Last night I had to choose between going to see a Becket play done in pantomime or to see a 2 woman play about the experiences of women who had been sent to the gulag. I decided on the gulag, and despite the play being in Russian, we had been given a copy of the script and I found myself weeping.
But, I'm very tired right now, and there is another entry, a bit longer, just below this one. Tomorrow, though, I'll tell you about Dmitri, neo Marxism, progressive nostalgia and The Roads We Did Not Choose.
Good night,
Annie
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Three days without hot water
Well, I realize that's hardly news, but it's the truth. Today is "turnaround" day, and all those who were here for two weeks have headed off to the airport, and those who are staying for four are feeling self-satisfied and maybe a bit smug that we are, despite the lack of hot water.
No pugs, today. About ten of us piled on a bus for Novgorod, about 120 miles south of Petersburg, and had the most enthusiastic and knowledgeable tour guide ever, and she hauled us around to monasteries, fortresses, cathedrals and statues where she told us about, well, pretty much the whole history of Russia, beginning with Ruric, who was the Russian prototype. Apparently he was from Sweden, and was called to the area of Novgorod to settle a dispute, and stayed, and somehow out of all that, Russia began. As you can see, I don't really understand how history works, but there is this amazing commemorative statue in the Kremlin in Novgorod that tells the history of Russia up to 1894 or thereabouts.
We walked past the river, and over the river, where Ivan the Terrible threw all the dead bodies of the people he killed when he plundered the town for its riches (the town of Novgorod was a major thoroughfare to Constantinople, a wintering-over spot for northerners on their way south, so the Novgorodians, like any good tourist town, exploited the fact that they could notcontinue on their journeys because of the frozen river and lake). The blood has long since disappeared, and across the river from where we stood gazing at the seven cathedrals built by the merchants to store their wares, just beneath the fortress wall, were a number of beach volley ball games being played on imported sand.
Okay, I'm pretty sure my history is wobbling here, so don't qyote me on any of that. The high points of the day were the monastory outside of Novgorod, a 10th century cathedral, and the Museum of Wood Building with original houses, churches, a chapel, and a well, all made from aspen wood and all amazingly adorned with a combination of christian and pagan symbols.
Amazingly adorned. How's that for vague?!?!? Pictures to come, and I'm really sorry that I have not yet figured this out. You would like the pictures, especially the one I took of the bride pounding the side of the church with her arm while being photographed by the official wedding photographer, and while her husband stood by holding her flowers...wedding parties come to this Museum of Wooden Buildings to have their photographs taken, and to get married, so we got to see a variety of practices related to the pagan aspect of the wedding, including the woman who precedes the bride and groom down a path, sweeping the path of evil with a broom.
Lots of birch trinkets for sale here, and bells to ward off evil, and some carved troll looking guy who sits in kitchens and hides stuff from people. Okay, I didn't get all the details, not really, but let's just say I'll be happy to get back to my own kitchen and not have to worry about living in a "black house" which was one in which no chimney was installed so as to avoid having to pay a chimney tax. So, while the annual outlay of money was reduced by letting the smoke from your chimney empty into your home and rise up into the children's sleeping area instead of directly out of the chimney and into the air, the mortality rate of children was extremely high; however, for the more practically minded, on the up side, "black houses", the ones permeated with soot, lasted longer because wood eating bugs never moved in.
Novgorod was a welcome relief from the craziness of Petersburg; not only were prices cheaper there, I also learned that Russians DO smile and can walk at a slowish pace and without wearing stilettos.
Of course as many couples seem to be marrying in white in Novgorod as are marrying in white in Petersburg, and i don't know if it is coincidence, but it seems as if everyone wants to get married, and the weddings look small. ONe wedding party I saw today at the Museum of Wooden Building (which, by the way, is a small village of original buildings, the church complete with a full set of bells and a bell ringer playing "tunes") included the bride and groom, a couple of women dressed up in folk dress who were blocking their way into the park and yelling at them, and some guy dressed up as a soldeier and yelling back...
Speaking of soldiers, don't tell Zoa, but I bought him three small soldiers, Russian soldiers, to add to his collection of green plastic soldiers. They are very cute, made of metal, and so quite heavy. Is he still playing with his soldiers? Oh, will somebody send me news of Zoa? I really miss him, and found myself watching children today, in Novgorod. I don't watch the children in Petersburg, as they seem to harsh, the lines on their faces already drawn too tightly.
Here it is, with only 5 minutes left in my time, and I haven't answered your emails or told you one thing about Friday, yesterday. I love getting your emails, and I'm positively hungry for them by the time I make it to an internet connection. I still haven't managed to get my computer going, so needless to say this blog thing is the only writing I'm doing, but oh mi gosh, I don't think I can write about all this in any meaningful way because every day is just so full of sights and images and impressions and I'm very "curious" about what the long view will look like.
I'm also amazed that I am only half way through this journey.
No pugs, today. About ten of us piled on a bus for Novgorod, about 120 miles south of Petersburg, and had the most enthusiastic and knowledgeable tour guide ever, and she hauled us around to monasteries, fortresses, cathedrals and statues where she told us about, well, pretty much the whole history of Russia, beginning with Ruric, who was the Russian prototype. Apparently he was from Sweden, and was called to the area of Novgorod to settle a dispute, and stayed, and somehow out of all that, Russia began. As you can see, I don't really understand how history works, but there is this amazing commemorative statue in the Kremlin in Novgorod that tells the history of Russia up to 1894 or thereabouts.
We walked past the river, and over the river, where Ivan the Terrible threw all the dead bodies of the people he killed when he plundered the town for its riches (the town of Novgorod was a major thoroughfare to Constantinople, a wintering-over spot for northerners on their way south, so the Novgorodians, like any good tourist town, exploited the fact that they could notcontinue on their journeys because of the frozen river and lake). The blood has long since disappeared, and across the river from where we stood gazing at the seven cathedrals built by the merchants to store their wares, just beneath the fortress wall, were a number of beach volley ball games being played on imported sand.
Okay, I'm pretty sure my history is wobbling here, so don't qyote me on any of that. The high points of the day were the monastory outside of Novgorod, a 10th century cathedral, and the Museum of Wood Building with original houses, churches, a chapel, and a well, all made from aspen wood and all amazingly adorned with a combination of christian and pagan symbols.
Amazingly adorned. How's that for vague?!?!? Pictures to come, and I'm really sorry that I have not yet figured this out. You would like the pictures, especially the one I took of the bride pounding the side of the church with her arm while being photographed by the official wedding photographer, and while her husband stood by holding her flowers...wedding parties come to this Museum of Wooden Buildings to have their photographs taken, and to get married, so we got to see a variety of practices related to the pagan aspect of the wedding, including the woman who precedes the bride and groom down a path, sweeping the path of evil with a broom.
Lots of birch trinkets for sale here, and bells to ward off evil, and some carved troll looking guy who sits in kitchens and hides stuff from people. Okay, I didn't get all the details, not really, but let's just say I'll be happy to get back to my own kitchen and not have to worry about living in a "black house" which was one in which no chimney was installed so as to avoid having to pay a chimney tax. So, while the annual outlay of money was reduced by letting the smoke from your chimney empty into your home and rise up into the children's sleeping area instead of directly out of the chimney and into the air, the mortality rate of children was extremely high; however, for the more practically minded, on the up side, "black houses", the ones permeated with soot, lasted longer because wood eating bugs never moved in.
Novgorod was a welcome relief from the craziness of Petersburg; not only were prices cheaper there, I also learned that Russians DO smile and can walk at a slowish pace and without wearing stilettos.
Of course as many couples seem to be marrying in white in Novgorod as are marrying in white in Petersburg, and i don't know if it is coincidence, but it seems as if everyone wants to get married, and the weddings look small. ONe wedding party I saw today at the Museum of Wooden Building (which, by the way, is a small village of original buildings, the church complete with a full set of bells and a bell ringer playing "tunes") included the bride and groom, a couple of women dressed up in folk dress who were blocking their way into the park and yelling at them, and some guy dressed up as a soldeier and yelling back...
Speaking of soldiers, don't tell Zoa, but I bought him three small soldiers, Russian soldiers, to add to his collection of green plastic soldiers. They are very cute, made of metal, and so quite heavy. Is he still playing with his soldiers? Oh, will somebody send me news of Zoa? I really miss him, and found myself watching children today, in Novgorod. I don't watch the children in Petersburg, as they seem to harsh, the lines on their faces already drawn too tightly.
Here it is, with only 5 minutes left in my time, and I haven't answered your emails or told you one thing about Friday, yesterday. I love getting your emails, and I'm positively hungry for them by the time I make it to an internet connection. I still haven't managed to get my computer going, so needless to say this blog thing is the only writing I'm doing, but oh mi gosh, I don't think I can write about all this in any meaningful way because every day is just so full of sights and images and impressions and I'm very "curious" about what the long view will look like.
I'm also amazed that I am only half way through this journey.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Dostoevsky
well, Dostoevsky, yes, and other things, too.
It's Thursday night for me, and probably Thursday morning for the rest of you, and I'm getting ready to go back to my dorm room and to bed. Lucky for me I have had a couple of days in a row of hot water for a shower, which means that I feel mostly normal during the day.
Wednesday: the regular non-fiction workshop in which we looked at Ann's essay about New York City being the laboratory for Barnard students, and then the cities of Russia being the laboratory for Ann's life. Should I tell you that Ann remembers the night that Stalin died because it was the first night of many she spent with a socialist partner who shall remain nameless? That that first night was a celebration, of sorts, of that death, and of many other deaths and then hope for the future. Her essay, of course, was not about that night, but about the contributions made by Russia to the defeat of the German army in World War Two, and the challenges of urban design in Russia's new cities during the soviet period: Petersburg, Odessa...Ann first came to Petersburg as an intourist in 1970, and her stories, well, her stories are hers to tell. She left this morning on an early plane.
The afternoon involved a viewing of Russian Ark and brief lecture about it by poet, essayist, and "intelligentsia" neo-Marxist Alexandr Skidan. Further discussion on Friday. I'll let you know, but am guessing that the discussion will centre around the director's "blindness" to the soviet period and the function of the European guest who is shown around the Hermitage by the unseen narrator. The European guest, Marquis de Gonstine, who in 1940s published the most vile book ever written about Russia, was played by a Russian actor (Sergei Dryden?) who is the husband of the woman who owns the space (coffee shop, bookstore, art gallery) where we watched the movie.
The Russian reading at the Anna Akhmatova Museum, Sergey Gandlevsky and Leonid Kostyukov. The former a poet whose translations were first read by Matvei Yankelevich and then who himself recited them from memory. Just stood up and recited his poems, short and long, all of them, word for word, no crib notes, and in the tradition of the soviet poets who did that out of necessity, out of the need not to be arrested for their written work. When asked what his favorite alcohol was, Sergey responded that he drinks to become drunk, not for the good taste, so he doesn't care what alcohol he drink. However, given the choice, he would select cognac over cologne, but he does not care what brand of cognac.
And then the Dostoevsky Museum with Allison today, and the Vladimir Mother of God Icon Cathedral, the first and last parish that D worshipped in as a Petersburger.
But of course all this is just stuff. You don't care about that stuff, do you? I mean, what could it possibly mean to you to have me list what I did, where I went? It's all meaningless until it has a personal stamp on it, until there is a story. So, here is the story.
Next to the Dostoevsky Apartment Museum is a market, an indoor market. I said to Allison, let's just go in an look, because I could see from outside that there were some vegetables piled up in pyramids, and so we went in and there were more vegetables piled up in precarious pyramids and more types of vegetables than I have seen anywhere in any restaurant in Petersburg and I practically danced down the aisled, taking photographs of gerkins and cucumbers, tomatoes, green onions, bunches of lettuce. And then the white, white cheeses packaged in brie or camembert like rounds but probably what I think of as russian feta, deep fried cheese sticks, mounds of yellow and red pears, limes, apples, carrots, raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, cherries...and the market smelled fresh and fruity and clean not with the rotting vegetation smell of an equatorial market but of the lively and alive vegetation smell of freshly picked and brisk air ripened pure nutrient. I had to pull out my camera, as if I had stumbled upon something I had never seen before, and I took pictures of swollen garlic bulbs, dried apricot, dates, figs, and Allison she just touched my shoulder and laughed.
I bought a small tub of linden honey, why linden honey, I don't know, there must have been 20 different kinds of honey, Steve, each a different golden yellow and thick and sweet in a honey sweet way, and she held out a small stick with honey dripping off and she was laughing at me because I think she could tell how excited I was at seeing all this real food in one place and before I had finished tasting one kind of honey she handed me another stick oozing honey and I kept trying honey after honey and she kept laughing at me and I kept dreading when the honey samples would stop coming and I bought a small amount of honey that I will eat...some time. Russian honey. Steve, I will try to bring some home.
But the real story is the pug, the German pug, the fat german pug who was so fat that his bulbous eyes were almost lost in his facial folds and even un-neutered he spread himself lazy on the concrete floor of the market, maybe hoping that some scrap of vegetable would fall his way, and so I took his photograph and his owner posed him for me, he was so fat that he barely moved, just looked out from inside his body through those ridiculous fat eyes, and his name was Faroud. From Germany and the women selling vegetables and fruit thought I was crazy taking pictures of a fat dog in a market but what could be better than honey, fresh cherries, a fat pug, and talking a kind of hectic Germanic-Russian--English sprinkled with the desperation of French and Spanish prepositions and nouns -- and what did the pug care, really, he just wanted me to pat him, well, no he just wanted to stretch out on the cool concrete floor.
So you can see, maybe, that the staid museum veneration of a great writer was a bit of a letdown after the pug and the honey, and while I was interested in wandering around Fyodor's 6 room apartment and reading about how his gambling addiction was his undoing and his wife's devotion his reconstruction, there was no mention of a dog, and unlike Cathy the Great he spent much of his time writing and thinking. Well, maybe that's unfair to compare him to C the G; she collected Italian Greyhounds, being an Italophile what with all that rococo and Greco Roman statuary.
But Fyodor moved every few months, and this apartment museum was the last apartment he lived in; he died, a very heavy and stubborn smoker, of emphysema, and there is a tobacco tin in his apartment on which his daughter inscribed the date of his death: January 28: Papa died today, it says.
It's Thursday night for me, and probably Thursday morning for the rest of you, and I'm getting ready to go back to my dorm room and to bed. Lucky for me I have had a couple of days in a row of hot water for a shower, which means that I feel mostly normal during the day.
Wednesday: the regular non-fiction workshop in which we looked at Ann's essay about New York City being the laboratory for Barnard students, and then the cities of Russia being the laboratory for Ann's life. Should I tell you that Ann remembers the night that Stalin died because it was the first night of many she spent with a socialist partner who shall remain nameless? That that first night was a celebration, of sorts, of that death, and of many other deaths and then hope for the future. Her essay, of course, was not about that night, but about the contributions made by Russia to the defeat of the German army in World War Two, and the challenges of urban design in Russia's new cities during the soviet period: Petersburg, Odessa...Ann first came to Petersburg as an intourist in 1970, and her stories, well, her stories are hers to tell. She left this morning on an early plane.
The afternoon involved a viewing of Russian Ark and brief lecture about it by poet, essayist, and "intelligentsia" neo-Marxist Alexandr Skidan. Further discussion on Friday. I'll let you know, but am guessing that the discussion will centre around the director's "blindness" to the soviet period and the function of the European guest who is shown around the Hermitage by the unseen narrator. The European guest, Marquis de Gonstine, who in 1940s published the most vile book ever written about Russia, was played by a Russian actor (Sergei Dryden?) who is the husband of the woman who owns the space (coffee shop, bookstore, art gallery) where we watched the movie.
The Russian reading at the Anna Akhmatova Museum, Sergey Gandlevsky and Leonid Kostyukov. The former a poet whose translations were first read by Matvei Yankelevich and then who himself recited them from memory. Just stood up and recited his poems, short and long, all of them, word for word, no crib notes, and in the tradition of the soviet poets who did that out of necessity, out of the need not to be arrested for their written work. When asked what his favorite alcohol was, Sergey responded that he drinks to become drunk, not for the good taste, so he doesn't care what alcohol he drink. However, given the choice, he would select cognac over cologne, but he does not care what brand of cognac.
And then the Dostoevsky Museum with Allison today, and the Vladimir Mother of God Icon Cathedral, the first and last parish that D worshipped in as a Petersburger.
But of course all this is just stuff. You don't care about that stuff, do you? I mean, what could it possibly mean to you to have me list what I did, where I went? It's all meaningless until it has a personal stamp on it, until there is a story. So, here is the story.
Next to the Dostoevsky Apartment Museum is a market, an indoor market. I said to Allison, let's just go in an look, because I could see from outside that there were some vegetables piled up in pyramids, and so we went in and there were more vegetables piled up in precarious pyramids and more types of vegetables than I have seen anywhere in any restaurant in Petersburg and I practically danced down the aisled, taking photographs of gerkins and cucumbers, tomatoes, green onions, bunches of lettuce. And then the white, white cheeses packaged in brie or camembert like rounds but probably what I think of as russian feta, deep fried cheese sticks, mounds of yellow and red pears, limes, apples, carrots, raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, cherries...and the market smelled fresh and fruity and clean not with the rotting vegetation smell of an equatorial market but of the lively and alive vegetation smell of freshly picked and brisk air ripened pure nutrient. I had to pull out my camera, as if I had stumbled upon something I had never seen before, and I took pictures of swollen garlic bulbs, dried apricot, dates, figs, and Allison she just touched my shoulder and laughed.
I bought a small tub of linden honey, why linden honey, I don't know, there must have been 20 different kinds of honey, Steve, each a different golden yellow and thick and sweet in a honey sweet way, and she held out a small stick with honey dripping off and she was laughing at me because I think she could tell how excited I was at seeing all this real food in one place and before I had finished tasting one kind of honey she handed me another stick oozing honey and I kept trying honey after honey and she kept laughing at me and I kept dreading when the honey samples would stop coming and I bought a small amount of honey that I will eat...some time. Russian honey. Steve, I will try to bring some home.
But the real story is the pug, the German pug, the fat german pug who was so fat that his bulbous eyes were almost lost in his facial folds and even un-neutered he spread himself lazy on the concrete floor of the market, maybe hoping that some scrap of vegetable would fall his way, and so I took his photograph and his owner posed him for me, he was so fat that he barely moved, just looked out from inside his body through those ridiculous fat eyes, and his name was Faroud. From Germany and the women selling vegetables and fruit thought I was crazy taking pictures of a fat dog in a market but what could be better than honey, fresh cherries, a fat pug, and talking a kind of hectic Germanic-Russian--English sprinkled with the desperation of French and Spanish prepositions and nouns -- and what did the pug care, really, he just wanted me to pat him, well, no he just wanted to stretch out on the cool concrete floor.
So you can see, maybe, that the staid museum veneration of a great writer was a bit of a letdown after the pug and the honey, and while I was interested in wandering around Fyodor's 6 room apartment and reading about how his gambling addiction was his undoing and his wife's devotion his reconstruction, there was no mention of a dog, and unlike Cathy the Great he spent much of his time writing and thinking. Well, maybe that's unfair to compare him to C the G; she collected Italian Greyhounds, being an Italophile what with all that rococo and Greco Roman statuary.
But Fyodor moved every few months, and this apartment museum was the last apartment he lived in; he died, a very heavy and stubborn smoker, of emphysema, and there is a tobacco tin in his apartment on which his daughter inscribed the date of his death: January 28: Papa died today, it says.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Daniil Kharms
Highlights: this is a quick one (aren't you relieved?) because I have only bought a half hour on the internet and need to answer my email, but spent most of this afternoon at a soviet style cafe across the street from the russian absurdist poet Daniil Kharms, a cafe nicknamed the Kharms cafe.
i really need to get home to read an essay about soviet architecture before my 10 am class, but I will try to get back to you soon. I skipped the Banya to attend a lecture on russian absurdism...i gues that pretty much tells the story, my story: given the choice between the body and the mind, I choose the mind...
go figure, i still haven't learned.
Annie
i really need to get home to read an essay about soviet architecture before my 10 am class, but I will try to get back to you soon. I skipped the Banya to attend a lecture on russian absurdism...i gues that pretty much tells the story, my story: given the choice between the body and the mind, I choose the mind...
go figure, i still haven't learned.
Annie
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Graduation Night
After dinner of pike and boiled potatoes at the Idiot cafe last evening, the highlight of which was a toast taught to us by our resident southern belle, Cleila - here's to heat: not the kind that drops shacks and shanties, but the kind that drops slacks and panties - oh, and I detect a trace of encoded classism and racism - I headed back to my dorm hoping for hot water and a cool breeze. Neither was available, so I sat in my room and worked on my computer until it died (my converter is not working, and my computer not accessible to me, making working really difficult - well, impossible.) so then I listened to music on my mp3 player until that died, and then i tried working on my palm pilot, but then that died...
oh, so I checked for hot water again, but there was none, and the water cooler in the hall was empty...
but before all that was a trip to Club Revolution, a "new" nightclub just off Nevsky Prospekt that is a section of a converted shopping arcade, many floors and subsections of dark areas lit by black lights, back rooms with movie projectors, small areas with small bars on several levels with a small stage on one "central" level where a dj or other entertainer might set up. The key to visualizing this place are the following: low ceilings; small areas with concrete floors; many discontinuous serpentine, not-to-code stairways; a high area at the very top of all this that is small, surrounded by windows and providing of a view of the rooftops of petersburg. This top room is where the readings last night were, three winners of previous writing contests for SLS. I found my way over there with Peter the poet from NYC. And then a group of women went to the Idiot where we were overcharged for mediocre food.
This morning i was up early to catch a tour bus to head out to Peterhof. That trip was good; the sun was hot, the weather good, and best of all, I got out to the country and stood on the Baltic Sea and waved at Finland. Took many pictures, but because of my dead computer battery, have no way to include these here. Peterhof is Peter the G's summer palace, replete with fountains and lots of rococo stuff which is amazing to look at and stunning to contemplate that Stalin pretty much left it all alone and that it was not until the Nazis moved in that the palace was robbed, burned, torn up. But, all that is history that you can read in better and more accurate detail in your lonely planet. what i came away from the experience with was the appreciation for the forest and parkland that surrounds the palace and extends to the sea. The rest of it seems to be so much frippery, kind of a disneyland prototype, games for bored adult children to play. now we wander through and look at the games but don't play them.
But getting up early this morning to take the 30 minute bus ride out to peterhof was made more interesting by the fact that last night was the mass graduation party on the Hermitage square. Millions, yes millions, of young petersburgians come into teh city centre for this "celebration" which is essentially a huge drunk, and this morning on my way to catch the tour bus i stepped over and around unconsciously drunk teenagers, evaded those who were still tottering around clutching beer or vodka bottles, and watching where I was walking lest I step in the ubiquitous streams of urine that flowed as steadily as the alcohol. Garbage and broken bottles were everywhere, and the park that I sat in the other morning to eat breakfast becasue my restaurant had "run out" of food, was filled with probably hundreds of young people in various stages of dress, consciousness, and sexual arousal. I suppose you might say this part of the city had a carnival atmosphere; yet, at the same time, which was just before 8 am, there was a team of hundreds (and those were just the ones I saw in my relatively short walk from the dorm to the bus) of maintenance workers dressed in lime green safety vests, sweeping the shattered glass and debris into dustbins and then into green garbage bags, which were already lining the streets. While two drunken teenagers clutched one another beneath the safety of a park bench, a man or woman would be patiently scooping up the broken beer bottles that had led to this embrace. Meanwhile, up and down Kazanskaya Prospekt moved a couple of street cleaners, you know those machines that have circular brushes and which spray water? Those street cleaners were spraying water on the streets and brushing up the urine and debris on the streets.
Well, I know that Betty wanted me to tell her what the Hermitage smells like, but I haven't been there yet, so I'll tell you Betty, on June 24 (or whateve date it is right now, I've lost track) 2007, the streets of Petersburg flowed with urine, which I suppose is a fair trade and a lot more bearable than having them flowing with blood.
When I returned from Peterhof this afternoon, there were still people standing in the streets with garden hoses as they sprayed.
that's it for today. of note: on the way out of the city I saw block after block of highrise apartment buildings, and then some mansions of the nouveau riche (not sure what term they use here for those guys. it's not the oligarchs, but probably the generation behind the oligarchs, the younger children of the oligarchs who learned by watching to stay out of the politics of the nation) and then the highlight: the Baltic.
I stuck my fingers in the Baltic and tasted, but it did not taste salty.
love,
Anne
oh, so I checked for hot water again, but there was none, and the water cooler in the hall was empty...
but before all that was a trip to Club Revolution, a "new" nightclub just off Nevsky Prospekt that is a section of a converted shopping arcade, many floors and subsections of dark areas lit by black lights, back rooms with movie projectors, small areas with small bars on several levels with a small stage on one "central" level where a dj or other entertainer might set up. The key to visualizing this place are the following: low ceilings; small areas with concrete floors; many discontinuous serpentine, not-to-code stairways; a high area at the very top of all this that is small, surrounded by windows and providing of a view of the rooftops of petersburg. This top room is where the readings last night were, three winners of previous writing contests for SLS. I found my way over there with Peter the poet from NYC. And then a group of women went to the Idiot where we were overcharged for mediocre food.
This morning i was up early to catch a tour bus to head out to Peterhof. That trip was good; the sun was hot, the weather good, and best of all, I got out to the country and stood on the Baltic Sea and waved at Finland. Took many pictures, but because of my dead computer battery, have no way to include these here. Peterhof is Peter the G's summer palace, replete with fountains and lots of rococo stuff which is amazing to look at and stunning to contemplate that Stalin pretty much left it all alone and that it was not until the Nazis moved in that the palace was robbed, burned, torn up. But, all that is history that you can read in better and more accurate detail in your lonely planet. what i came away from the experience with was the appreciation for the forest and parkland that surrounds the palace and extends to the sea. The rest of it seems to be so much frippery, kind of a disneyland prototype, games for bored adult children to play. now we wander through and look at the games but don't play them.
But getting up early this morning to take the 30 minute bus ride out to peterhof was made more interesting by the fact that last night was the mass graduation party on the Hermitage square. Millions, yes millions, of young petersburgians come into teh city centre for this "celebration" which is essentially a huge drunk, and this morning on my way to catch the tour bus i stepped over and around unconsciously drunk teenagers, evaded those who were still tottering around clutching beer or vodka bottles, and watching where I was walking lest I step in the ubiquitous streams of urine that flowed as steadily as the alcohol. Garbage and broken bottles were everywhere, and the park that I sat in the other morning to eat breakfast becasue my restaurant had "run out" of food, was filled with probably hundreds of young people in various stages of dress, consciousness, and sexual arousal. I suppose you might say this part of the city had a carnival atmosphere; yet, at the same time, which was just before 8 am, there was a team of hundreds (and those were just the ones I saw in my relatively short walk from the dorm to the bus) of maintenance workers dressed in lime green safety vests, sweeping the shattered glass and debris into dustbins and then into green garbage bags, which were already lining the streets. While two drunken teenagers clutched one another beneath the safety of a park bench, a man or woman would be patiently scooping up the broken beer bottles that had led to this embrace. Meanwhile, up and down Kazanskaya Prospekt moved a couple of street cleaners, you know those machines that have circular brushes and which spray water? Those street cleaners were spraying water on the streets and brushing up the urine and debris on the streets.
Well, I know that Betty wanted me to tell her what the Hermitage smells like, but I haven't been there yet, so I'll tell you Betty, on June 24 (or whateve date it is right now, I've lost track) 2007, the streets of Petersburg flowed with urine, which I suppose is a fair trade and a lot more bearable than having them flowing with blood.
When I returned from Peterhof this afternoon, there were still people standing in the streets with garden hoses as they sprayed.
that's it for today. of note: on the way out of the city I saw block after block of highrise apartment buildings, and then some mansions of the nouveau riche (not sure what term they use here for those guys. it's not the oligarchs, but probably the generation behind the oligarchs, the younger children of the oligarchs who learned by watching to stay out of the politics of the nation) and then the highlight: the Baltic.
I stuck my fingers in the Baltic and tasted, but it did not taste salty.
love,
Anne
Saturday, June 23, 2007
The Sisters Karamazov
it's probalby too soon to be writing anything new, but write I will, since this is when I have some time. Tonight is "graduation" night when graduates celebrate in the square outside the Hermitage, but before I go and check out that party, which I suspect will be like the Calgary Stampede in hyperdrive, Slavic version, I'm heading off to a concert of music given by a group of young up and coming conservatory students. I have an address and little else.
I spent the day at Catherine's Palace in Pushkin, a rococo monstrosity painted cyan in the town of Pushkin, just south of Petersburg. We were a small group of 18 or so stumbling through a series of rooms in the upper hall, and saw the main staircase, which we climbed up to get to the upper floor where we walked through two dining rooms, one of which was decorated with huge paintings of dead game; a portrait gallery, decorated with "substandard" Italian stye family portraits; and the amber room, decorated with panels of yellow and orange amber. Most rooms are in the Rococo style, as Catherine, Peter I's wife who originally built the palace as a gift for her husband, had a penchant for the style. Everywhere are cherubs, ornate busts decorated with vines, thick bellied angels and gold leaf; gold, green and yellow foil; and by the time you get to the rooms decorated by Catherine the Great, you move into the neoclassical style, which is much more plain and easier on the eyes and the modern psyche, despite the continued use of cherub heads.
The palace was inhabited by the Nazis during the 900 day seige, and the interior burned. Everything you can see there today is a reproduction created from photographs, including the paintings on the ceilings which had been painted originally by Italian masters, but which were reproduced by Russian painters. The ceiling paintings appear to be representations of the nobility enjoying a happy existence in heaven, surrounded by angels and cherubs and pastel coloured clouds and blue sky.
Outside the palace is a great park which includes two bathhouses (banyas) a lake, several versts worth of trails, a church and a pyramid shaped tomb where Catherine buried her dogs.
The church is now a restaurant.
All this is good, but more interesting to me, still, are the buildings and people that I see from the window of the bus to and from the palace. Our guide tells us that Russians do not visit this palace, as adults, unless they are ill. If I understood her correctly, people who are suffering from exhaustion or mental deterioration can visit a doctor and ask to be prescribed a week off, and will be sent off to the selo for a week's worth of rest, where they can visit the interior rooms and roam in the gardens. As far as I know, they do not also get presscribed shock therapy, or heavy doses of sedatives, but I'm pretty sure if I were able to spend a week roaming the gardens, contemplating the statues of Perseus holding a disembodied head in her right hand, I might start to feel a bit better about life.
School children, as well, get to visit the Palace. Other than that, no one has time, or money. The average monthly income for a Petersburgian is $400.
Mich has decided that when she returns to Ottawa, she's going to start work on a novel whose working title is "Punishment and Crime". Turns out Mich and I were both in Lanark House residence at Carleton at the same time, which means, technically, that we "went to school together" in the early 70's, although neither of us can remember the other.
Despite my being able to sleep last night, I am exhausted and feel that by the end of tomorrow I will be ready to actually do some work. I've "dropped" one of my classes, and will be down to just one of them, and will be able to focus on things other than running around; so, Andrew, if you can hang on for a few more days, I'll be getting to your work tonight and then tomorrow (that means probably Monday in HK).
On Tuesday afternoon, Larissa, I'm heading to the banya for a good steam bath. I don't think there are any massage therapists around, and although I've seen several advertisements for "24 hour massage", I don't think that the people who are offering this service are RMT's. I'm suspicious about the various options that are available to have with that massage, as they don't seem to fit my usual expectations; besides, given the general feel of the place, I'd be suspiscious if I saw any sign of "hot stones", fearing that I might get my head smashed in instead of getting my back warmed.
So I have nothing in particular of note to add today. A trip to the country side has it's pleasures, but does not offer much in the way of writing material, unless you want me to go on about the statues and the gold and the size of the rooms: it's all beautiful, and at some point I just stopped taking photographs and started to react the same way when I drove down the St Lawernce Seaway: If I see another quaint southern ontario town on the banks of the St Lawrence river, I'll gag.
At a certain point in my life, I think when I was in kindergarten or grade one and first learned that each year of a person's life has a number, like 1959, or 1964, and so on, I realized that I would in a future year be able to look back at my self from a previous year, and I remember that when I realized that, I made a vow to myself to remember back to myself as a six year old from when I was 50. I remember choosing 50 because at that time it amazed me that I could ever be 50, and be able to look back on a younger person. It's a funny thing to remember, that little child talking to the future adult; most of the time we think in terms of the adult talking back in time to the child that we used to be. But I remember talking to the future adult, asking her to talk to me from when she was 50. Was that the Fourth Dimension?
And of course on my birthday, my 50th birthday, a few years ago, I had a little chat with my self, said "hi" to the kid.
Life expectancy in Russia is 54 for men and 58 or so for women.
There are more than 20 memorials to Lenin in this city of Leningrad; none to Stalin, not any more. There used to be more than 50 memorials to Lenin, and who knows how many to Stalin?
Two Russian wolfhounds just pranced by across the street.
Bye.
I spent the day at Catherine's Palace in Pushkin, a rococo monstrosity painted cyan in the town of Pushkin, just south of Petersburg. We were a small group of 18 or so stumbling through a series of rooms in the upper hall, and saw the main staircase, which we climbed up to get to the upper floor where we walked through two dining rooms, one of which was decorated with huge paintings of dead game; a portrait gallery, decorated with "substandard" Italian stye family portraits; and the amber room, decorated with panels of yellow and orange amber. Most rooms are in the Rococo style, as Catherine, Peter I's wife who originally built the palace as a gift for her husband, had a penchant for the style. Everywhere are cherubs, ornate busts decorated with vines, thick bellied angels and gold leaf; gold, green and yellow foil; and by the time you get to the rooms decorated by Catherine the Great, you move into the neoclassical style, which is much more plain and easier on the eyes and the modern psyche, despite the continued use of cherub heads.
The palace was inhabited by the Nazis during the 900 day seige, and the interior burned. Everything you can see there today is a reproduction created from photographs, including the paintings on the ceilings which had been painted originally by Italian masters, but which were reproduced by Russian painters. The ceiling paintings appear to be representations of the nobility enjoying a happy existence in heaven, surrounded by angels and cherubs and pastel coloured clouds and blue sky.
Outside the palace is a great park which includes two bathhouses (banyas) a lake, several versts worth of trails, a church and a pyramid shaped tomb where Catherine buried her dogs.
The church is now a restaurant.
All this is good, but more interesting to me, still, are the buildings and people that I see from the window of the bus to and from the palace. Our guide tells us that Russians do not visit this palace, as adults, unless they are ill. If I understood her correctly, people who are suffering from exhaustion or mental deterioration can visit a doctor and ask to be prescribed a week off, and will be sent off to the selo for a week's worth of rest, where they can visit the interior rooms and roam in the gardens. As far as I know, they do not also get presscribed shock therapy, or heavy doses of sedatives, but I'm pretty sure if I were able to spend a week roaming the gardens, contemplating the statues of Perseus holding a disembodied head in her right hand, I might start to feel a bit better about life.
School children, as well, get to visit the Palace. Other than that, no one has time, or money. The average monthly income for a Petersburgian is $400.
Mich has decided that when she returns to Ottawa, she's going to start work on a novel whose working title is "Punishment and Crime". Turns out Mich and I were both in Lanark House residence at Carleton at the same time, which means, technically, that we "went to school together" in the early 70's, although neither of us can remember the other.
Despite my being able to sleep last night, I am exhausted and feel that by the end of tomorrow I will be ready to actually do some work. I've "dropped" one of my classes, and will be down to just one of them, and will be able to focus on things other than running around; so, Andrew, if you can hang on for a few more days, I'll be getting to your work tonight and then tomorrow (that means probably Monday in HK).
On Tuesday afternoon, Larissa, I'm heading to the banya for a good steam bath. I don't think there are any massage therapists around, and although I've seen several advertisements for "24 hour massage", I don't think that the people who are offering this service are RMT's. I'm suspicious about the various options that are available to have with that massage, as they don't seem to fit my usual expectations; besides, given the general feel of the place, I'd be suspiscious if I saw any sign of "hot stones", fearing that I might get my head smashed in instead of getting my back warmed.
So I have nothing in particular of note to add today. A trip to the country side has it's pleasures, but does not offer much in the way of writing material, unless you want me to go on about the statues and the gold and the size of the rooms: it's all beautiful, and at some point I just stopped taking photographs and started to react the same way when I drove down the St Lawernce Seaway: If I see another quaint southern ontario town on the banks of the St Lawrence river, I'll gag.
At a certain point in my life, I think when I was in kindergarten or grade one and first learned that each year of a person's life has a number, like 1959, or 1964, and so on, I realized that I would in a future year be able to look back at my self from a previous year, and I remember that when I realized that, I made a vow to myself to remember back to myself as a six year old from when I was 50. I remember choosing 50 because at that time it amazed me that I could ever be 50, and be able to look back on a younger person. It's a funny thing to remember, that little child talking to the future adult; most of the time we think in terms of the adult talking back in time to the child that we used to be. But I remember talking to the future adult, asking her to talk to me from when she was 50. Was that the Fourth Dimension?
And of course on my birthday, my 50th birthday, a few years ago, I had a little chat with my self, said "hi" to the kid.
Life expectancy in Russia is 54 for men and 58 or so for women.
There are more than 20 memorials to Lenin in this city of Leningrad; none to Stalin, not any more. There used to be more than 50 memorials to Lenin, and who knows how many to Stalin?
Two Russian wolfhounds just pranced by across the street.
Bye.
Friday, June 22, 2007
solstice
Had a great dinner with Charlotte and Mich at an Azherbijanian restaurant, complete with scented water-tobacco burning hookahs at the table. The food and service was great, and I tried another different russian beer, this one called Tinkah. that's not the correct spelling, but this keyboard that i am using although it includes the cyrllic letters, is not set up to be used that way. not that I can see anyway.
i think I am developing a taste for the beer, and it's damned good. Well, David, since I know you are reading this, the next time you're picking up your Canadian at the Toronto beer store, check to see if there's any russian stuff there, and i won't worry about getting any at the duty free.
I had lamb, which was fabulous, potatoes, roasted vegetables, and beer.
last night was solstice, and the first night of the white nights festival. the city did not sleep, not that it does anyway, but last night was even more lively, and apparently it will become even livelier over the next 10 days, especially either tomorrow or sunday, when every student who is in any kind of course "graduates" and they parade down the Nevsky Prospekt, which is closed for the occassion, wearing even more revealing clothing than usual and sashes which say "graduate".
i have to admit i retreated to my room for solstice. i am so tired by the end of the day from running around to museums, cathedral mass, and dinner, that i decided not to go on the midnight boat ride along the canal. oh, but they set those up for us every few days, and there will be more.
in an email to me, Nancy said that a friend of hers was envious that I was to be in St Petersburg for a month, and included a few warnings: watch out for the swarming gypsies, who target tourists, espectilaly women, and have a trick of throwing a baby at you so that you will put out your arms to catch it, thereby dropping your purse. well, most everyone who's reading this will no that i have this nifty little over-the-shoulder bag that requires no arms to carry, purchased with just that warning in mind. however, while i have not seen any such swarming gypsies, i have heard that George Elliot Clarke, eminent Canadian poet from Halifax and now Toronto, was swarmed by four men while walking down the Prospekt with his wife. George was walking minding his own business when suddenly a man stepped right in front of him and stuck his face into his. George turned to go another direction, and another man right there, right in hs face. He turned then to his left, and a third man blocked his way with a menacing glare. And he turned behind to find yet a fourth man blocking him, at which point he just pushed through and rejoined his wife. The men's purpose was to warn him, threaten him; but they did not accosst his wife, although I'm sure they could have.
I heard today that many high ranking officials have been murdered on the prospekt and in fact there are bullet holes in some of the plate glass windows of stores. Additionally, it is not unusual for us to see, while walking along a side street off the prospekt, a smashed in car window, recently minted, or piles of glass beads on the street.
this afternoon I went to a screening of Tarkovsky's movie Mirror, an autobiographical film about his life as a young boy. don't rush out to watch it unless you have a high tolerance for ambiguity, or unless your russian history is impeccable. our guide through the experience, Alexandr Skidan, provided some annotations that made the movie comprehensible, and on Monday we will be discussing the film in terms of the inclusion of passages from Pushkin's letters and scenes from Dostoyevsky. interesting stuff, and I'm hooked.
the screening was in a tiny room that was part of a small independant book publisher in petersburg that started out 20 eyars ago publoishing essay ss only\ The space they inhabit serves as a press that now publishes full length books, screens avant garde films, has art galleery, bookstore, and readings. Each room of the space is very small, and down a narrow sti\rcase and into a space that in canada would not pass fire codes, but it had the feel of secrecy about it which may or may not be necessary any more or again. it's hard to say.
so, bacvk to Nancy's fr4iend, who told Nancy he was envious that I would be here for a month. It is easy for me to understand why he would say that. I've been here a week, and have spent this first week just watching, really, watching and allowing myself to step into the pace of the moving hoards of people who call the Prospekt their home. i just now feel as if i can walk without tripping, and have put out my intuitive feelers enough to sense the complexity and variety of the characters who are out there. Faceless and numberless people are now starting to separate into types, and i can tell a tourist, like myself, at a glance, and that s before they speak english or german or italian. i'm tempted to go more fully undercover, and put on a long dark skirt and envelope my head in a babushka, as I feel, like in most countries i'm familiar with, that women over 50 move invisibly among those who matter more. i like it. imagine what i could do with that disguise? certainly I would avoid standing in the tunnels that go under the prospekt and down to the subways where i would sing russian folk songs with a plastic bucket at my feet; i don't see much interest in that, or in standing at entrances to restaurants that serve russian national dishes, handing out discount coupons for their food. rather, i would stumble quickly but with a slight hobble down the street and onto the bus, where I would pause before stepping up into the bus (no "kneeling" buses here, in St Petersburg, let me tell you in this city for the young) and wait for some slightly younger woman to rush over to help me up the steps, help from the next generation of babushkas who have not yet realized that they are that, who are still young enough to be regretting the stillettos they have stopped wearing because of bunyans and too many turned ankles. yes that['s the other thing i noticed, just walking and watching: turned ankles. one of those amazons striding along and then pop, over she goes like one of those dolls that are held together with string on the inside, but who collapse when you push the base.
so, what i wanted to say really, here was that a week in St Petersburg would be like going to a ballet and listening to the overture and then leaving before the ballet began. I haven't even been the hermitage yet, i'm still digesting the modernists, wanting more tarkovsky, lectures from the russian scholars here who are showing me the mythology of petersburg, the facade, the dreamworld of peter I that has been added to by successive layers of russian imagination. So i understand Nancy's friend's envy, because to have been in petersburg for a week is to KNOW to absolutely know that you have not been in petersburg at all.
i suspect that being here for a month will bring even greater certainty about the insubstantiability of petersburg. already i want to come back.
no blood on the streets this morning.
love you all, Anne
i think I am developing a taste for the beer, and it's damned good. Well, David, since I know you are reading this, the next time you're picking up your Canadian at the Toronto beer store, check to see if there's any russian stuff there, and i won't worry about getting any at the duty free.
I had lamb, which was fabulous, potatoes, roasted vegetables, and beer.
last night was solstice, and the first night of the white nights festival. the city did not sleep, not that it does anyway, but last night was even more lively, and apparently it will become even livelier over the next 10 days, especially either tomorrow or sunday, when every student who is in any kind of course "graduates" and they parade down the Nevsky Prospekt, which is closed for the occassion, wearing even more revealing clothing than usual and sashes which say "graduate".
i have to admit i retreated to my room for solstice. i am so tired by the end of the day from running around to museums, cathedral mass, and dinner, that i decided not to go on the midnight boat ride along the canal. oh, but they set those up for us every few days, and there will be more.
in an email to me, Nancy said that a friend of hers was envious that I was to be in St Petersburg for a month, and included a few warnings: watch out for the swarming gypsies, who target tourists, espectilaly women, and have a trick of throwing a baby at you so that you will put out your arms to catch it, thereby dropping your purse. well, most everyone who's reading this will no that i have this nifty little over-the-shoulder bag that requires no arms to carry, purchased with just that warning in mind. however, while i have not seen any such swarming gypsies, i have heard that George Elliot Clarke, eminent Canadian poet from Halifax and now Toronto, was swarmed by four men while walking down the Prospekt with his wife. George was walking minding his own business when suddenly a man stepped right in front of him and stuck his face into his. George turned to go another direction, and another man right there, right in hs face. He turned then to his left, and a third man blocked his way with a menacing glare. And he turned behind to find yet a fourth man blocking him, at which point he just pushed through and rejoined his wife. The men's purpose was to warn him, threaten him; but they did not accosst his wife, although I'm sure they could have.
I heard today that many high ranking officials have been murdered on the prospekt and in fact there are bullet holes in some of the plate glass windows of stores. Additionally, it is not unusual for us to see, while walking along a side street off the prospekt, a smashed in car window, recently minted, or piles of glass beads on the street.
this afternoon I went to a screening of Tarkovsky's movie Mirror, an autobiographical film about his life as a young boy. don't rush out to watch it unless you have a high tolerance for ambiguity, or unless your russian history is impeccable. our guide through the experience, Alexandr Skidan, provided some annotations that made the movie comprehensible, and on Monday we will be discussing the film in terms of the inclusion of passages from Pushkin's letters and scenes from Dostoyevsky. interesting stuff, and I'm hooked.
the screening was in a tiny room that was part of a small independant book publisher in petersburg that started out 20 eyars ago publoishing essay ss only\ The space they inhabit serves as a press that now publishes full length books, screens avant garde films, has art galleery, bookstore, and readings. Each room of the space is very small, and down a narrow sti\rcase and into a space that in canada would not pass fire codes, but it had the feel of secrecy about it which may or may not be necessary any more or again. it's hard to say.
so, bacvk to Nancy's fr4iend, who told Nancy he was envious that I would be here for a month. It is easy for me to understand why he would say that. I've been here a week, and have spent this first week just watching, really, watching and allowing myself to step into the pace of the moving hoards of people who call the Prospekt their home. i just now feel as if i can walk without tripping, and have put out my intuitive feelers enough to sense the complexity and variety of the characters who are out there. Faceless and numberless people are now starting to separate into types, and i can tell a tourist, like myself, at a glance, and that s before they speak english or german or italian. i'm tempted to go more fully undercover, and put on a long dark skirt and envelope my head in a babushka, as I feel, like in most countries i'm familiar with, that women over 50 move invisibly among those who matter more. i like it. imagine what i could do with that disguise? certainly I would avoid standing in the tunnels that go under the prospekt and down to the subways where i would sing russian folk songs with a plastic bucket at my feet; i don't see much interest in that, or in standing at entrances to restaurants that serve russian national dishes, handing out discount coupons for their food. rather, i would stumble quickly but with a slight hobble down the street and onto the bus, where I would pause before stepping up into the bus (no "kneeling" buses here, in St Petersburg, let me tell you in this city for the young) and wait for some slightly younger woman to rush over to help me up the steps, help from the next generation of babushkas who have not yet realized that they are that, who are still young enough to be regretting the stillettos they have stopped wearing because of bunyans and too many turned ankles. yes that['s the other thing i noticed, just walking and watching: turned ankles. one of those amazons striding along and then pop, over she goes like one of those dolls that are held together with string on the inside, but who collapse when you push the base.
so, what i wanted to say really, here was that a week in St Petersburg would be like going to a ballet and listening to the overture and then leaving before the ballet began. I haven't even been the hermitage yet, i'm still digesting the modernists, wanting more tarkovsky, lectures from the russian scholars here who are showing me the mythology of petersburg, the facade, the dreamworld of peter I that has been added to by successive layers of russian imagination. So i understand Nancy's friend's envy, because to have been in petersburg for a week is to KNOW to absolutely know that you have not been in petersburg at all.
i suspect that being here for a month will bring even greater certainty about the insubstantiability of petersburg. already i want to come back.
no blood on the streets this morning.
love you all, Anne
Thursday, June 21, 2007
a few more observations (okay, it does go on a bit, but this is for me, too)
I'm not sure if it's the packs of howling and snarling dogs wandering the night streets, or the raging fires in the garbage bins, or the men in dark suits and glasses that were taking my picture in the restaurant yesterday at lunch time, or the pools of coagulated blood on the sidewalks and doorsteps that I must step around in the mornings on my way to breakfast, but there is something about Petersburg that is, well, different from my little house on that pacific island.
How quiet Vancouver Island is. How quaint. How safe. How calm. Yesterday, while I sat in the "park" across from the Kazanski cathedral to eat my breakfast of yogurt and apple/cherry tart, and while I took in the fact that I was sharing the space with those who had not yet awakened from their nights' sleep on the benches around me, several piles of relatively fresh dog shit, the remains of a whole chicken, and a dead rat, I realized that of the many things I could possibly be missing (Steve, Judith, Larissa, Lorraine, Zoa, Brendan, a hot shower, a good meal, a comfortable bed, fresh air, a mosquito free existence, hugs, Milton, the cats, Steve, Steve, Steve, and Steve...and then my colleagues and the familiarity that comes along with them), I am missing nature. Here, in the heart of Petersburg, there is no nature. Well, none other than the above mentioned park (and others in similar vein, and all surrounded by cement and pastel coloured European facaded buildings) and the rivers running through the river. But the rivers too are bound by concrete and although I have seen men standing on bridges to reel a hook from a line in hopes of catching a fish, my imagination does not go so far to imagine that a fish could actually survive in such a murky river. Well, no floating condoms yet, but plenty of empty water bottles and paper wrappers can be seen bobbing alongside the boats that take us tourists through the canal system.
But heck, I bet you want to know about the howling dogs, don't you? It's absolutely true. Every night after I put on my blinders (and more about that metaphor another time) and lull myself into the half sleep that is just barely possible when all the dusk-falling and its sleepy time cues are missing, I hear, off in the distance, and sometimes closer, and sometimes moving away, a pack of what sound to be about 6 dogs. There is a great commotion of snarling and biting and yowling, and I can imagine the flying specks of blood and saliva as these dogs move through the streets, searching for the stray cats (is it true? did there used to be four kittens running around the garbage bin outside my dorm, and now there are three? ).
Digression: right now I'm in the grotty internet cafe, the one with the "booths" for internet privacy. teh booths, I may have mentioned before, have curtains, so that you can use the cameras that are in them with impunity. When I have used those computers, I have been treated with random pornography sites that pop up out of nowhere and treat me to the basest tastes of the public internet user, and those usually involve child pornography.
Flash to the Nevsky Prospekt. Many of the young women on Nevsky Prospekt look like, well, what in my town might be described as hookers. Petersburg is a young city; most of the od people have died or moved away, and what is left is a young crazy city. So making my way down Nevsky Prospekt at any hour of the day or night is challenging because even those very tall blonde russian women wearing stilletos and very tight jeans (and oh, did I mention their breasts?), those women are moving quickly. They are on their way to somewhere, and someone told me that that somewhere is on the way to being married before they reach 23...or it's too late. Or something like that. Some of them marry quickly and then immdiately divorce, as it apparently is less shameful to be single after a divorce than to be single because never having married. In any case, there they are, in their tight white jeans, tight bodice enhancing and revealing shirts or blouses, push out bras, striding like amazons along the Prospekt. Can these women really be the future babushka, the woman who sits in every room of the Russian State Museum ensuring that no one touches or breathes on the painting by Filono or Maleich. These women wearing flat shoes, patterned skirts, blunt cropped short hair, and stern faces...did they used to be the young women of Petersburg striding their own version of the fashion statement? I guess it's the stilettos and the breasts that get me. I mean, given how short I am in comparison, this does mean that I spend a great deal of my time not only dodging around their quick pace, but also around their breasts...I don't have to avert my eyes, I have to wear safety glasses.
So, back to the internet cafe. Today I've asked for a computer facing the window that looks out to Kazanskya Prospekt. This means I can watch what's going on outside (the guy with dreads on his cellphone, pacing up and down in front of me and screaming at the person on the other end, the woman in the silver lame - is there any such thing? - the silver lame mini-dress and black and silver stilettos, a cigarette as long as her stiletto heel is tall, in her left hand...and on these computers, at least, there are no pornography pop ups - it's public, and I can be pretty sure, I hope, that...
The fire in the garbage bins? Yesterday morning on my way to class (?) I noticed, oh, I don't know, maybe 30 foot flames rising out of the garbage bin, and the accompanying smell of burning garbage. I suspected a smell of burning meat, too, so maybe that's where that fourth kitten disappeared to (sorry Larissa, but these kittens, well, they just get into everything, and thus probably also garbage cans). Astonishingly to me, and to some of the other NAmericans here, everyone seemed to blythly go about their business. And so I did too. Oh, a raging fire in a garbage bin, I will be able to say the next time I pass one. And not then wonder how to call a fire truck.
Men in dark suits, you ask? Steve, I know you are wondering about that one, and will be asking me to take the next bus out of here. Essentially, it goes like this: sitting in a restaurant yesterday at noon having lunch with two Canadian friends. Two men, wearing dark suits and sunglasses (yeah, I know, I know, how undercover can you get, how subtle?) sitting two tables away taking pictures. When I looked at them directly, which happened to be while the camera was aimed directly at our table, the guy with teh camera turned away and took a photograph of the ceiling.
So, is this just a Petersburgian taking pictures of tourists? And he just happens to look like a thug?
Its the pools of coagulated blood that I find the most curious. Every morning since I have come here I have seen blood on the streets. Sometimes the same blood hangs around for a few days, which means the packs of wandering dogs are not finding them and cleaning them up. But I have heard stories from the young men who are here and frequenting the bars that bar fights are not uncommon, and heard one story from a guy who turned a corner to find a guy bashing another guy's head into the concrete sidewalk, while the victim's girlfriend stood by smoking a cigarette and crying at them to stop. He finally stopped, and the victim got up and went into the bar with his girlfirend while the attacker went to his car, opened the trunk, removed his shirt, tossed it in, and then pulled out a clean one, put it on, went into same bar.
Or there is the guy from our program who spilled a beer on a russian bar patron and the patron responded by punching him in the face and knocking him out.
Okay, so Steve, you need to know that I'm not hanging out in bars, although I gotta tell you that the food situation here is so sketchy that I have started having a beer for each of lunch and dinner instead of eating. I've found it to be much cheaper and more reliable. It's also thirst quenching. Perhaps it also helps me to sleep better.
So, those pools of blood on the streets are interesting inscriptions from the Petersburg locals and the more adventurous of our group (there are 100 of us here) and are already starting to feel normal and now have begun merely to add resonance to the name of the Cathedral about 4 blocks away, the Church of the Spilled Blood. I haven't been there yet. I'm saving that, but it is a major tourist attraction, so it holds little attraction for me. So far.
Today I went to the Russian State Museum with Ann, a woman from Greenwich Village, 75 yrs old. She is director of an institute of urban design in the village, and as a young reporter was the first person to have interviewed Andy Warhol, who, at the conclusion of the interview, gave her a piece of his which was a two sided painting of a 2 dollar bill. She is currently working on the 2nd edition of a book on the history of design, which WW Norton is publishing once she includes the material on Russian design. Well, she is fascinating to spend time with, but not because of those things, but because she is just plain old fun. And, of course, we share in interest in the same time: early 20th century, so were both heading to the avant garde section of the museum where she wanted to see Kandinsky and I wanted to see. I saw...work by Filonov, a piece entitled King's Feast, another Cosmos, Shock Workers (Masters of Analytic Art), Dairy Maids, Peasant Family, Live Head, Formula of Spring. He was working in the early 20th century doing Cubist types of things while Picasso was hanging around with Gertrude Stein in Paris doing his Cubist thing. Interested in looking up more about Filonov. I also saw several pieeces by Malavich, and I want to also see if Linda Dalrymple Henderson mentions either of these two painters in her book, The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art. I know she has a chpater on Russian art, but I did not get to read it before I had to send it back to the Museum.
Speaking of Fourth Dimensions, I feel in a way as if I have stumbled upon one here in Petersburg. It does seem like a Fourth Dimension, a European-like city, architecturally, inhabited by grim-faced Russians. No helmet laws here, Steve, for any kind of bike (I say this now because a woman just blasted by, helmetless, on a motorcycle), and what would be the point, really, of having helmet laws in a city that does not fix its potholes?
And so missing nature is looking at my photographs of Cortes Island sunsets, the little cabin which by now is no longer covered with a tarp but with scadding, the beach at Smelt Bay, swimming in Hague Lake, lying in the sun, listening to nothing except the beating of my own heart. And maybe a raven. I was feeling strange for a while the other day, and wondering what was the cause, and then I realized it was the absence of nature. Yes, I am deeply immersed in culture, but what is culture without nature? Well, it's locked doors, stiletto heels, blood on the streets, packs of nocturnal dogs.
Speaking of ravens. The ravens in Petersburg sound different from the ones on Vancouver Island.
How quiet Vancouver Island is. How quaint. How safe. How calm. Yesterday, while I sat in the "park" across from the Kazanski cathedral to eat my breakfast of yogurt and apple/cherry tart, and while I took in the fact that I was sharing the space with those who had not yet awakened from their nights' sleep on the benches around me, several piles of relatively fresh dog shit, the remains of a whole chicken, and a dead rat, I realized that of the many things I could possibly be missing (Steve, Judith, Larissa, Lorraine, Zoa, Brendan, a hot shower, a good meal, a comfortable bed, fresh air, a mosquito free existence, hugs, Milton, the cats, Steve, Steve, Steve, and Steve...and then my colleagues and the familiarity that comes along with them), I am missing nature. Here, in the heart of Petersburg, there is no nature. Well, none other than the above mentioned park (and others in similar vein, and all surrounded by cement and pastel coloured European facaded buildings) and the rivers running through the river. But the rivers too are bound by concrete and although I have seen men standing on bridges to reel a hook from a line in hopes of catching a fish, my imagination does not go so far to imagine that a fish could actually survive in such a murky river. Well, no floating condoms yet, but plenty of empty water bottles and paper wrappers can be seen bobbing alongside the boats that take us tourists through the canal system.
But heck, I bet you want to know about the howling dogs, don't you? It's absolutely true. Every night after I put on my blinders (and more about that metaphor another time) and lull myself into the half sleep that is just barely possible when all the dusk-falling and its sleepy time cues are missing, I hear, off in the distance, and sometimes closer, and sometimes moving away, a pack of what sound to be about 6 dogs. There is a great commotion of snarling and biting and yowling, and I can imagine the flying specks of blood and saliva as these dogs move through the streets, searching for the stray cats (is it true? did there used to be four kittens running around the garbage bin outside my dorm, and now there are three? ).
Digression: right now I'm in the grotty internet cafe, the one with the "booths" for internet privacy. teh booths, I may have mentioned before, have curtains, so that you can use the cameras that are in them with impunity. When I have used those computers, I have been treated with random pornography sites that pop up out of nowhere and treat me to the basest tastes of the public internet user, and those usually involve child pornography.
Flash to the Nevsky Prospekt. Many of the young women on Nevsky Prospekt look like, well, what in my town might be described as hookers. Petersburg is a young city; most of the od people have died or moved away, and what is left is a young crazy city. So making my way down Nevsky Prospekt at any hour of the day or night is challenging because even those very tall blonde russian women wearing stilletos and very tight jeans (and oh, did I mention their breasts?), those women are moving quickly. They are on their way to somewhere, and someone told me that that somewhere is on the way to being married before they reach 23...or it's too late. Or something like that. Some of them marry quickly and then immdiately divorce, as it apparently is less shameful to be single after a divorce than to be single because never having married. In any case, there they are, in their tight white jeans, tight bodice enhancing and revealing shirts or blouses, push out bras, striding like amazons along the Prospekt. Can these women really be the future babushka, the woman who sits in every room of the Russian State Museum ensuring that no one touches or breathes on the painting by Filono or Maleich. These women wearing flat shoes, patterned skirts, blunt cropped short hair, and stern faces...did they used to be the young women of Petersburg striding their own version of the fashion statement? I guess it's the stilettos and the breasts that get me. I mean, given how short I am in comparison, this does mean that I spend a great deal of my time not only dodging around their quick pace, but also around their breasts...I don't have to avert my eyes, I have to wear safety glasses.
So, back to the internet cafe. Today I've asked for a computer facing the window that looks out to Kazanskya Prospekt. This means I can watch what's going on outside (the guy with dreads on his cellphone, pacing up and down in front of me and screaming at the person on the other end, the woman in the silver lame - is there any such thing? - the silver lame mini-dress and black and silver stilettos, a cigarette as long as her stiletto heel is tall, in her left hand...and on these computers, at least, there are no pornography pop ups - it's public, and I can be pretty sure, I hope, that...
The fire in the garbage bins? Yesterday morning on my way to class (?) I noticed, oh, I don't know, maybe 30 foot flames rising out of the garbage bin, and the accompanying smell of burning garbage. I suspected a smell of burning meat, too, so maybe that's where that fourth kitten disappeared to (sorry Larissa, but these kittens, well, they just get into everything, and thus probably also garbage cans). Astonishingly to me, and to some of the other NAmericans here, everyone seemed to blythly go about their business. And so I did too. Oh, a raging fire in a garbage bin, I will be able to say the next time I pass one. And not then wonder how to call a fire truck.
Men in dark suits, you ask? Steve, I know you are wondering about that one, and will be asking me to take the next bus out of here. Essentially, it goes like this: sitting in a restaurant yesterday at noon having lunch with two Canadian friends. Two men, wearing dark suits and sunglasses (yeah, I know, I know, how undercover can you get, how subtle?) sitting two tables away taking pictures. When I looked at them directly, which happened to be while the camera was aimed directly at our table, the guy with teh camera turned away and took a photograph of the ceiling.
So, is this just a Petersburgian taking pictures of tourists? And he just happens to look like a thug?
Its the pools of coagulated blood that I find the most curious. Every morning since I have come here I have seen blood on the streets. Sometimes the same blood hangs around for a few days, which means the packs of wandering dogs are not finding them and cleaning them up. But I have heard stories from the young men who are here and frequenting the bars that bar fights are not uncommon, and heard one story from a guy who turned a corner to find a guy bashing another guy's head into the concrete sidewalk, while the victim's girlfriend stood by smoking a cigarette and crying at them to stop. He finally stopped, and the victim got up and went into the bar with his girlfirend while the attacker went to his car, opened the trunk, removed his shirt, tossed it in, and then pulled out a clean one, put it on, went into same bar.
Or there is the guy from our program who spilled a beer on a russian bar patron and the patron responded by punching him in the face and knocking him out.
Okay, so Steve, you need to know that I'm not hanging out in bars, although I gotta tell you that the food situation here is so sketchy that I have started having a beer for each of lunch and dinner instead of eating. I've found it to be much cheaper and more reliable. It's also thirst quenching. Perhaps it also helps me to sleep better.
So, those pools of blood on the streets are interesting inscriptions from the Petersburg locals and the more adventurous of our group (there are 100 of us here) and are already starting to feel normal and now have begun merely to add resonance to the name of the Cathedral about 4 blocks away, the Church of the Spilled Blood. I haven't been there yet. I'm saving that, but it is a major tourist attraction, so it holds little attraction for me. So far.
Today I went to the Russian State Museum with Ann, a woman from Greenwich Village, 75 yrs old. She is director of an institute of urban design in the village, and as a young reporter was the first person to have interviewed Andy Warhol, who, at the conclusion of the interview, gave her a piece of his which was a two sided painting of a 2 dollar bill. She is currently working on the 2nd edition of a book on the history of design, which WW Norton is publishing once she includes the material on Russian design. Well, she is fascinating to spend time with, but not because of those things, but because she is just plain old fun. And, of course, we share in interest in the same time: early 20th century, so were both heading to the avant garde section of the museum where she wanted to see Kandinsky and I wanted to see. I saw...work by Filonov, a piece entitled King's Feast, another Cosmos, Shock Workers (Masters of Analytic Art), Dairy Maids, Peasant Family, Live Head, Formula of Spring. He was working in the early 20th century doing Cubist types of things while Picasso was hanging around with Gertrude Stein in Paris doing his Cubist thing. Interested in looking up more about Filonov. I also saw several pieeces by Malavich, and I want to also see if Linda Dalrymple Henderson mentions either of these two painters in her book, The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art. I know she has a chpater on Russian art, but I did not get to read it before I had to send it back to the Museum.
Speaking of Fourth Dimensions, I feel in a way as if I have stumbled upon one here in Petersburg. It does seem like a Fourth Dimension, a European-like city, architecturally, inhabited by grim-faced Russians. No helmet laws here, Steve, for any kind of bike (I say this now because a woman just blasted by, helmetless, on a motorcycle), and what would be the point, really, of having helmet laws in a city that does not fix its potholes?
And so missing nature is looking at my photographs of Cortes Island sunsets, the little cabin which by now is no longer covered with a tarp but with scadding, the beach at Smelt Bay, swimming in Hague Lake, lying in the sun, listening to nothing except the beating of my own heart. And maybe a raven. I was feeling strange for a while the other day, and wondering what was the cause, and then I realized it was the absence of nature. Yes, I am deeply immersed in culture, but what is culture without nature? Well, it's locked doors, stiletto heels, blood on the streets, packs of nocturnal dogs.
Speaking of ravens. The ravens in Petersburg sound different from the ones on Vancouver Island.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Russia
So, last night I took a 1 1/2 hour russian course and now I am fluent. well, maybe not fluent, but at least i can start to read signs and know what they say. luckily there are enough imported english words and then words with latin roots that I can recognize and translate. I know now that there is an invitro fertilixation clinic here in Petersburg, although i have no reason or desire to visit it.
observations of today: watched a young mother teach a pre-walking baby with bunny ears on her yellow hat how to kick a can onto the street from the sidewalk. That is what people do here: drop their bottles and cans onto the street. And, in downtown Petersburg at least, someone comes along dressed in lime green coveralls with a broom and dust thingy and sweeps them up and into a trash can.
don't smile in Russia: you will be thought to be a simpleton or to have some nefarious purpose. this suits me well; as I don't smile much anyway.
don't count on street lights to clear the roads for safe pedestrian passage. this of course is a good match for my neurotic street crossing behaviour.
last night i got caught in a notorious petersburg downpour. of course i brought no umbrella or raincoat, so i got wet trying to find an unlocked entrance to the university compound. it took me an hour as at one point i backtracked and then had to re-backtrack in this pouring rain. I was carrying a plastic container of some sort of cabbage salad I had purchased in the 24 grocery convenience store, but it leaked and my salad filledwith rainwater, so I tossed it in the garbage (and did notkick it into the street). well, wet is an understatement. i was soaked through to my skin by the time i found the entrance and found my way to the residence building. luckily my roomate was still up despite the late hour so i didn't have to awaken her to let me in the room forwhich there is only one key.
the best news of many days is that therewas hot water for a shower for the first time snce i've been here. i had been warned about the possible lack of hot water, so was prepared fr it, bt this morning i woke up to find hot (if brown and stinky) water pouring out of the shower head. coincidentially this is the first day that I have felt "human".
i'm disappointed that I have not yet figured out how to post my photographs here, but i have not taken very many yet. i feel as if I am still trying to orient myself, and my picture taking has been random and likely either dull or predictable. Kristie wanted me to take pictures of the poeple that I am meeting, so I'm trying to do that. but mostly i'm interested in the dogs of petersburg, because while i don't see many during the day, i can hear them in the middle of the night...and it sounds like packs of dogs roaming the streets while engaging in internicene battles. I can hear the snarling and barking and howling, and the gnashing of teeth. the next day there is no evidence of these packs of dogs, so either Iam hearing ghosts or the dogs of petersburg are noctural, waiting until the push of people subsides.
and then, larissa, there are the cats. i've seen a few cats, most of them filthy but obviously well fat, ad i suspect that is due to the rat population. there are several cats loitering around the Hertzen campus, and they are robust muscle-bound body-building cats whose striding pecs speak of their confidence. i haven't really interacted with any of them, as there is the possibility of rabies....but i've taken a couple of pictures of cats.
and then there was the generic dog lying on the front step of the hermitage this morning. he was just lying there on his side, surrounded by hundreds of people coming and going, and he looked like he was dead, or at least in a deep sleep, and i figure he was sleeping there because it was safe from the wandering hoards of yowling dogs he travels with and fights with at night. it was safe - people just stepped around him. Some looked at him, others just ignored him. i took his picture. will post when and if i can.
this afternoon i attended a lecture on the "fire and flood mythology of Petersburg", which was essentially a lecture about how petersburg was first conceived as Peter I imaginary construct and whose european designed buildings were merely a facade for his idea of utopia...a facade, of course, with no substance. the writers of petersburg, first Gogol, PUshkin and Dostoevski and then others, including most recently Bitov in his "Pushkin House" have created and then explored the substance of the mythology that grew out of this facade.
and so on. i didn't bring my notes with me, but the lecture was great and the lecturer will be giving another 7 lectures while I am here on various aspects of russian literature, and i'm in for those.
Culture shock has not set in, and I'm not sure why. I feel very comfortable here although the white nights are somewhat of a trickster as I am never able to tell what time it is. So, i don't get my "go to bed now" cue from the dusk; thre is no dusk, just daylight until 1 am and then night until 3 or so, and then sun again. i hve never seen the sun fall so deeply into the sky and skit there, so different from say Fiji...
observations of today: watched a young mother teach a pre-walking baby with bunny ears on her yellow hat how to kick a can onto the street from the sidewalk. That is what people do here: drop their bottles and cans onto the street. And, in downtown Petersburg at least, someone comes along dressed in lime green coveralls with a broom and dust thingy and sweeps them up and into a trash can.
don't smile in Russia: you will be thought to be a simpleton or to have some nefarious purpose. this suits me well; as I don't smile much anyway.
don't count on street lights to clear the roads for safe pedestrian passage. this of course is a good match for my neurotic street crossing behaviour.
last night i got caught in a notorious petersburg downpour. of course i brought no umbrella or raincoat, so i got wet trying to find an unlocked entrance to the university compound. it took me an hour as at one point i backtracked and then had to re-backtrack in this pouring rain. I was carrying a plastic container of some sort of cabbage salad I had purchased in the 24 grocery convenience store, but it leaked and my salad filledwith rainwater, so I tossed it in the garbage (and did notkick it into the street). well, wet is an understatement. i was soaked through to my skin by the time i found the entrance and found my way to the residence building. luckily my roomate was still up despite the late hour so i didn't have to awaken her to let me in the room forwhich there is only one key.
the best news of many days is that therewas hot water for a shower for the first time snce i've been here. i had been warned about the possible lack of hot water, so was prepared fr it, bt this morning i woke up to find hot (if brown and stinky) water pouring out of the shower head. coincidentially this is the first day that I have felt "human".
i'm disappointed that I have not yet figured out how to post my photographs here, but i have not taken very many yet. i feel as if I am still trying to orient myself, and my picture taking has been random and likely either dull or predictable. Kristie wanted me to take pictures of the poeple that I am meeting, so I'm trying to do that. but mostly i'm interested in the dogs of petersburg, because while i don't see many during the day, i can hear them in the middle of the night...and it sounds like packs of dogs roaming the streets while engaging in internicene battles. I can hear the snarling and barking and howling, and the gnashing of teeth. the next day there is no evidence of these packs of dogs, so either Iam hearing ghosts or the dogs of petersburg are noctural, waiting until the push of people subsides.
and then, larissa, there are the cats. i've seen a few cats, most of them filthy but obviously well fat, ad i suspect that is due to the rat population. there are several cats loitering around the Hertzen campus, and they are robust muscle-bound body-building cats whose striding pecs speak of their confidence. i haven't really interacted with any of them, as there is the possibility of rabies....but i've taken a couple of pictures of cats.
and then there was the generic dog lying on the front step of the hermitage this morning. he was just lying there on his side, surrounded by hundreds of people coming and going, and he looked like he was dead, or at least in a deep sleep, and i figure he was sleeping there because it was safe from the wandering hoards of yowling dogs he travels with and fights with at night. it was safe - people just stepped around him. Some looked at him, others just ignored him. i took his picture. will post when and if i can.
this afternoon i attended a lecture on the "fire and flood mythology of Petersburg", which was essentially a lecture about how petersburg was first conceived as Peter I imaginary construct and whose european designed buildings were merely a facade for his idea of utopia...a facade, of course, with no substance. the writers of petersburg, first Gogol, PUshkin and Dostoevski and then others, including most recently Bitov in his "Pushkin House" have created and then explored the substance of the mythology that grew out of this facade.
and so on. i didn't bring my notes with me, but the lecture was great and the lecturer will be giving another 7 lectures while I am here on various aspects of russian literature, and i'm in for those.
Culture shock has not set in, and I'm not sure why. I feel very comfortable here although the white nights are somewhat of a trickster as I am never able to tell what time it is. So, i don't get my "go to bed now" cue from the dusk; thre is no dusk, just daylight until 1 am and then night until 3 or so, and then sun again. i hve never seen the sun fall so deeply into the sky and skit there, so different from say Fiji...
Sunday, June 17, 2007
oh my...
Okay, I'm here.
First impressions: some of the buildings similar to the Spanish era buildings in Havana. Wide boulevard streets, open spaces, no crush of people, or high density housing, relatively clean air with a whiff of the Baltic, but not salt smell, just moist. Moist. Without being humid. People walk fairly slowly down the streets. Young women wearing tight, stylish clothing (although nothing like the men and women off all ages I saw in the Milan airport) and stylish shoes...no "crocs" here.
I've just returned from a two hour tour of the vicinity around where I am working and staying, and have seen the hotspots of St Petersburg tourism.
I'll start with the present and work backwards. I'm sitting in an internet establishment which is essentially a long narrow room with several computers in it. I've paid ahead for an hour, so that I can catch up on my email, facebook, and this blog, and I've been assigned to a small cubicle with keyboard and monitor, the latter of which is embedded into a wooden frame. This computer has skype capability and a camera and headphones. And, it is high speed.
I'm hungry, but there is a free reception this evening, and if last evening's welcome reception is any indication, the food will be great.
The tour of St Petersburg was essentially a tour of the cathedrals, museums, galleries, and Other Places of Historical And Tourist Interest, including a gift shop that had a wide selection of amber, gilded babushkas, and gold-leaf and hand painted decorated lacquer boxes, one of which I was immediately drawn to, only to discover it was 1200 american dollars. Each section of this gift shop has its own expert salesperson, and I was immediately provided with a mini-lecture on the purpose, origina, and devleopment of the lacquer boxes by a young man called Daniil who reminded me of Ilya Kurakin from, oh, was he the russian sidekick on mission impossible?. The one I chose but did not buy had a gold embossed painting of a Turk on a flying carpet. Beautiful, delicate in blues, pinks, and of course, gold.
So I've had a surface introduction to the highlights, including a visit into the Cathedral of St Nicholas, an "active" church replete with icons, gold reliquary, genuflecting russian women wearing babushkas (I had to cover my head with my jacket, reminiscent of my childhood when having joined a RC daycamp, I made daily trips into the RC church to pray with my French catholic friends, my head covered with a square of toilet paper which I had to hold on my head with my hand), and legless war veterans outside in wheelchairs, fully dressed in their battle fatiques, and begging.
Inside, many women and children move around from icon to icon and as they approach and move away from each icon, they cross themselves many times, bow their heads, and approach the icon where they touch their forheads against the icon, and also, in the case of the "picture" icons, they kiss the representation of baby Jesus. Women must have their heads covered, and most of the women wore colorful square scarves which are folded in half to create a triangle which they then tie over their head. As they leave the church, they also turn back to the door they have just exited and make the sign of the cross and bow down, different women to differing degrees.
St Nicholas is the patron saint of mariners, and of course, St Petersburg having originally been built by Peter the Great, who was an enthusiastic mariner, it makes sense that there would be a cathedral named for St Nicholas...and, of course, the Neva River ties into the Volga, and goes out to the Baltic.
I am staying in the student0residence of the Herzen University, which means that I am a 10 minute walk from where most of the seminars are, as well as 10 minutes from breakfast. This, of course, was the cheapest housing option available to me, and while my room is somewhat reminiscent of a cell, it is an adequate retreat from everything else I'm doing here, since the university buildings form a barrier between the inner courtyard where the residence is, and the very busy Nevski Prospeckt, which runs alongside. So, I could hear no street noise from my room, and was only awakened by the sound of miniature chainsaws diving through my room, which turned out to be mosquitoes. Since Steve is not here with me to run around the room ki9lling every last one of them, I just let them fly around all night, and kept myself covered with my sheet, which wasn't particularly effective, as I woke up with mosquito bites on the bottoms of my feet. But I have learned my lesson, and will start to use the Deep Woods Off that Steve bought for me before I left. And I will keep the window closed at all times.
The room is sparse, and while I lay awake last night in the bright lights of 12:30 am, the sun just setting, I stared at the ceiling and estimated that the room I'm sharing with Allison from London England but originally from the US is about 8 x 10 feet. It includes two narrow beds; well, one narrow bed and another bed that is even narrower. A stand up wardrobe with four shelves and 4 hangers, two bedside tables, a chair, and a television are the only things in the room. We share a bathroom with 8 other people, but there is likely never going to be a shower line up, as there is no hot water. I'm glad I cut my hair.
How to Shower When There is No Hot Water
First you turn on both the hot and cold water taps, Just In Case the hot water should begin to flow. Then, you tell yourself that you can do it, that you can put your whole body under the stream of cold water pressing out of the rusty shower head. So, you take off all your clothes and stick a leg in. Well, okay, just a foot, and then you have this idea that if you just stick your head under the falling water, you can wash your hair without having your lips turn blue. So, you do that, and then you wash each of your feet, separately, and then your armpits, and then whatever other part of your body it occurs to you to wash, and you leave the shower room without having had a shower, but feeling somewhat as if you can face the rest of the world without the rest of the world running away screaming.
I was met at the airport by two tall, high cheek-boned Russian women in their twenties. They both wore tight clothes, well, really tight clothes, and had an expansive uncovered space between the bottom of their T-shirt and the top of their hip high jeans. They both had long blond hair that came to wispy points, and were aware and helpful. Coming through the terminal had been easy, although the escalotor down stopped while I was on it. I descended into a mass of recent arrivals from Milan (my plane) and London, and we all pressed forward towards the 4 possible exits. I had a couple of forms to fill out, which, when I arrived, were taken away from me, along with my passport, to be registered by the police at a cost of 300 rubles, or 18 USD. Iam now without a passport or visa, and am hoping not to get arrested. One guy from Kenya was stopped at customs and sent back to Kenya because there was an anomoly with his visa...I think there was a comma in the wrong place. They plopped him right on the next plane out of Russia, and I'm guessing that not many questions are asked in these situations.
gotta go!
First impressions: some of the buildings similar to the Spanish era buildings in Havana. Wide boulevard streets, open spaces, no crush of people, or high density housing, relatively clean air with a whiff of the Baltic, but not salt smell, just moist. Moist. Without being humid. People walk fairly slowly down the streets. Young women wearing tight, stylish clothing (although nothing like the men and women off all ages I saw in the Milan airport) and stylish shoes...no "crocs" here.
I've just returned from a two hour tour of the vicinity around where I am working and staying, and have seen the hotspots of St Petersburg tourism.
I'll start with the present and work backwards. I'm sitting in an internet establishment which is essentially a long narrow room with several computers in it. I've paid ahead for an hour, so that I can catch up on my email, facebook, and this blog, and I've been assigned to a small cubicle with keyboard and monitor, the latter of which is embedded into a wooden frame. This computer has skype capability and a camera and headphones. And, it is high speed.
I'm hungry, but there is a free reception this evening, and if last evening's welcome reception is any indication, the food will be great.
The tour of St Petersburg was essentially a tour of the cathedrals, museums, galleries, and Other Places of Historical And Tourist Interest, including a gift shop that had a wide selection of amber, gilded babushkas, and gold-leaf and hand painted decorated lacquer boxes, one of which I was immediately drawn to, only to discover it was 1200 american dollars. Each section of this gift shop has its own expert salesperson, and I was immediately provided with a mini-lecture on the purpose, origina, and devleopment of the lacquer boxes by a young man called Daniil who reminded me of Ilya Kurakin from, oh, was he the russian sidekick on mission impossible?. The one I chose but did not buy had a gold embossed painting of a Turk on a flying carpet. Beautiful, delicate in blues, pinks, and of course, gold.
So I've had a surface introduction to the highlights, including a visit into the Cathedral of St Nicholas, an "active" church replete with icons, gold reliquary, genuflecting russian women wearing babushkas (I had to cover my head with my jacket, reminiscent of my childhood when having joined a RC daycamp, I made daily trips into the RC church to pray with my French catholic friends, my head covered with a square of toilet paper which I had to hold on my head with my hand), and legless war veterans outside in wheelchairs, fully dressed in their battle fatiques, and begging.
Inside, many women and children move around from icon to icon and as they approach and move away from each icon, they cross themselves many times, bow their heads, and approach the icon where they touch their forheads against the icon, and also, in the case of the "picture" icons, they kiss the representation of baby Jesus. Women must have their heads covered, and most of the women wore colorful square scarves which are folded in half to create a triangle which they then tie over their head. As they leave the church, they also turn back to the door they have just exited and make the sign of the cross and bow down, different women to differing degrees.
St Nicholas is the patron saint of mariners, and of course, St Petersburg having originally been built by Peter the Great, who was an enthusiastic mariner, it makes sense that there would be a cathedral named for St Nicholas...and, of course, the Neva River ties into the Volga, and goes out to the Baltic.
I am staying in the student0residence of the Herzen University, which means that I am a 10 minute walk from where most of the seminars are, as well as 10 minutes from breakfast. This, of course, was the cheapest housing option available to me, and while my room is somewhat reminiscent of a cell, it is an adequate retreat from everything else I'm doing here, since the university buildings form a barrier between the inner courtyard where the residence is, and the very busy Nevski Prospeckt, which runs alongside. So, I could hear no street noise from my room, and was only awakened by the sound of miniature chainsaws diving through my room, which turned out to be mosquitoes. Since Steve is not here with me to run around the room ki9lling every last one of them, I just let them fly around all night, and kept myself covered with my sheet, which wasn't particularly effective, as I woke up with mosquito bites on the bottoms of my feet. But I have learned my lesson, and will start to use the Deep Woods Off that Steve bought for me before I left. And I will keep the window closed at all times.
The room is sparse, and while I lay awake last night in the bright lights of 12:30 am, the sun just setting, I stared at the ceiling and estimated that the room I'm sharing with Allison from London England but originally from the US is about 8 x 10 feet. It includes two narrow beds; well, one narrow bed and another bed that is even narrower. A stand up wardrobe with four shelves and 4 hangers, two bedside tables, a chair, and a television are the only things in the room. We share a bathroom with 8 other people, but there is likely never going to be a shower line up, as there is no hot water. I'm glad I cut my hair.
How to Shower When There is No Hot Water
First you turn on both the hot and cold water taps, Just In Case the hot water should begin to flow. Then, you tell yourself that you can do it, that you can put your whole body under the stream of cold water pressing out of the rusty shower head. So, you take off all your clothes and stick a leg in. Well, okay, just a foot, and then you have this idea that if you just stick your head under the falling water, you can wash your hair without having your lips turn blue. So, you do that, and then you wash each of your feet, separately, and then your armpits, and then whatever other part of your body it occurs to you to wash, and you leave the shower room without having had a shower, but feeling somewhat as if you can face the rest of the world without the rest of the world running away screaming.
I was met at the airport by two tall, high cheek-boned Russian women in their twenties. They both wore tight clothes, well, really tight clothes, and had an expansive uncovered space between the bottom of their T-shirt and the top of their hip high jeans. They both had long blond hair that came to wispy points, and were aware and helpful. Coming through the terminal had been easy, although the escalotor down stopped while I was on it. I descended into a mass of recent arrivals from Milan (my plane) and London, and we all pressed forward towards the 4 possible exits. I had a couple of forms to fill out, which, when I arrived, were taken away from me, along with my passport, to be registered by the police at a cost of 300 rubles, or 18 USD. Iam now without a passport or visa, and am hoping not to get arrested. One guy from Kenya was stopped at customs and sent back to Kenya because there was an anomoly with his visa...I think there was a comma in the wrong place. They plopped him right on the next plane out of Russia, and I'm guessing that not many questions are asked in these situations.
gotta go!
Friday, June 15, 2007
Toronto Pearson
So, I am in Pearson Airport at gate 174 waiting for my plane, which leaves in about 3 hours. I came very early to check in, because I hate it when unforseen problems create last minute chaos, so I was here 5 hours before check in, and of course everything went smoothly. My passport, the ticket I had bought by myself online, the visa - all passed muster, as they say, and here I am sitting in the departure lounge with my Starbucks coffee and my laptop.
When I woke up early this morning, my heart was beating rapidly and I had a lump in my throat. I was feeling a combination of excitement and fear, and the certain feeling that I would forget the laundry that I had put in the dryer earlier this morning, or my wallet or passport, at David and Karon's...but no, I think my neurotic comprehensive and deliberate planning and organization have paid off. Everything is where it should be, and it all fits, although in London I had to dump the obscenely awkward red suitcase large enough to store human cargo and replace it with two smaller brown bags.
The posts that follow beneath this one are short, and include a couple of photographs from the 3 days I spent in Toronto.
My heart is no longer beating like a hummingbird's, and I have a gallon of water packed in my carryon bag, ready for the upcoming travel marathon.
When I woke up early this morning, my heart was beating rapidly and I had a lump in my throat. I was feeling a combination of excitement and fear, and the certain feeling that I would forget the laundry that I had put in the dryer earlier this morning, or my wallet or passport, at David and Karon's...but no, I think my neurotic comprehensive and deliberate planning and organization have paid off. Everything is where it should be, and it all fits, although in London I had to dump the obscenely awkward red suitcase large enough to store human cargo and replace it with two smaller brown bags.
The posts that follow beneath this one are short, and include a couple of photographs from the 3 days I spent in Toronto.
My heart is no longer beating like a hummingbird's, and I have a gallon of water packed in my carryon bag, ready for the upcoming travel marathon.
Feet
Karen and I went for a long walk along the waterfront, and here she is soaking her feet with that ubiquitous smile on her face.
My Hot Dog bun
Here is my first night's bed, the one with the slow leak...and David wrestling with it
two women
I liked these two women, who were waiting to cross the same street, but who maintained a wide distance from one another. The similarities between them in terms of clothing and purses are far overcome by their differences.
gentleman with coffee on Bay street
I took a picture of this gentleman, and he must be called a gentleman, because of his pinstriped suit, immaculate looks, and straight posture. He seemed "out of time" from most of the other people walking by, or sitting down for coffee outside from where I was sitting.Queen & Bay, June 14 2007
Here is an impossible photograph that miraculously came out of my camera. Old City Hall is in the background, including the spire to the left of the photograph. Just below the spire you can see the left curved tower of new city hall, and to the right of that, the curved building which is the right hand side of the City Hall building. The top right hand corner of the photograph, where there are a few circular looking objects, is a photograh of the signs outside of where I was sitting with Linda. Of course, this photograph is spatially impossible, but aesthetically interesting.Wednesday, June 13, 2007
On the Edge of Etobicoke
I fell into the deep well of St Thomas Ontario for a few days, but I've recovered now after a nutritious dinner with David and Karon, and a long walk along the waterfront with Karon. It's 31 degrees in Toronto, and humid, but the breeze was blowing in off the lake, and the boardwalk was filled with rollerbladers, cyclists, walkers, runners. Notable was the guy on a bike wearing what looked to be a heavily padded shirt on which the design was metal plating.
Sailboats, at least 100 of them, were in the lake closer to downtown Toronto, and beside where we were walking the dragon boat races were ongoing.
Last night I slept on an airbed with a slow leak, so every couple of hours I woke up to find the tops of the totes on which the airbed was placed poking into my back, and my body enveloped in two large puffs of air mattress. Luckily it's an electric air mattress, so all I had to do was press a little button and it filled up with air again. I slept well, though.
Pictures at 11.
Sailboats, at least 100 of them, were in the lake closer to downtown Toronto, and beside where we were walking the dragon boat races were ongoing.
Last night I slept on an airbed with a slow leak, so every couple of hours I woke up to find the tops of the totes on which the airbed was placed poking into my back, and my body enveloped in two large puffs of air mattress. Luckily it's an electric air mattress, so all I had to do was press a little button and it filled up with air again. I slept well, though.
Pictures at 11.
Thursday, June 7, 2007
Samuel de Champlain with Astrolabe
This is the only photograph I took today. As soon as I took it, the batteries in my camera died. So this is it. It's that explorer, the French one. His statue is up on Nepean Point, facing up river in the direction he headed.
Of note from today: I wore a bright yellow rainjacket that I had bought from London Drugs for 15 dollars, and I hated it so much (it just felt wrong) that I left it in the coat check at the Museum of Civilization.
Have Visa, Will Travel
Now, I think I'll head off to the Museum of Civilization and see what, exactly, is meant by that word and what all the fuss is about.
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
National Art Gallery
this is the National Art Gallery in Ottawa as seen from the bench just outside the Nicholas Hoare book store on Sussex Drive. You can sort of see the spider just to the right of center.
So, the Nicholas Hoare bookstore is one of those bookstores that just has all the good stuff and NONE of the filler...the opposite of Chapters, which has 90% filler and a bit of the good stuff.
I bought Orhan Pamuk's My Name is Red (it's okay, Steve, I bought it in paperback, so it wasn't so expensive).
And Betty, as I wandered through the NAG, I kept making myself aware of the smells I was smelling. I have to admit, mostly I detected the odor of soap, but in the George Clutesi room, I smelled the scent of fresh paper.
I saw one exhibit, Betty, in which this woman takes personal objects that are worn or carried close to the human body, and puts them outside, inserting a bee hive into them. Over the years, honey comb accumulates on and around the objects, and her piece on display was a dress almost completely covered with honeycomb. The blurb that accompanied the piece talked about "inter-species collaboration" in art. For some reason, I thought of you and thought you'd like that.
So, I apologize for this photograph. It's pretty lame compared to the ones I saw on the racks in the Byward Market (on my way back to Home Sweetland Home, the B&B I'm staying at in Sandy Hill), which somehow managed to insert a field of tulips between the gallery and the road...how do they do that? I didn't see any flippin' tulips!
Can it really be this easy?
Where's the catch?
I got up early this morning and went down to breakfast to find one other B&B guest there. Brian and Sid's dog, Chelsea, had stolen a table napkin and was running up and down the hall with it in her mouth, and the other guest was too polite, I guess, to say anything.
After he had made our breakfasts, Brian sat at the table with us and asked me what I was up to in Ottawa. - Going to the Russian Consulate, I told him, to get a visa.
-Oh, he says, looking pleased. That's just down the street. And he tells me to walk up to Laurier Avenue, about two blocks from the B&B, turn right, and walk another few blocks until I come to Range Road, then turn right there. And here I had been expecting another $30 taxi ride.
It's cold in Ottawa today, but I set out, following Brian's instuctions. The consulate opens its doors at 9:30, and I'm standing outside at 9:10. No chance, of course, of an early opening, so I wander down to the edge of the Ottawa River and am surprised to find a rich population of Mallards, gulls, and even a couple of cormorants sunning themselves, facing east, sitting on rocks in the middle of the river's flow. I hear the unmistakable sound of red-winged blackbirds, and one of them lands on the walkway next to me, looks up at me, and mouths some incomprehensible message, it's beak opening and closing, opening and closing, before it flies off again into the river grass.
There seem to be a few extra cars in the parking lot across from the consulate, so I go back to stand outside the door at 9:20. At exactly 9:30, the door is opened electronically from within, and the five of us enter the building together. First thing I see is a row of Babushkas, bright blue, standing on a ledge. The receptionist points me to the "teller" behind a smouldering grey window, and I tell him I'm applying for a visa, and ask him what he wants first. - Passport, visa application, invitation, photograph, photocopy of passport information page...and $210 for 24 hour processing. I sign something, get a little blue card from the guy behind the glass, and am told to come back tomorrow.
It's 9:35, and I walk back up Somerset Street to Sweetland and am back in my room by 9:45.
So I have the rest of the day to work, catch up on my sleep, and then figure out where I am in relation to the rest of the city, the one that I used to know.
Tomorrow, it's pick up the visa and then work, visit a museum, relax...
I got up early this morning and went down to breakfast to find one other B&B guest there. Brian and Sid's dog, Chelsea, had stolen a table napkin and was running up and down the hall with it in her mouth, and the other guest was too polite, I guess, to say anything.
After he had made our breakfasts, Brian sat at the table with us and asked me what I was up to in Ottawa. - Going to the Russian Consulate, I told him, to get a visa.
-Oh, he says, looking pleased. That's just down the street. And he tells me to walk up to Laurier Avenue, about two blocks from the B&B, turn right, and walk another few blocks until I come to Range Road, then turn right there. And here I had been expecting another $30 taxi ride.
It's cold in Ottawa today, but I set out, following Brian's instuctions. The consulate opens its doors at 9:30, and I'm standing outside at 9:10. No chance, of course, of an early opening, so I wander down to the edge of the Ottawa River and am surprised to find a rich population of Mallards, gulls, and even a couple of cormorants sunning themselves, facing east, sitting on rocks in the middle of the river's flow. I hear the unmistakable sound of red-winged blackbirds, and one of them lands on the walkway next to me, looks up at me, and mouths some incomprehensible message, it's beak opening and closing, opening and closing, before it flies off again into the river grass.
There seem to be a few extra cars in the parking lot across from the consulate, so I go back to stand outside the door at 9:20. At exactly 9:30, the door is opened electronically from within, and the five of us enter the building together. First thing I see is a row of Babushkas, bright blue, standing on a ledge. The receptionist points me to the "teller" behind a smouldering grey window, and I tell him I'm applying for a visa, and ask him what he wants first. - Passport, visa application, invitation, photograph, photocopy of passport information page...and $210 for 24 hour processing. I sign something, get a little blue card from the guy behind the glass, and am told to come back tomorrow.
It's 9:35, and I walk back up Somerset Street to Sweetland and am back in my room by 9:45.
So I have the rest of the day to work, catch up on my sleep, and then figure out where I am in relation to the rest of the city, the one that I used to know.
Tomorrow, it's pick up the visa and then work, visit a museum, relax...
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Arriving in Ottawa
It wasn't until I stood in the Ottawa airport watching some guy take all the red suitcases off the carousel, and then replace them when he realized they weren't his, that I was hit by the realization that I have started my journey. Even the 3 hour stopover in Calgary hadn't really sunk in, probably because I was moping over my aching gums.
But when I got off the plane in Ottawa and saw the bilingual signs in the airport, I started to feel the familiarity of the place which only grew as the taxi drove me down the airport connector and onto Bronson Avenue. Bronson Avenue! And there! There is Carleton University! The #1 bus, wasn't it, that went from Carleton up to Bank Street and down all the way to the Parliament buildings and then further still into Vanier? And we're turning onto...oh, it's the entrance to Colonel By Drive. And there is the canal, where I skated, and the apartment building where Flora McDonald used to live.
The memories come in unexpected fragments, and as they pop in I wonder if they are truly memories or if they are memories of dreams. Yes, that's it. I have had dreams all these years, dreams I have not remembered until now, dreams that take place in all these Ottawa locations. Because I haven't been able to keep active memories of Ottawa alive in my life. I mean, who has time to remember everything in their past, so I assume that's what my dream life is designed for: to sift through, update, review, re-file all those memories so that they remain in some form.
But to what purpose? To serve as scaffolding for the present, a kind of structure upon which to attach new memories?
I can't say that the memories are intense, or loaded with emotion, positive or negative. I have a mostly neutral reaction to seeing the places. I see a street corner and remember an orange cat I once had who was kidnapped by a man who lived alone in a second floor room in a boarding house across the alley from where I was living. The neighbourhood kids came and told me where Andy was, and then offered to steal him back for me. I agreed, and within hours Andy was sitting in my kitchen asking for more cat food.
Now I'm sitting in my B&B room, not far from the University of Ottawa. The room is small, maple floors, yellow trim on the walls, a green and yellow flower-decorated quilted bedspread on the bed, with baby blue satin pillows. There is a sink in the corner, and a television installed on a retractable arm over by the window. On the wall behind me is a framed print of a boy walking through deep snow, pulling his sled and accompanied by a tri-colour collie. Behind them are several dairy cows on the other side of a page wire fence. The snow is falling thickly.
I am grateful that I have wireless internet in this room.
But when I got off the plane in Ottawa and saw the bilingual signs in the airport, I started to feel the familiarity of the place which only grew as the taxi drove me down the airport connector and onto Bronson Avenue. Bronson Avenue! And there! There is Carleton University! The #1 bus, wasn't it, that went from Carleton up to Bank Street and down all the way to the Parliament buildings and then further still into Vanier? And we're turning onto...oh, it's the entrance to Colonel By Drive. And there is the canal, where I skated, and the apartment building where Flora McDonald used to live.
The memories come in unexpected fragments, and as they pop in I wonder if they are truly memories or if they are memories of dreams. Yes, that's it. I have had dreams all these years, dreams I have not remembered until now, dreams that take place in all these Ottawa locations. Because I haven't been able to keep active memories of Ottawa alive in my life. I mean, who has time to remember everything in their past, so I assume that's what my dream life is designed for: to sift through, update, review, re-file all those memories so that they remain in some form.
But to what purpose? To serve as scaffolding for the present, a kind of structure upon which to attach new memories?
I can't say that the memories are intense, or loaded with emotion, positive or negative. I have a mostly neutral reaction to seeing the places. I see a street corner and remember an orange cat I once had who was kidnapped by a man who lived alone in a second floor room in a boarding house across the alley from where I was living. The neighbourhood kids came and told me where Andy was, and then offered to steal him back for me. I agreed, and within hours Andy was sitting in my kitchen asking for more cat food.
Now I'm sitting in my B&B room, not far from the University of Ottawa. The room is small, maple floors, yellow trim on the walls, a green and yellow flower-decorated quilted bedspread on the bed, with baby blue satin pillows. There is a sink in the corner, and a television installed on a retractable arm over by the window. On the wall behind me is a framed print of a boy walking through deep snow, pulling his sled and accompanied by a tri-colour collie. Behind them are several dairy cows on the other side of a page wire fence. The snow is falling thickly.
I am grateful that I have wireless internet in this room.
Saturday, June 2, 2007
Leaving for Ottawa on the 5th...
Riddled with dental pain, I am also in the final throes of packing. I'm supposed to take a Norton anthology of literature with me, which is probably the heaviest and bulkiest item I'm taking. Jorie Graham wants us to bring this for the poetry workshop, because, we are told, we are going to be memorizing some poems...I hope I can choose an imagist poem, or perhaps I'll pretend to memorize one of Shakespeare's sonnets, one that I have already memorized. What I should do, though, is memorize part of Paradise Lost...something dark and dramatic about Satan.
I went to a "packing" seminar at a travel store the other day, and learned what sorts of plastic containers I need to use for packing small amounts of shampoo in my carry-on. And I learned (well, had it confirmed) that I never want to go on a cruise where I'll have to wear ex-officio clothing that is so heavily treated with chemicals that I will be immune from the sun's rays and from spilled olive oil, which apparently just rolls off ex-officio clothing. And, of course, keep me away from those plastic sandals "that go with slacks or an evening dress". Nor do I want to go anywhere where I'll be lounging around in the hot sun all day and then pulling my floral wrap around my bathing suit to go to dinner.
Cool luggage, though. I wonder if I can jelly-roll the binders of writing portfolios that I have to take with me, or my laptop?
Bob T. showed me an article in the most recent issue of Geist, written by a playwright who went to SLS in St Petersburg for 8 days last year. Her article was cynical about Russia, and dismissive of the value of the seminars. Well, it didn't exactly make me feel excited about going. On the other hand, the sorts of things that bugged her about her experience are just the sorts of things that I'll probably absorb into my pores : smirking Russian women wearing knock-off Gucci sunglasses who dismiss the war-maimed with a casual wave of a hand, a race through Leningrad in a Lada, a room at the Herzen University Inn described as a "cell" - I mean, what better digs to have while in Russia, but something best described as a cell.
The highlight of her trip was the cab ride back to the airport at its conclusion, during which the cabbie talks about the death of Russia, or something like that.
But truly, I am moving into that pre-trip zone, the place that urges me to stay home, to curl up into my own bed with a book by a familiar author, the place that tells me I'm crazy, I'm not well enough prepared, I have too much to do to get ready, I will never be ready enough, I will forget crucial tools. And then that other familiar response to the pre-trip zone that says that none of the things that I think I will need for my journey will matter once I am on the journey, because it is, after all a journey. Maybe all I really need is the plane ticket and a credit card or two, maybe a change of clothes and a notebook. The rest is all trappings, designed to create the illusion of security or control. If I don't bring a Norton Anthology with me, will I not be able to find a poem to memorize? Are there no books in Russia? In St Petersburg? And why would I want to memorize a poem that's included in that anthology? If it is in that anthology, am I really interested in it? In memorizing it? I'd rather bring John Berger's And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos, and memorize some poetic prose in that. In fact, now that I've thought of it, that's what I'm going to do.
I went to a "packing" seminar at a travel store the other day, and learned what sorts of plastic containers I need to use for packing small amounts of shampoo in my carry-on. And I learned (well, had it confirmed) that I never want to go on a cruise where I'll have to wear ex-officio clothing that is so heavily treated with chemicals that I will be immune from the sun's rays and from spilled olive oil, which apparently just rolls off ex-officio clothing. And, of course, keep me away from those plastic sandals "that go with slacks or an evening dress". Nor do I want to go anywhere where I'll be lounging around in the hot sun all day and then pulling my floral wrap around my bathing suit to go to dinner.
Cool luggage, though. I wonder if I can jelly-roll the binders of writing portfolios that I have to take with me, or my laptop?
Bob T. showed me an article in the most recent issue of Geist, written by a playwright who went to SLS in St Petersburg for 8 days last year. Her article was cynical about Russia, and dismissive of the value of the seminars. Well, it didn't exactly make me feel excited about going. On the other hand, the sorts of things that bugged her about her experience are just the sorts of things that I'll probably absorb into my pores : smirking Russian women wearing knock-off Gucci sunglasses who dismiss the war-maimed with a casual wave of a hand, a race through Leningrad in a Lada, a room at the Herzen University Inn described as a "cell" - I mean, what better digs to have while in Russia, but something best described as a cell.
The highlight of her trip was the cab ride back to the airport at its conclusion, during which the cabbie talks about the death of Russia, or something like that.
But truly, I am moving into that pre-trip zone, the place that urges me to stay home, to curl up into my own bed with a book by a familiar author, the place that tells me I'm crazy, I'm not well enough prepared, I have too much to do to get ready, I will never be ready enough, I will forget crucial tools. And then that other familiar response to the pre-trip zone that says that none of the things that I think I will need for my journey will matter once I am on the journey, because it is, after all a journey. Maybe all I really need is the plane ticket and a credit card or two, maybe a change of clothes and a notebook. The rest is all trappings, designed to create the illusion of security or control. If I don't bring a Norton Anthology with me, will I not be able to find a poem to memorize? Are there no books in Russia? In St Petersburg? And why would I want to memorize a poem that's included in that anthology? If it is in that anthology, am I really interested in it? In memorizing it? I'd rather bring John Berger's And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos, and memorize some poetic prose in that. In fact, now that I've thought of it, that's what I'm going to do.
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