded with moisture. And then he smiled.  They both were in tatters, and then they weren’t. The metamorphosis, indeed.

M. bent over the table and kissed the hollow of her neck. Ani pulled away, trying to look him in the eye, his breaths still dancing across her skin quickening her pulse traitorously. He was drawing numbers with his tongue on her flushed skin, dragging his lips to that sweet spot behind her ear, which he knew damn well made her squirm on her seat. She panted. She wanted him to take her back home and undress. The idea of making love to him was uppermost in her mind. She told him so.

He chuckled softly and nodded at a pizza on the table.

“You don’t want your pizza? I thought you were hungry!”

“Famished actually! Just not for pizza.”

M. looked down at her plate, his hand moving towards the apex of her thighs.

“Pizza is an example of parabiosis.” M. continued calmly as if giving a lecture. She cocked an eyebrow at him.

“Just think about it! They put cheese on this perfect oval of dough and then – voila – you get an entirely new thing. Parabiosis, Ani.”

“Did you just compare me with a slice of mozzarella?”

 “More like a sprinkle of Parmesan… You, me, combined together. A family, a child, the whole nine yards. Parabiosis.”

“Well, as you said, it’s clear that we are way past the metamorphosis stage.” Ani got out of the booth and extended a hand to M.

“Time to start the parabiosis phase, Romeo. Let’s go.”

Story #61 "What is a good teacher?"

Originally written as a CELTA admission essay.

What is a good teacher? What qualities one should possess to be considered a poster child for teaching? And who is to tell a good teacher from the bad one, and make the final decision? They say “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Perhaps, to an extent, it’s fair for a good vs. bad teacher as well.

When I did my TESOL course a year ago, I was asked to write an essay on my teaching philosophy, and at some point, I started contemplating what a good teacher was in my opinion, and whether I, myself, met those standards. I might repeat myself here with what I wrote in the past, but thinking back now, I stand by my words. 

I’m firmly convinced that a good teacher is a teacher who knows how to convey the information they prepared for the lesson and is able to present the material in a practicable and entertaining way, as well as be capable of engaging students in different communicative activities to provide them with vocabulary and grammar sufficient for successful communication. That kind of teacher knows the ultimate goal of any exercise they give and sets short-term and long-term aims for themselves and their students.

A good teacher knows how to encourage a student to use actively the learning strategies such as asking questions, making notes, and not being afraid of making mistakes. They can explain that experimenting with the language is impossible without mistakes, and get sure students feel confident enough in a classroom. As a rule, a good teacher sticks to the 80/20 strategy and knows how to reduce teacher talking time and increase student talking time.

They want to pass on not only their knowledge but their passion for languages and sow the seeds of the idea that any learning indeed is an exciting process a student can benefit from. A good teacher strives to show their students that there is no extrinsic motivation they need to study as they can find it within themselves. As a teacher, I try to be that source of motivation and enthusiasm for my students.