One Woman Revival

I wonder if am on edge or at the edge of a realization. It feels like I am approaching the cusp of some deeper knowing but I feel agitation instead of elation. I take stock of my life and the many ways I am fortunate. Last week, I was at a Georgian restaurant called Dacha off of Polk St for an evening of “Borscht and Beats”. Rhythmic pulsations from a DJ booth paired with deep red soup. We sampled the wine made from the Saperavi grape unique to the region and grazed from a plate of pickled vegetables to start the meal. Our bowls of borscht arrived along with two piroshki, baked hand rolls, one stuffed with chicken and rice and another packed with mushrooms. We savored the combination along with the dollop of sour cream at the center of the borscht which diffused into the hearty stew. 

I had not been to Dacha before but it reminded of Leleka, a Ukrainian dumpling spot in the Financial District which has been one of my favorites since moving to San Francisco. I would frequent it often on my lunch breaks and relished the soft pelmeni before slurping up the remaining broth. On one occasion, I tried their dark beer with a label that jabbed at a certain Russian leader. While leaving Dacha, after polishing off the meal with meringue dessert and glass of port, we walked under a yellow and blue flag which declared “We Stand with Ukraine”. It made sense that a queer+women Georgian restaurant owner would relate to the plight of Ukraine. There was café in SOMA that stayed apolitical called Aydea, which served food from Tartarstan, a republic located within Russia. It was only open a few months before closing at least temporarily. I remembered they served “Tartar eggs” which came with a flakey pastry and strong coffee but it did not make much impression otherwise, perhaps contributing to the pause in operation. 

At these meals and many times during the day, I feel I am nibbling around the fringes of an insight but it is dense like the insides of a piroshki. It is as if we are all nodes at the intersection of various forces but do not really matter as an individual dot in a universe of crisscrossing lines. Perhaps this is Russian nihilism and existentialism is the delusion that anything matters. But in my experience, I have found that believing in a personal narrative can make it true. Deciding that I would survive a tragedy and rebuild my life was a fairy tale that I willed into a reality. While an array of moments may not arrange themselves into a grander meaning, we can each at least be a story onto ourselves.