Tuesday, 9/18

And sometimes I’m all sad sappy sucker, isolating myself in my stereophonic indie pop the minutes before leaving for school, the hours before going to sleep. This at least when I’m not roaming around the city, although more often than not that is similarly sound-tracked. I’ve always been the kind of person enjoy the journey mostly for the sake of the accompanying music. Quality time, and all that.

The only problem is when I get stuck in st. ides heaven, on repeat. Or like around this time last year when I sunk irretrievably into cat power. I’ve been thinking a lot about Elliott Smith lately, maybe because the died to young suicidal artist thing is all over this place. I mentioned earlier that my friend Yulia took me by Kamchatka the other day, Tsoi died in the early 90s in a car accident, and is only one of the more recent in a long history of early fatalities. And so goes the last poem in my book of Sergei Esenin:

До свиданья, друг мой, до свиданья.

Милый мой, ты у меня в груди.

Предназначенное расставанье

обещает встречу впереди.

До свиданья, друг мой, без руки, без слова,

Не грусти и не печаль бровей,-

В этой жизнь умирать не ново,

Но и жить, конечно, не новей.

Right, sorry to be cryptic and gloomy. It was actually a rather nice day, call me a sundowner.

After class Maria, Elza (France), Eric (NYC) and I strolled from Smolny to Nevsky, ate some blini, drank some tea, and then dropped by Stirka 40* which is the a laundromat and bar. It is also very small, pleasantly low-fi, and not as slamming with hipsters as you might think. When we got there was only a girl and a guy playing some discordant piano music.

Like I said, not a bad day. After an exhaustive walk home, I scarfed down some dinner, took a long shower and tried to hide from TP and her hair dryer. She was mortified and dried my hair herself, I came out looking like a lion. All in a good night’s fun here on Vasilevsky… Now, after some discursive homeworking, it’s between some Hemmingway and another movie. On the news I caught something briefly about Iran threatening missle strikes but I was too exhausted to put much energy into deciphering the details. Anyways, it was quickly segued into a 10 minute story about a new sky scraper in Moscow. Balanced as always. My conversation teacher yesterday told us how disheartened she is by the television news, like she was really saddened by it, а мы идем назад. Anyways she also mentioned that there’s a talk show with Tatyana Tolstaya on Chanel 1 that’s generally worth watching. And of course we have Пусть говорят the talk show I mentioned earlier. Actually the other day my Babushka was watching a debate type show on Chanel 1 that seemed to me rather intelligent and controversial. Of course I couldn’t make out even half of the discussion. Broadcast news seems to be my most problematic point with Russian.

Yesterday I took another solo stroll (I just learned the russian verb to stroll, btw… I still have so much to learn) around the Moika and Winter Palace in the rain, this time sans beer, ostensibly aiming to find one of the new hipster bars I’ve been reading about in the SPTimes. This one’s called Achtung Baby and supposedly they play brit pop and new wave, which is like a godsend after last summer’s repeated attempts to find a dj who’d put on some New Order for me. Have I mentioned the “Love will tear us apart tag” on Kazanskaya? At any rate, there’s a Jazz Ska show there on Friday that I’m totally all over. In other trendsturbation, the Times tells me that the Novus management opened a new place called Mod just around the corner. God bless the English language expat paper.

After the walk I landed at Maria’s apartment for some minor merriment in honor of her Belgians’ departure today. Music, pictures, politics. Soviet champagne and some really tasty Russian cheetos. I am definitely taking them up on the offer to visit Belgium, who would pass up finest beer and chocolate in the world. The weather softened a bit after the rain so I had quite the pleasant walk home, Mogwai blazing, not minding the damp.

My mouth is dry and I’m out of bottled water. I’m almost tempted to gulp some of the notorious Petersburg stuff…