From https://sites.google.com/site/ilyashambatbiography/

Shortly after that I got involved with Julia. She was showing her photographs, and I was reading my poetry, at the opening of an art store. We both loved each
other's work.

When she told me that she was divorcing her husband, I first wanted to introduce her to my boss. Then I found to my amazement that she had feelings for me. She was an exceptionally beautiful woman; and it is not often that women like that are available
for a relationship.

Her oldest daughter was 21; her younger daughter was 17; her son was 15. When they would go to the shop, people would think that she and her daughters were sisters. Every man wanted to be with her; but that is not the same thing as them being willing to
treat her right.

She had been married for 15 years in a horrible situation. The man would make her spend 6 hours a day cleaning the house and would come at her with fists in case he found a speck of dust on the floor. He lead her to think that she was stupid because she
was an artist, and when she filed for divorce he said that he was going to leave her without anything. Largely as a result of his attitudes she kept praying to God to become normal. I do not see at all why God would grant such a
prayer. There are all
sorts of ways in which people can be. You don't realize any kind of a benefit by making a cat become a dog. You realize benefit by letting the cat be the cat
and benefit from what the cat has to offer.

Then she married a man who was nice to her superficially. However he wasn't doing much of his part. He contributed nothing to the household, and he spent a
lot of her money. He wanted an authoritative role in the family without doing his part as a
provider. I have not much patience for people like that.

I took Julia and her children to Kramer's Books. She had a very in-depth understanding of Christianity, and she could counter just about any argument I would make with a Christian response. That however did not keep her from being beautiful and sexy. She
accepted the Christian teachings about love and compassion and caring for one another and left much of the rest alone. Her claim on the latter was “The truth will set you free.”

Her artwork was simply magnificent. She could find a way to make peeled paint on a door into a work of art. She could find all sorts of things in nature that
conveyed feeling or meaning. I picked up on her work and put the same themes into poetry. She
also wrote poetry for me. She came up with this poem:

Can this be love

Forever and for all times

And time be timeless?

Between the storm

Between the night

And the morning light

My love will be there for you

My love.

Her taste being as advanced as it was, she had very little use for the “avant
garde” style of poetry. When I took her to a meeting of an avant garde poetry
group in DC, she told me, “I hope you never write that way.” I didn't. I have been writing
in a way that Julia had inspired. I have had all sorts of good input on the subject as a result of practicing that style of writing.

Julia was descended from English royalty. Her father had been a colonel and the
vice president of the National Science Association. Everyone in the family was expected to be their best; and they were. One son became a multi-millionaire surgeon. Two
others reached high positions in the military. Another son became an excellent minister who was able to get a cathedral in Kansas. And then of course there was Julia, who produced some of the most beautiful works that have ever been produced by a woman
in known history.

Her daughter had a boyfriend who was black, and kids in the school started a rumor about her having sex in the toilet with all the black boys at the school.
There was another child who attacked her physically and scratched her face. Julia took her
daughter into home schooling for some time before returning her back to school.

The girl's boyfriend in turn got framed by some other kids for robbing a bank. When the police showed up, they were confronted with Julia telling them that the boy had been with her, her daughter, and her boyfriend named Ilya Shambat -
“he is Russian”
- playing hide and seek at the house. Of course the police were not all that happy to find two gorgeous American blondes in such situations, one being with a Russian and the other being with a black. The boy however loved Julia for that. She had saved
him from spending 30 years in prison.

Her son was becoming quite a priest around the neighborhood. He would befriend the neighborhood kids and mentor them. Kids would come to Julia's home and ask for his company. He had a way with people. Julia wanted him to become a priest;
I do not know
whether or not he has done that. He was however absolutely certain of the reality of Christian God. He told me that we were going to meet Jesus in the sky. He also once told his mother, “Why do people keep secrets? I can see them whether or not they
tell me about them.”

Julia had a brother named Alex, who became a priest in Kansas. He believed that
God was telling him that a local cathedral would be his, and eventually it was.
He started out as a hippie, selling his belongings to buy a bow and arrows and going to the
woods with his girlfriend. After his girlfriend had had enough, he moved in with his parents and started studying the Bible. He did not only have the superficial knowledge of Christianity; he had a mystical understanding of Christianity. He told me that
I saw God in Julia, and that I should see God in God.

One night Julia experienced her ex-husband Todd talking to her in spirit. In the morning she wanted to test this, so she said in her head, “All right Todd, if you are talking to me in spirit then call me.” 30 seconds later Todd
called her and told
her that he had been talking to her in spirit.

Her son was into Eminem, and I told her when he was listening to Eminem's song about him wanting to kill his mother. I have analysis of this. The baby boom generation listened to Jim Morrison, who wanted to kill his father. This generation listened to
Eminem, who wanted to kill his mother. Probably the biggest reason for that is that in 1950s the fathers were the authority, whereas in my generation in many cases the mothers were. And of course the anarchic temperament would want to kill whoever is in
authority, whether they be mothers or fathers or anything else.

The biggest problem with Eminem is that he has generalized his legitimate hatred of someone guilty on all sorts of people who are innocent. It is rightful to feel anger at a mother who is doing the wrong thing; it is wrong to
feel angry at women proper.
Most of these men's girlfriends are not bad people at all. Many of them are much better people than they are themselves. But because of the contributions of people like Eminem, their men treat them terribly. And that does not serve any benefit at all.

Julia and I had a lot of beautiful experiences. We went kayaking in the Shenandoah Park, and while we were swimming in the river she let me recline into her and said, “Let me be your ocean.” We stopped on the side of a rural road and held each other
in the grass. We traveled to Barcelona and from there to Andorra, as she photographed the beauty around us. We would drive through the country, and she would ask me to stop the car in order to take photographs.

Julia was very insistent about her Christian faith. We went to churches, and some of what I found there made sense. There was a preacher who said that we “must be dangerous people for God” - inverting the femi-fascist and psycho-fascist rhetoric
about some people being dangerous. There was another preacher who had made good
even though his father thought that he was a fool, and how much better it was that he had listened to God's advice instead of a man's advice. There was a preacher exhorting
people to reach out to those who were regarded as freaks, as they go around with a wound in their hearts. A man asked me at the door, “How is the world treating you? More importantly, how are you treating the world?”

I wrote this:

I celebrate my beloved and that which made her
The impassioned supercharged tenderness of her heart
The inexhaustible treasures of warmth and compassion
The strength that in horror retains beauty and clarity
I celebrate her heart. I celebrate her heart.
I celebrate my beloved and her spiritual masters
Leonardo Da Vinci, Monet, Michelangelo, Jesus
Her gentle wisdom, heavenly softness and ethereal majesty
Her mind focused on the exhalted and beautiful
Her unrelenting passion for the eternal
I celebrate her soul. I celebrate her soul.
I celebrate the sun and the earth, the rain and the trees
The cold perfect magnificence of the universe
The enlightened ecosystemic wisdom of nature
The warm luscious gentleness of woman's body
I celebrate the world. I celebrate the world.
I celebrate human will and individuality
The glorious co-creator within the universe
The seeker of justice and knowledge
The craftsman and fountainhead of progress
I celebrate mankind. I celebrate mankind.
I celebrate my beloved, for she contains all that is beautiful
And in her nature, God and civilization produce the most glorious consummation known to man
That reconciles pieces and gives a unified paradise.
Awaken, my soul, to the majesty of the universe.
Awaken, my soul, to the greatness of human spirit.
Awaken, my soul, to the glory of God.
Awaken, my soul, to the beauty of my beloved.
I saw Julia as the consummation of the divine process. E. E. Cummings said that
the final secret was man. I believe that the final secret is the woman. I certainly found it easier to love Julia than I did to love God, but I ended up loving God later on
in my life after He started working in my life.

The head preacher at the church was a flamboyant Jewish convert named Lon Solomon. He staked everything upon the literal interpretation of the Bible. He said that the solution is to accept the Bible on faith and to let science catch
up. Another view on
the subject came from a person who wrote a book about how the axioms of modern science are compatible with the existence of God and that God waited until matter became self-aware before imparting to His creation the knowledge of right and wrong.

One day Julia's parents came to visit her. Her father had both the military experience and the experience as a scientist, and he was both commanding and curious at once. He talked about how nobody understands women. I told him that poets think they do.
He responded with, “Poets don't know anything.” I told him that his daughter was tough, and he said that she had been brought up to do things for herself.

I recited to them a poem that I had written for Julia:

So much the sweetness and softness of air.
Breathe lightly upon me I cannot speak.
Your soul is a summer wind
Sprinkled with petals and feathers
Running through forests and meadows
Running through caverns and rapids
Running through mountains and deserts
Carrying sunlight
Carrying pollen
carrying raindrops
And carrying love into hearts.
Breathe lightly my love
I can only feel you
Wafting across me
Rubbing against me
Flying around me
Enfolding, carressing my heart.
Bring me the world
Sweet breeze
Bring me world by the molecule
Bring me the top of the atmosphere
Bring me the bloom of the rainforest
Bring me the salt of the ocean
The wind and the rain making love under glancing moon.
Play, play with my flames
Sweet breeze
Send sparks flying
Let my fulminations become
A tapestry shining and tearing
And reaching for you
Carry me through the mind of humanity
Carry me to the soul of eternity
Carry me all around the globe
And together we'll drape it in love.
Dr. Howard thanked me for the reading and left saying, “Peace to the Truth.”

We went to see the person at whose art reading we had met. I recited my poetry,
and she showed her artwork. She came back saying that we were both well-received, as the message of both was love.

I took Julia to the Tsvetayeva Bonfires. I also took her to the reading of a well-known poetry group in DC, which mostly published work in avant garde style. Julia told me that what they were doing was not poetry, and that she hoped that I never write
that way.

After some time Julia decided to go to Florida to take care of her family. I put the poems that I had written for her into a book called “Poems to Julia” that made me – and her – the talk of the DC poetry scene. People were thanking me for
bringing back passion into poetry. Many of them were tired of postmodern and avant garde ugliness and were grateful to see actual poetry. Julia had inspired
me to become a real poet. She was a muse who showed me a better way.

Julia called me three years down the road; but by that time I was already engaged.

I wrote this:

The Little Red Riding Hood's father killed the wolf that had tried to eat her. On their way back home, he admonished her. "You are too gullible," he said. "You must exercise discretion about whom you should trust." She said, "But Daddy, the wolf was
hungry." Her father replied, "Yes, the wolf was hungry. But that doesn't mean that I'll let him eat my daughter. The world is cruel, and we have to survive. If it's wolf against you, it better be you."

But the Little Red Riding Hood felt guilty over the death of the wolf. She knew
in her heart that there had to be a better way to live, and she tried to make life better for everyone. She would take birds with broken wings in her home and care for them
until their wings grew together and they could fly away. She picked a squirrel that boys were beating and brought her home and made her a pet. She would play with geese during the summer and cry when they were slaughtered in autumn.

She had long curly blond hair and giant, sensitive blue eyes. She had an elegant manner and beautiful posture. She drew beautiful pictures and made beautiful sculptures. She would climb trees and swim in the lake for hours, lost in her thoughts.

One day she watched people beating a goat. "What are you doing?" she asked. "He's the scapegoat," was the answer. "We beat him when we feel angry." "How can you do that?" she shouted. "He is a living being. He feels pain just like you do."

When the people left, she hugged the goat and cried. "I am so sorry," she said looking into his big brown eyes, eyes full of pain and confusion. She kissed him on the forehead, then all over his face, and petted him on his fur. "I know, these people are
cruel. But you are free now. Be free and enjoy your life." The goat hobbled away.


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