This time I was in Russia. I knew it with the certainty that only dreams give you, when there's nothing to suggest that it is actually the case, but you know it is just because it is. Russia was much like any other city, or a conglomeration of lots. It was cold, and the shops were large and almost empty. Not in that spare, yuppie-expensive shoppe sort of way, but in that non-consumer, little to sell way. I was on exchange? Maybe. I don't remember anything more.

Except that having this dream made me think of Onegin all morning, and the hopeless romanticism of Liv Tyler and Ralph Fiennes, and how beautifully the whole tapestry was rendered. Can I hope to plumb such depths of emotional turmoil and tragedy? (Some would call it angst. Even me. But not when it's as delicate as the Russians can produce.) Should I?