“St. Basil’s”

naive st. basils drawing

In December 1983, I decided to learn the Russian alphabet. My teacher had caught me passing notes. I’d encrypted the note in Greek, and the teacher happened to know the Greek letters and could transliterate what I’d written. She read it aloud. I surmised she didn’t know Russian, the language of our Cold War rivals. So I took out a book at the local branch of the public library and began learning the Cyrillic alphabet. Only thing was, the Cyrillic alphabet is tailor-made for Russian, with weird letters that have no sound and combinations like shch that just don’t happen in English. Curious, I read the first few lessons and began learning my first non-native language. This drawing was produced shortly after learning the basics of the alphabet and wanting to be able to project it. I did not know how to write Kremlin (Kreml’) but wanted to intimidate bullies by placing an emblem of a bigger enemy on my wall. The blue writing below reads “Moscow, USSR” and wants to say "Kremlin 1983". The red symbols on the right of the drawing are not a signature but a code that is the name of a middle school crush, Aþikolaðiwâ, a classmate of my sister’s. Of course, this is the work of a 13½ year old boy. Produced 28 December 1983 = Tayya 2a28, two dozen tenth phase (Iuley-Lrixal Xrga).

This page last modified Tuesday 5 June 2012.