Blog July 7, 2007
Title: Masha?
I’m not sure how long it has been since my last entry, but I’m trying something new, sitting in my room with my laptop and typing, and hoping I will be able to cut and paste from here to the blog when I get to a high speed later.
Details.

I’m thinking, though, that maybe it’s been a few days, and I need to gather my thoughts back to Wednesday or so. But on Tuesday, I had intended to go to a number of lectures after my morning poetry class, but instead was distracted by something else, the details of which I have no memory. Oh, this is a good lesson to me about note-taking. My notes only say that I skipped the evening faculty reading because I had felt sick and had gone to bed…and slept. So, the afternoon is a blank to me, and maybe I slept all afternoon.
Well, I haven’t actually been slavishly reporting on the mundane details of every day anyway, so I’ll skip now to this second half of the program which is amazingly already half over. I experienced the first two weeks here in a kind of slow moving, intense dream like state, but after some of my new “friends” left (I think about half of the participants left, and half stayed on for the whole month), and another 50 new people arrived, and the new sessions started, everything was starkly different. Time started moving much more quickly. SP stopped being just a dream, and started to become more real, although still unattainable, and if SP were a lover, he would be a distant one, one whom I would feel concurrently compelled and reluctant to ask: what are you thinking?, that horrible question we have all asked and then immediately regretted: what are you thinking?
As I wake out of the dream, I find myself attending a series of lectures about Russia given by… the name is not there. I have to sit in the front of the classroom (I’m a back-of-the-classroom resident by habit and preference) because otherwise I can’t hear the deep register of his voice over the banging metal door just outside and over the uncareful footsteps on the squeaking wooden floor, or even over the rustling of paper or polite muffled coughs in the classroom; regardless of my hearing challenges and having to sit in the front of the class, I attend these lectures where I am not being workshopped in any way form or manner (no chalk board, no flipchart, no cozy chats about who we are and where we come from…god I hate that shit) and listen to his amazing-note-free lectures about Russia. So, he comes into the class the first day, introduces himself, outlines the topics of his six lectures, and begins to talk. His talks include a “thesis”, of sorts, a number of stories and examples, both from history and from his personal experience, that illustrate what he means, and then a conclusion that slides neatly into an introduction for the next lecture topic. The topics he’s covering are the untranslatable Russian expressions that provide insight into the Russian “character”; Russian Orthodoxy and its differences from Roman Catholicism; the Petrine influence on Russian culture, especially St Petersburg; Russian literature as a phenomenon of the aristocracy (until Chekov); Communism; and finally, Russian drinking.
He began the 1st lecture with a Russian drinking song, one that he feels suggests something of the nature of the Russian character (always, of course, with reminders that we are not to reduce our understanding to such stereotypes, but that we are speaking in broad strokes), and the song goes like this,
(and I’m thinking you should imagine a group of, probably men, good friends, sitting around a table, a bottle of vodka in the middle. Before beginning the song, they should down, together, a shot of vodka. And at the end of each line, they should do the same. This is my addition to the story and should by no means be taken as historically or folklorically accurate)
If you drink, you will not buy a house
If you don’t drink, you will not buy a house
So, it is better to drink and not buy a house
Than it is to not drink and not buy a house.
(then all men should break out in great laughter, and start to tell stories to one another, tales of a sort, I’m thinking, but again, that’s my addition).

So, I missed Friday afternoon’s lecture on the Petrine influence on Russian culture, mostly because I woke up on Friday with this enormous need to get out on my own, walk as far away as I could in a direction I had never been, and spend the day with my own thoughts. That’s what I did, after checking my stupid guidebook (I’m going to start a group on Facebook, if there isn’t one already, a group “Against the Use of Guidebooks”). Okay, so I was looking through my guidebook to see where I might want to go when I read the following: “If you want to experience the maritime quality of Vasilevsky (one of the SP islands), you have to depart from its more lively eastern end and head to its bracing and remote-seeming western shores.”
I’m a sucker for the word “bracing”, and I think it reminds me of those children’s books I read when I was a kid, books about a group of Scottish children who wore sensible shoes and knee socks and “braced” themselves for walks along rocky crags. I think I always thought of those children as having strong knees and having bramble scratches on their legs, and that there was something essentially healthy about getting cut and scratched while walking in bracing weather. Or something like that. And of course I grew up in a “bracing” climate myself…so maybe I was seduced by the proposition: “if you want to experience the maritime quality”. Yeah, I thought, I do want to do that. Of course this guide book provided no further information except a map, so I figure out where I would have to go and started walking. I guess I had walked about two ½ hours when I realized that I would have to turn back (not that I have to worry about nightfall here, but I do have to consider the fact that I’m not actually capable of walking on concrete, regardless of the quality of my shoes, for much more than a few hours, without having the muscles in my legs seize up. Or, as happened one day, inexplicably, having my ankles swell to the size of tennis balls. And then there is the problem of bathrooms. I am really going to have to invent some solution to quick and easy urination for women. In any case, I did not get to that maritime quality or the “bracing and remote-seeming” part of the island, not even close. But I did see a bunch of ships and loading cranes and rough looking men bathing their feet in the Neva and I saw a high metal fence topped with rolled barbed wire, and another high fence topped with razor wire, and those on a beautiful tree lined street, and a beautiful firehall with a great statue of firefighters outside. So, my walk took me six hours, and that meant that I could walk only half-way to bracing and remote, or half-way away from lively. I ended up having a really late lunch at a German restaurant, so had a (large) great unfiltered beer, salad, and salted pretzels…sat on the terrace outside and let my legs recover and then pretty much staggered back to my room where I slept for two hours, having missed my afternoon lecture on Peter I.
Despite my truancy, these lecturers, by this lecturer who delivers what he promises, are the best part of the program, for me, so far. Well, that and the Dmitri walks.
Linda H., you would have also chosen to go on a walk entitled “Gender and Cyber”, especially since the advertised walk, “The petersburg artist as the creative parasite”, which you also would have signed up for, had been changed to the former. Blah blah blah…badly expressed former sentence. Whatever. You know what I mean.
So, I have to tell you about a Dmitri walk. Every Dmitri walk is different, yet they all pretty much follow a similar pattern. I’ll see if I can capture that here. Dmitri is, well, I don’t know who he is. He is Dmitri. He organizes these walks, two a week, for the full month, so has set up 8 walks. He seems nervous, sweats a lot while he talks, wears black t-shirts and thick glasses. Steps away from you when you step towards him. Is passionate about his subject, but, and this is important, aware of the provisional nature of passion, or something like that. He seems to be an observer type, who observes, watches, synthesizes, analyzes, and then even is aware of the I want to say “false”, but that is not the right word, it’s more like, he is aware of his awareness of things and maybe it’s actually the “humor” of taking anything very seriously. Yes, I think that captures what I think he is about. Serious, and then aware of the humor of being serious. So, regardless of whether that is what he intends, that is how I experience him, and that is why I love to go on Dmitri walks, because the walks are like a physical/kinesthetic expression of that blend of the serious and the humorous.
The first Dmitri walk I went on was the first Tuesday I was here. It’s funny, but I don’t even remember where we were supposed to go, because I never actually got there, and I’ll have to check my notes to find out what the topic was. Maybe I’ll do that right now. Hang on.
Nope. Can’t find my notes. But we are setting out on a walk, scheduled from 2:30 to 4. There are other things I need to do at 4. I’m still jet lagged. We leave as a group of 10 or so from the Herzen Inn and go and stand at a street corner across the street from the Inn where Dmitri begins to talk, in a very low voice, in a fairly thick Russian accent, beside the roaring of traffic (another challenge for my hearing, as you can guess) about…St Petersburg as a mythical city. He begins by saying that we will walk for 30 minutes to our destination, 30 minutes back…and my inner arithmetician tells me that leaves another half hour AT the destination. So, after 40 minutes of St Petersburg as a mythical city, during which time we get yelled at for standing too close to the entrance of a Versace shopping plaza, and then freeze to death standing in the shade about 3 feet from a sunny spot, we set out on a walk. I am dubious about our ability to get to our destination and back in the remaining 50 minutes, but I stick with the plan because, I’m, well, curious, to see what will happen. I mean, already I can’t remember the last time I’ve been yelled at, and here I am in a new country where I know none of the rules of engagement, even less of the language, I don’t know the layout of the city, I’m jet lagged, and I am at the mercy of someone who seems oblivious to space, temperature, time, and sound. What could be better? There is something to add to this: he is interesting to listen to and I find myself grateful for having the read the Russian formalists many years ago in Calgary. And, of course, it REALLY helped having read about the 4th dimension just before coming here, because in this instance, and in many others, I now have a place to put the incomprehensible: oh, I think, when I don’t know what to think. I must be in the fourth dimension. And I start to look around for Daniil Kharms.
Or Filonov. The painter.
So, we start walking and get to the cathedral where Nabakov’s funeral was held. By this time it is raining, the street corner we are standing on is noisier than the earlier one, and I can’t hear anything. It is, when Dmitri has finished speaking, 3;45, and he begins walking again, and we are crossing the yard in front of the Hermitage, heading for a bridge that will take us to our destination. I say to Sandra, who is walking beside me, that we are going to cross the bridge, that there is a fair amount of walking yet to do. Oh, oh, and the two of us agree that between the walking and the standing and the straining to hear over the traffic noise and the advance of time, we can’t continue, so we slip back and take the short way back to the hotel and …. Do what each of us needs to do.
Now, you would think that that would be the end of the Dmitri walks, right, for me? Wrong. There is something about his perspective, something about what he talks about, and how he talks about it, and the absolute unpredictability of what will happen and where we will go that is equally compelling as the beautifully predictable and organized lectures that I described earlier. It’s like, dare I say it, it’s like yin and yang, well, no, I wish I could come up with a better analogy for those differences and why they work together, but I can’t. I only know that for me, I am equally entranced with both approaches, and I think that’s because both approaches leave me an enormous amount of space to do with the information, the concepts, the experiences, what I will do with them, without having to publicly process or share what or how I think or know. My reactions are tied to my most recent years plowing through the doctorate, taking “workshops”, learning how to “facilitate”, “connecting”, “networking”.
So, last night I went to the Georgian restaurant with Charlotte and we talked about writing, and the writing life, and listened to the guy wearing tight black leather boots and a black tunic with gold trim, a dagger tucked provocatively into the belt cinching his portly mid-section, and listened to him sing Georgian songs to a Karaoke machine.
I had gone to Charlotte’s room to say hello and to see if I could use her phone, and we had intended to go to see Noah Richler, but both realized how tired we were and couldn’t imagine another long walk to the Nabokov museum (can you imagine, being too tired to go to the Nabokov?) so went to an Armenian restaurant first, who told us they had no room, but then we stood outside and watched while they let others in after us…? Well, at least they didn’t yell at us, although I have to say that I probably won’t ever mind getting yelled at again, as I’m used to turning my back on being yelled at, now, for what seem to me to be the smallest of offences: not having correct change, wearing sandals, wanting “still” instead of “gaseous” water, and heck, you guys know me, and you know I’m not exactly rude by nature, or obnoxious, or whatever, so I know you ‘re not thinking that Anne the asshole is finally getting her due.
So the Georgians were kind enough to let us in.
Tired, now, and it’s Saturday, and I’m meeting a few people a bit later to walk up to the mosque.

Love,

Oh, yeah, I meant to tell you about Masha, and the Gender and Cyber walk. You’ll love Masha, really, I promise you. In the meantime, check out the following: http://digbody.atlant.ru
Ha ha this is so funny. In one my lectures I heard about the expression, “I intend” to do something, and what that means in Russian. I had intended to tell you about Masha, but, well, other words interceded, got in my way, and Masha will have to wait, because while I am enjoying writing, I really need to get going out in the world again, to the mosque, to wherever else the walk to the mosque really takes me, so that I can write again. Masha will have to wait, but Masha has already happened, so there’s plenty of time for that…