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.