I was in Poland not long ago on a bit of a wild goose chase and as I was preparing to return home, I went looking for a book to read on the plane. I found an English bookstore and the book that fell into my hands was Nicolai Lilin’s brilliant Siberian Education, his memoir about growing up in Siberia’s “criminal underworld”. (The book has attracted more than its fair share of controversy; it is written in the voice of autobiographical memoir and was promoted as such, but the author has since made it clear that it’s ‘literature based on old memories‘).
The book is full of maxims, and one of my favorites is “don’t keep money in the house”. Money is an invention of government, and only used by non-criminals and cops – useful but dirty, and not worthy of welcome in the home. To me this expresses beautifully that home should be a place of refuge from the business of everyday life, and that we should be attentive to what we choose to bring into our homes, into our hearts.