Leo, Leo, Leo!

August dawns muggy and buggy. Temperature in the triple digits...I hear that so often these days, I think it would be the name of a great drink. Bartender, I'll have a triple digit. Make that a double. Even my elephant ears, pictured here, in the shade garden sulk. Cheer up, guys!

Fortunately, I'm keeping cool in Moscow and St. Petersburg. The horses snort, their breath warm clouds, the Russian steppes are frigid, [Anna decidedly not!]the tundra glistening with frost, the ball rooms filled with dancers, the vodka flowing. I'm reading Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, and if I had another kid, a son--which I'm definitely not, but I'm just saying-- I'd name him Leo. Leo as in Tolstoy, as in a genius, who captures the inner turmoil of relationships and troubled marriage and the heat of romantic love and longing like no one I've ever read before, dead or alive.

It's amazing to think Count Leo...he was a Count, too, that's so cool-- could, in the 1860's, when he wrote this classic, capture so sympathetically the intricacies of women's lives in the face of their limited, suffocating roles in society. Truly, he treats male and female characters equally. Also, there are the seeds of class warfare--the serfs grow restless. But then there are no true villains or heroes in Anna Karenina...everyone is so complex, conflicted, good and bad...so, you know, human.

What a tapestry of humanity. What a sprawling beautiful canvas. I'm on page 600 or so...200 more pages. I'm enthralled, absorbed, in awe, and plenty cool, thank you.