You are currently browsing the monthly archive for October 2007.
I’m not so happy to read this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7065019.st
Saturday morning breakfast: tea and a grapefruit, which is pretty much all that’s in the refrigerator. Although if we’re being technical, I’m pretty sure I feasted on bread and cheese when I got home this morning at 8 am. Today I only aspire to make it out of the apartment and buy some food.
Elza’s birthday was on Thursday and we’ve been celebrating this week accordingly. Last night her Japanese roommate cooked a bunch of food and we sat around their apartment in the dorm drinking miserable wine and shooting the shit. Eric’s friend Alexei, a jester of sorts, explaining to everyone that women are the “flowers of life” and etc. He’s a musician, but as far as I could tell from his myspace page (he was something like starkid1675) he’s mostly occupied with Pink Floyd covers and the like. He’s recorded himself playing alongside …. and this seems to bring him constant pleasure. He also studies Italian and he pretty much went nuts when two Italian kids from Smolny dropped by. All in all, an excellent fellow.
Afterwards our paths, of course, led to dacha/fidel and etc, or the “corner of foreigners” as Dima put it. True enough, and even when it’s quite merry, that place can and will suck your energy away. The main object of my evening was to meet up with some kids I met a couple days ago, so I left around 2 for the cavernous Achtung Baby, where all sorts of interesting things seemed to happened.
My least fuzzy memories:
Arina’s toy hammer, which we deemed молоток счастья, and wandered around attempting to bring luck to those who looked like they needed it. One of the guards was amused by this, but all the same didn’t want to receive a lucky bop on the head. When I first met Arina she was dancing with a Spiderman action figure and I was sad to learn that he disappeared somewhere. She explained that he was probably still dancing at Fidel.
Two contradictory social/political conversations. The first when some drunkard started calling me a spy, which I shrugged off responding that of course I was a spy, but a German one. The problem being that he then started to speak German and got quite confrontational. All is well though, we diffused the situation without internationally motivated fisticuffs. About five minutes, somebody named Katja, presumed me to be Russian and didn’t believe me when I said I was American. I had to convince her by speaking English which then led to the inevitable discussion about Americans and politics and how I felt about Putin and etc. I tried to be delicate here, and we ended up having a swell conversation all full of understanding and positive cross cultural relationship. East is west.
Further: “Champagne Dancing” and red faces. Pink tights. The hammer disappears (went off dancing?) and returns. A couple abortive attempts (not mine) to dance on some tables. A whole lot of stumbling. And etc. At some point Arina gets into an argument with the kid that looks like Quentin Tarantino, something about Tarkovsky and true love, although most of it I could neither hear nor understand. She mistakenly thought he was a foreigner and wanted me to translate for her, international confusion being the theme of the evening.
Later, standing outside at 7 with some kid who studies animation and an old man who was apparently looking to extend the evening with us. Regrettably, we all went home and, as I said, I massacred a block of cheese before falling asleep listening to Король и шуть still in my clothes.
And now this evening I must resolve a romantic bind I seem to have gotten myself in… so it goes. But that is all, I’m sure, of little interest to you, dear reader.
One week later, and “In Rainbows” is still on constant rotation. My Russian friends are undoubtedly sick of my constant recommendations that they listen.
In other news, my cinema withdrawal problems are most likely resolved. That is, I still haven’t been to the cinema proper, but I’ve found an outlet for the cinephilic tendencies that doc films nurtured. The dvd business is certainly flourishing in Russia, in spite of crackdowns on pirates and etc (ie you can no longer find that coveted single disc with all of David Lynch’s films near the Nevsky Prospekt metro). Nearly every corner has some sort of audio/video store, many of which are 24 hours, and as far as I know quite busy. Nevertheless, the collections of these stores tend to be a hodgepodge of the latest western and Russian new releases, classic Soviet film, and a smattering of films by the more popular American indie directors and classic international auteurs. It’s possible to find pretty much anything, of course, but this takes a great deal of mental and physical energy strolling about the stores from block to block. That or, supposedly, a short metro ride to the book market where I hear you can choose from a great number of dvds, including said single disc Lynch collection.
But today I dropped by “Колекция” which I’ve passed a number of times on ulitsa Marata. It’s a cosy, wood-paneled square store with wall to wall shelves and tons of dvds and cds. The contemporary cinema section is a little lacking, but this is more than made up for by the “авторское кино” or (auteurs) shelf. In addition to this they boast a collection of rare, out of print, or never-been-in-print dvds, mostly on dvd-rs and packaged in a minimal-chick brown case. Of course, this means dvds that are rare in Russia and with Russian translations but there’s still some interesting stuff. Furthermore, the discs are cheap; most cost around $6. Compared with some of the more blatantly bootlegged stuff, this is expensive for Russia, but most of the other “legitimate” stores charge, relatively, a lot more. Further, they have a catalog of rare films that they’ll copy for you.
Today I snapped up a copy of Tarkovskii’s Mirror and Orson Wells’s “Falstaff” (ie “The Chimes at Midnight”). I’m pretty sure the audiotrack on this latter is fixed on the Russian dubbing, which is a shame, but I’m excited enough to finally see this film that it won’t bother me too much.
The store also stocks what appeared to be all of the Красный матрос “Mitki” books, and believe you me, that is pretty durned cool.
There’s another similar-looking store in an anonymous nook off of Zhukovsogo street, I’ll probably check that out tomorrow.
In other news, there is little news. Not much aside from the usual cyclical relationship between carousing and getting sick, the constant class debates about Russian politics, pessimism, and of course, the Russian soul. I believe for next Wednesday my favorite teacher is preparing a history of mentality/world view.
Should be swell.
All for now.
Thursday 10/18
If you haven’t listened to the new Radiohead album, “In Rainbows” stop reading this, download the album, and spend an hour lying on the carpet, listening straight through on headphones. It’ll be just like you were back in high school, you love it.Even if it was only a minor album it’s worth supporting their pay as you please distribution plot. (full disclosure: I have yet to pay but in the last week my budget has been more or less up in the air, things have stabilized, so I’ll shoot them some cash next time I’m on the net. Although it is tempting to shell out 30 pounds for the special edition “disc crate” that’s due out in December).
But this is absolutely not a minor album. It’s positively fucking fantastic.
In my relative isolation from hipster music news (and, really, the news proper) I didn’t find out about “In Rainbows” until the day it was released online. I wasn’t even aware that an album had been in the works, my days of fanaticly reading greenplastic.com having long ago passed.
I don’t remember the precise words, but I remember something about forever and parting scrolling across the LCD displays when I saw them (finally) in Washington the summer of 2003. Marley and I took it as a clear and poignant indication that our favorite band would soon call it quits. It seemed an appropriate moment, they having achieved ten fold more than any band could ever hope. Besides, at that point Thom Yorke was making suggestions about moving on to other projects all over the place.
And so I’ve been secretly hoping that Radiohead would call it quits, rest on their laurels and leave behind a (relatively) un-besmirched oeuvre to us, their adoring, sometimes ravenous, listeners. My expectations for them are always lofty, but you can only reinvent yourself so many times and remain compelling. I don’t think I could bear the august years of Radiohead.
But, I repeat, the album is fantastic and anything but a handshake rehashing of OK computer or Kid A, or sloppy, aimless avant-reinvention. It’s complex, it’s terrifying, it’s moving, and it is, I think, still quite new.
Besides, we’ve finally got a full studio version of “Nude” and, to be completely honest, with that gem even the most derivative album would be cause for this listener to celebrate.
Tonight there is a very important football match between Russia and England. Regardless of who wins, Moscow soccer hooligans will probably erupt tonight. Maybe in Piter as well, my roommate tells me that all of the bars have already been booked out, meaning space even at the bar proper is reserved. At any rate, if your curious about Russian soccer hooliganary, the bbc reccomends you search youtube for “russian soccer hooligans”
Sadly, I’ll probably be watching at home, alone, and in front of some homework. Perhaps sir Bochkarev (which may surpass Nevskoe as cheap beer of choice) will accompany.
Otherwise, the internet has returned to City Bar, so I’m sitting here with Danny tending to business, failing to write emails (ie gchatting), and generally avoiding the chill outside. Danny slept on my couch and skipped because last night’s roaming around ended at 4 am with the two of us looking for Schwarma all around Ploschad Vostanija. In the end I only successfully purchased an enormous bag of bacon flavored chips. I, как бы молодец, went to class.
Edit, update, whatever: I just noticed that this week’s fiction in the New Yorker is a translation of Andrei Platonov’s “Among Animals and Plants” . You should probably read this story, and others by the same author
10/14
Sunday Morning, 11 am
I woke up early from a late night and, yet another, set of strange dreams. Night turmoil, etc. Now I can’t get back to sleep, so it’s Elliott Smith and a glowing screen for me, consuming a bag of semi-sweet tea biscuits and already about a liter of water. The former two should sort of neutralize each other, anyways, light being an essential antidepressant and all.
Yesterday, sitting around City Bar, alone, I picked up an old New Yorker and read first the Miranda July story and then the feature on the Stafford literary archive in Austin. Yet another reason to brave Texas and visit Austin, the archive is, if I remember correctly, one of the largest in the world. Something about receiving tractor-trailer loads of Norman Mailer’s notes; appointing to the board of directors the suspected girlfriend of Cormac McCarthy in a scheme to acquire his papers. The article spent a considerable amount of space on the Dillilo collection, reprinting some really lovely excerpts from his letters to David Foster Wallace about writing and detail. There was also a bit about him writing and rewriting his paragraphs over and over, one after another, like Sebastien Knight.
And all kinds of minor and major drama, coagulated in the course of the last week, exploded last night, part of it standing on a cold, crowded street outside of the ex pat strip. No casualties, at least. Russian rent a cops yelling at my friends for sitting on a low-lying windowsill.
And with that, lacking not so much the essence as the means, I’ll stop here. Maybe sleep will return, so as to slip into rhythmic quietude, and etc.
Later
Coffee, Salinger, and the famous Kasha. I made some eggs with machengo cheese and a little bit of salt. The apartment is empty and it’s already afternoon; I’m up and about in my pajamas and thick gray sweater. I watched an enormous hornet groom itself, trapped in between the two windows, then I made arrangements for his escape. It’s a fifth story window with all the significance for Hrabal et al, but there are neither pigeons to feed nor spectators to recount the story of my slip and fall. And so back to De Daumier-Smith’s chair-less room, and me, sympathetic, without a desk.
I am positively lonely for bottomless coffee at, say, Salonica’s lunch counter in Chicago and an afternoon thrown away with this little white book.
Light, Clarity, sadly I’m without avocado salad. They are too expensive here, and so I settle for distressingly monochromatic breakfasts.
There’s a dog, possibly stray, prowling our stairwell, barking. It’s been out there for at least half of the day. I’d like to help it out somehow, but precaution here trumps compassion. With all the strays running around I’m getting numb to it anyways, to say nothing of the panhandlers around the center who are truly in miserable condition.
Today I took an unintentional tour of the grocery markets around Nevsky, through whatever absent-mindedness I kept on remembering things I needed as I passed another store on the way home. Or maybe it was all the power of suggestion, drawn into purchase by those glowing 24 ч. Продукты signs and the grizzly, somewhat truculent clerks. On top of that I made a fruitless trip to city bar to use the internet, which was for some reason down. The dark Vasilyostrovskoe (a word that will likely forever trip up my pronunciation) was also, unfortunately, absent.
On the way home from City Bar I went DVD shopping. Purchases: брат (“brother”… I think it’s available stateside), the first disc of the Master and Margarita miniseries, and the Good German. This latter I only really bought because it was 59 rubles, or about $2.25, also I’ve never seen it. Have I mentioned that I’m rereading Master and Margarita in Russian? This makes, I believe 2x through in English and (soon) 2x through in Russian. By Nabokovian standards I’m 2/3 through reading the book once! I have pretty low expectations for the miniseries, but it’s been a subject of my curiosity for a while now. Really though it took all of my restraint to avoid buying Не родись красотой which I guess translates as something like “not born beautiful” but is sort of grammatically confusing to me. My language has been totally flopping lately. At any rate, that’s the sitcom that was real popular here last summer. “Ugly girl” in the office of whatever nameless firm falls in love with cute, slightly pensive boy and consequently blossoms into beauty. Nothing original, but it’s got a special place in my heart all the same. I particularly love the sassy, older office women who hardly need occasion to pull out several bottles of champagne and cut the working day short. The film I’m really looking for, however, is called Старухи (“old folks”) and features a gang of rural, foul-mouthed grannies.
In class we finished watching Кавказский Пленник (“Prisoner in the Caucuses”) which was the inspiration for my dvd binge. I think there are several versions, but this one, starring Sergei Bodrov (who incidentally also starred in брат) is real, real swell. Also I think I’m developing a boy crush on him. Lately I’ve been (half-consciously) imitating his way of answering the phone, a sort of combination of “oi” and “hey” followed by a “privet” that rolls into a sort of dumbfounded, lopsided grin. It’s all very charming.
Also, it is very sad about his death a couple years ago. Watch his movies.
With this blog I still don’t really know if I should transliterate Russian words with Latin letters or keep the Cyrillic. It just seems strange to write them in Latin, plus there’ll all sorts of awkward moments pertaining to the different transliteration standards. Because of the way my phone is set up, I have to text (sms… whatever) in Latin even when I’m writing Russian. Originally I was using more or less the LOC standard, but that’s cumbersome and I think actually more confusing to Russians. Yulia’s got me using her hybrid system where ч=4, ш/щ=w, ж=z. But then I wonder why this doesn’t also apply with “з” which sounds like “z” but could be swapped for 3. She also uses “0″ instead of “o” for whatever incomprehensible reason. Sometimes here Maria has an even more confusing variant where 6 =ш/щ. I’m never quite sure what to do with the Cyrillic “с” which looks exactly like the Latin “c” but is always sibilant. I think in some sms-norms c=ц which is otherwise “ts.” Not that any of this really matters, messages tend to be intelligible regardless of the transliteration.
In the last week I’ve been listening to talk radio while steeping my morning caffeine and sometimes while cooking. It doesn’t seem to have to reactionary political connotations implied by talk radio in the states, but then again a great deal of the nuance is lost on me so I could be wrong. At any rate, yesterday they had a representative from some American NGO on and, while he spoke Russian well enough, listening to his American accent got me pretty down. I’d be happy enough to have sufficient command of the language to debate on the radio, but all the same it’s unlikely I’ll ever speak Russian without accent. I mean, I’m into sexy foreign accents in English as much as the next guy, but I’m pretty sure that the American Russian accent doesn’t have any of the requisite attractive, exotic qualities.
Something to work for, though. I’ll just have to keep up the Sergei Bodrov emulation.
Michael just came home and assured me that the dog belongs to someone in the building. He’s still barking out there.
It’s movie time.
Sunday, Later.
Well I’m quite pleased by my pilgrimage to Lend, the supermarket recommended by my roommate, although I failed in both of the aforementioned goals, peanut butter and tomato sauce. The latter didn’t turn out so well partly because my tomatoes were not of the highest quality, partly because I had neither enough of them nor tomato paste to fill the gap, and partly because I’m sort of a haphazard, careless, and extremely unlearned cook. All the same I produced something that, all things considered, tasted pretty swell. It’s not so important if your sauce is totally the wrong color, right? Actually I think that has more to do with the weird green fluorescence in our kitchen.
Anyways, exciting things about this supermarket: a positively vast milk product isle, manchego cheese (!), halfway decent produce, delicious bakery/deli/mystery smells, all sorts of international products. Really I don’t know why I couldn’t find peanut butter, it seems like just the place for it. I’m still hoarding the jar of Skippy extra crunchy (I know, it’s not real peanut butter… but I love it all the same) that I brought from the states. My European friends, Maria in particular, are fans so I’m hoping to have them over for some kind of peanut butter gluttony. Which leads me to ask, what adult beverage does one pair with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? Without even realizing it I was sort of thinking white Russian, which…
And so ends a rather uneventful, but all the same pleasing day. And so I leave it, and you with the following new pornographic exhortation: visualize success, but don’t believe your eyes; it’s a version of the world without the will to despise.
Sunday 10/8
I believe Anna Politikovskaya was killed a year ago today. RIP. It’s also Putin’s birthday, I believe. С днем рождения…
At any rate, It’s a Mark Kozelak sunday, as I’m working up the strength to run out for groceries. That is, I woke up today at 3 and have so far only managed to make some Kasha and rinse last night’s atmosphere(s) out of my hair. And I’m still just sitting here listening to my newly created Russia playlist, which features Mr. K quite prominently. I’m reminiscing y old history teacher long ago thrust him into my life during an independent study painting class. Kozelak’s sultry, heart-wrenching voice was alright by Mr. Joyce’s search and destroy metal standard’s because he uses it to cover AC/DC. Last year Sue reintroduced this album to me, for which I am very grateful; so here’s some thanks going out to some chilly cottage over in Scotland.
Right, discursive moods don’t really suit my attempts to chronicle the last week. So here are some impressions: a brief, intense fever; borscht overdose; Salinger; a great deal of the last New Pornographers album; romantic notions, both vague and specific; rye bread; street musicians; mix cds, as yet undelivered; quality time with Michael, my new roommate; Ivan the Terrible; peacebone; whole bags of yoghurt (somebody tell Saba, 1 kg!).
They say it will be a warm October. I’m skeptical that this will be a good thing, because it’ll still be a dark October, a chilly October. I think warm for October means just that there’ll be no snow, which is ultimately a bad thing. When the daylight starts slipping away, everybody needs the amplified light of a snow-plated city. To say nothing of how pretty it is. Magical and etc.
At 6am this morning, coming back from Tsinik the miltia controlled me on Nevsky Prospekt. They said something about a fight a little ways back and looking for the culprit, which seemed like a pretty weak reason to shake down an innocent-looking fellow like myself. But considering they didn’t make me pay any “fines” for problems with my documents, perhaps they were up to some legitimate police work. Of course, they also saw that I had no money in my wallet (my last 50 rubles deliciously spent on some Schwarma, which I ate on the streets with a trio of Chicago gangster obsessed Russians).
A morning tableau: Michael and I stumbling into the kitchen from our sides of the apartment, he boils water for pasta, I for Kasha. He feigns surprise and says something about “the famous Kasha.” I grunt something unintelligible about needing coffee and then fumble around with some looseleaf tea and the French press. Then we relate exploits of the previous night. Actually, I’m not being fair to him, it’s usually only me that’s stumbling, he has an incredible ability to wake up early and fresh after even the hardest of nights.
At any rate, we get along swell; I can’t believe my good fortune. Really my only complaint is the lack of a desk in my room, but I’m scheming to seize a table from the living room. The desk, and also the bathroom has no sink. I wash my hands and brush my teeth in the bathtub. But, trifles, really.
As it’s now well after 5pm, I should make something of an effort to take some fresh air and buy some fresh(ish) produce. Today I shall hunt for peanut butter, then maybe I’ll make some tomato sauce. Ambitious, I know, but here I take things one step at a time.
