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Yesterday our beloved Swedish friends threw us a party at the dormitory. Elen cooked meatballs with lindenberry and a delicious sauce that tasted like a savory version of maple syrup. Ням ням. They tried to teach us a swedish toasting song, in their version of which the lovely diphthongs roll off their tongues. We were, needless to say, not quite as successful, although Eric seems to have it almost down pat. Maybe for this reason we did the “Froggy dance” around him. This is essentially a maypole type of dance, but they explained something about how usually it’s not a pole but a giant phallus in the center. I’m not sure if there is usually a literal penis or if it’s just because dancing around a giant pole is inherently phallic. Anyways Eric had the dubious honor of standing in for the pole. There is also a slew of Swedish music I’m hoping to steal from them. In short, Scandanavia kicks ass. Later, after getting kicked out of Carolyn’s room by the security guards (bribery only goes so far in Russia; apparently “complaints” from the neighbors have priority), we traipsed over to Elza’s flat and continued our serious intellectual discussions until morning.And for the gradual onset of Kharmsian life:
По вторникам над мостовой
Воздушный шар летал пустой.
Он тихо в воздухе парил;
В нем кто-то трубочку курил,
Смотрел на площади, сады,
Смотрел спокойно до среды,
А в среду, лампу потушив,
Он говорил: Ну город жив.
I don’t have much to say about the crackdowns on the Marches of Dissidence this weekend(organized by Other Russia which is, if you remember a lose coalition of opposition parties essentially united under the platform that opposition to the Kremlin has been entirely disenfranchised in both the elections and mainstream media) except that it’s nothing surprising. Essentially the same thing we saw last Spring. I wasn’t around for the March yesterday in Petersburg, which was apparently scattered by riot police before it had a chance to coalesce. There seems to be some sense that it was poorly organized and so easily disbanded, but judging by most of the participants who called in to radio Echo Moscow today, this was not the case. Further, most people that I heard who supported Other Russia were of the opinion that not only did the Marches resonate in people’s thoughts in spite of their being shut down, but that the very fact of the overly hostile and premature crackdown in Petersburg indicates the fear held by the powers that be. Anyways, I didn’t manage to read the news, western or Russian, today or yesterday so I don’t really know what happened or is happening. Nobody has any doubt who’s going to win the elections next Sunday seeing as United Russia’s campaign strategy is basically repetition of Putin’s name and their platform amounts to (literally) “Putin’s Plan”; judging by the president’s 70% approval rating the Duma should fall solidly into their control. Nevertheless it is a sign of weakness and fear at the top levels when a supposedly marginal opposition group, protesting for fair and free elections, is met with mass arrests in addition to the various slurs we heard from Putin’s speech last week. Just as it’s a sign of weakness that United Russia refused to participate in the televised debates, instead opting to air political aids. Sure with such a popularity The refusal to address, or even deign to recognize and respect the opposition may be politically savvy at the given moment, but if everything was as stable and if The Party truly represents the best interests of the people, we wouldn’t see this kind of behavior from Putin et al.
But who knows, this is Russia, “страна возможностей.”
In other news, I want to make some chocolate chip cookies, but I suspect that the eponymous chips are going to be rather annoying to find, like canned tomato sauce and, much to my chagrin, peanut butter. And speaking of, I’m now thinking New Years is the appropriate time to bust out and binge on my hoarded jar of skippy extra crunchy (yea, yea, natural is better, but it doesn’t keep after opening and, frankly, I love me some sweetened, partially hydrogenated, artificially flavored peanut spread).
Finally, Ice is real fun, real pretty:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/incandenzafied/2066630492/
Happy Thanksgiving… my first away from some facet of the family. I will likely feast on pelmeni and/or spaghetti, but my thoughts will be with you fowl-eating folk.
Slushy streets, a warm heart, a swell weekend. все хорошо.
Friday, 9/16
A lovely week, a frustrating week. Films. Romance, snow and chocolate. A candy factory, even, but we won’t get into that here.
Monday was Svetlana’s birthday, so that evening I journeyed an hour North of Piter to Repino, where her company was trenched into a magnificently pink soviet dormitory, making a film. I didn’t quite know what to expect from her birthday party, but all in all it was a jolly good time. Essentially Lisa and I turned on David Bowie and everything became, accordingly, quite festive.
The downside was that the next morning I discovered that both my mobile phone and my mp3 player were missing. It’s possible they fell out during the car ride up, but we called the driver and he didn’t find anything. I’m pretty sure they were stolen from the pocket of my coat, which was hanging in the entrance to Sveta’s room. True, pretty much everybody there was unfamiliar to me, but all the same it was a relatively small group of people mostly coworkers and I, blithely, assumed everybody would be kosher, so to speak. Anyways, it certainly could’ve been a lot worse; both pieces were very inexpensive, if functional pieces of technology, easily replaceable if at a slightly inconvenient expense. Besides, I’d pretty much grown to hate my cell phone anyways it sported probably the most cumbersome sms interface imaginable. Really the worst part of it all is that I lost all of my contacts. I have a few written down, but stupidly I’ve been to lazy to transcribe all of my numbers on to paper. But there’s even an upside to that, I get to see which of those people are actually important. Not that I’d recommend purging your swollen contacts to discover the health of your relationships.
Otherwise, we had a swell evening. Food, music, tiny-room dancing all the while toasting Samoschina, alternately “самая лучшая девушка на свете” and “best coordinator ever.” Lisa and Sveta both spent some time in the States (the former in Florida, the latter in Kentucky… girl with a taste for Kentucky bourbon = dream) and their Russian is filled with English expressions and slang, even the parasitic “like” and “whatever.” It’s equally charming and hilarious. At any rate, getting back home the next day was complicated and a bit stressful as I had to rush to make an appointment at said candy factory. Being the best coordinator ever, of course, Sveta arranged for me to hitch a ride with the Producer and his family, but everything ran late this being Russia and they being Film people. Not that I’m complaining, both of these I adore. And at anyrate, thanks to some skillful (and strangely still responsible) driving I made it just in time.
There is, I think, a special kind of loneliness for being in a foreign country without your cell phone. It sounds petty, I know, but it’s true. Feeling down on Tuesday, I dropped by Quo Vadis to see Julia and we proceeded to spend some four hours looking at pictures and other such nonsense on vkontakte.ru, the Russian equivalent of the Facebook. Later at home I consoled my phoneless melancholy with first a Fassbinder film (Veronika Foss) and later the classic Soviet romantic comedy/gentle Brezhnev-era criticism “Ирония Судьба” (The Irony of Fate). Essentially, one New Years in the seventies our bumbling hero gets drunk with his friends in Moscow, and then by mistake sent to Leningrad where, still drunk, he gives a cab driver his address and gets dropped off at a building and apartment identical to his own Moscow. The gentle criticism being, of course, about cookie cutter soviet housing, the romance being the lovely lady who finds him passed out in her bed, and the moral, obviously, being alcohol is bad. “Надо меньше пить, пить надо меньше, меньше надо пить!” Although maybe it’s the other way around, considering that thanks to soviet uniformity and binge drinking our boy finally finds the woman of his dreams. He pretty much says something to that effect anyways.
There is a Splin song about Geography where the singer quite sadly, sincerely pleads his listeners to give him the address of Bjork in Iceland. They also have a song with the guy from b-2 about Fellini. This is a good band.
Yesterday we saw the new Emir Kustiritsa, “Testament.” Actually it was my first Kusturitsa. I liked it alright, although it had maybe a few too many tediously “funny” moments and a too little depth. I was into the funeral-wedding at the end, from what I understand typical for his films. I keep meaning to pick up a copy of Time of the Gypsies, anyways.
And speaking of funerals in film, I really wish I had a copy of “Intimate Lighting”. I’ve got a hankering for that scene where they play trumpet for the funeral party from outside of the cemetery walls.
And speaking of Czech cinema, Yuri Menzel made a film out of Bohumil Hrabal’s “I served the King of England” and it’s playing at Dom Kino this weekend. I’m hell of excited.
And today is lazy, hazy, and lovely. I made some delicious pasta and put bacon in the sauce and I’m drinking some of the coffee with which I finally replaced our old swill. With my coffee and orange juice together, it’s almost like being at Orange in Chicago…
The feeling that you are stupider than you were is what finally interests you in the really complex subjects of life: in change, in experience, in the ways other people have adjusted to disappointment and narrowed ability. You realize that you are no prodigy, your shoulders relax, and you begin to look around you, seeing local color unrivaled by blue glows of algebra and abstraction
-Nicholson Baker, The Mezzanine
I should probably qualify my statement a couple days ago about political apathy amongst my friends here. That is, obviously I can’t speak about Russians generally, and I fully acknowledge that I tend to associate with a particular crowd that may have it’s own anomalous mindset. Further, it should be pointed out that the political youth movements “Nashe” and “Molodaya Gvardia” have enormous memberships and I’ve heard more than once discussion on the Radio to the effect that similar groups of young activist are one of the most powerful forces in Russian politics. I may worry about the nationalist rhetoric of the above two, and I may disagree personally with their politics, but I can’t deny that these are viable and decidedly nonapathetic political institutions. But most importantly, I don’t mean to sound condescending to either my Russian friends or the youth here generally. I guess what I mean is that if you taken into account the perspectives that might result from the last twenty years (ie the formative years for my generation here) of Russian history, to say nothing of the political and social legacy of the Communist Party and the Soviet Union, it makes a lot more sense why a generation of people would consider politics farcical and, more importantly, seriously doubt the capacity of any elections or activism to change something. This is one of the most important lessons of my stay here; while the historical “facts” may be one thing I can read and contemplate, comfortably, from home, the effect of actually living here, through that period and those preceding it, are totally beyond my comprehension. It’s easy for an American to scoff at Russian political apathy (ie talk about a people destined to live under tyranny if they do not make any noble efforts to build and support democracy, and etc etc), it’s a different thing entirely to understand and appreciate the roots of this mentality in recent history. Finally, political apathy equates to neither the absence of social consciousness nor an inability to think critically about politics.
And plus, I mean, looking at American voter turnouts, we don’t have a whole lot of high ground to scoff from.
Here’s an article from Johnson’s List about the People’s Unity holiday I mentioned last week.
In other news, after several days of shopping headaches I’ve finally found some proper winter shoes. At least I think they’ll do. Unfortunately I had to buy them new, which thanks to Russia’s disproportionately high clothing prices set a serious hole in my wallet. I tried to find some decent second hand boots, but to no avail. Anyways, proper boots are well worth the expense here, I figure, so I’m not sweating it.
I attempted part of my boot-shopping at Udelnaya, which is an enormous market that stretches along one of the railroad lines to the north of the city. The space opens with some of the more established vending stalls, like you tend to find around any given metro station. DVDs, Kitchen appliances, new clothing, meat. This extends for maybe a block or so before turning into a roofed market place with more of the same, with perhaps a bit more emphasis on clothing. Then come the piles of clothes, mountains really, marking the second hand section. This part has a central open air pathway with a dark labyrinth of walled off spaces in which you can sort through a particular seller’s collection. The degree of organization varies wildly, and in almost any case finding something worthy requires a great deal of mental and physical labor. When I was there with Elza and Eric I managed to find a decent hooded sweatshirt and then tranced out in the semi-lit freezing maze of fabric: as I wander by old ladies, pink-faced, lazily swap gossip and wily youths stand smoking, exhorting. Nearly everybody is sipping some kind of hot beverage out of those ubiquitous flimsy plastic cups. At some point Elza received a call from France and so in my wandering she’d occasionally pass by, and I’d catch strands of French amidst the other half-intelligible market chatter. Essentially: one long dreamlike take in a Tarkovsky film.
And I didn’t even get to the final part of the market, the long (a mile, two?) stretch of blankets, baskets, tables with all kind of miscellany: clothes, pipes, appliances, tools, rusted hunks of metal, coins, books, and of course the essential soviet kitsch.
There are fireworks and shouts all over the city tonight as earlier today Petersburg’s football team, Zenit, became Champions of Russia. I went out for a walk around 7 and the streets were already filling up with rowdy, blue-scarved, fans and the consequent truckloads of militia. Everyone was heading to the stadium at Sportivnaya where the team was to be welcomed as heroes after arriving from Moscow. I watched a bit on TV, seems like madness, but fun all the same. Nevertheless, I’m staying inside tonight as the crowds coming back from the stadium are likely to be destructively merry. This is a particularly big deal for Petersburg as Zenit has only received a title once before in the Soviet Union. I haven’t followed football here at all, but all the same you can’t escape the city-wide comraderie of a major sports victory like this. Especially when it’s at the defeat of a muscovite team. Слава питеру!
And speaking of rowdiness, yesterday was the day of the militia (I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but for the uninitiated militia=police). As I understand it, usually for these holidays (day of the navy, day of the army, etc) the relevant service factions get plastered and quite often trouble ensues. In my travels yesterday I sort of expected to get stopped and harassed at least once, but I didn’t see any problems. Probably the slushy weather had something to do with that.
Finally, it’s nice to rediscover a band like Wilco, and get all nostalgic about Chicago and the Midwest. I watched Jesus’s Son a couple days back and the film’s use of “She’s a Jar” set me off… All the more so as I think it plays over several scenes on the El, first depressive then drug hazed and scary. Anyways, Jeff Tweedy’s voice will always feel like home, especially when sounded halfway across the world.
Oh, also, in case you missed it a couple weeks ago on somethingawesome: Chicago Glee Club covers the Pixies
<3
The wintery fluffy flaky kind, that is: http://www.flickr.com/photos/incandenzafied/1905946966/
Monday 9/5
Yesterday was the holiday for the people’s unification, although as far as I can tell hardly anyone knows what it’s about. I read one of the official explanations plastered about the city, so I know that it’s to commemorate the explosion of the poles from Moscow in 1612 (?) and consequently the establishment of the Romanov dynasty. Certainly an important event, but as the tradition was only recently established, most people see it as little more than a day off. In fact I talked to one kid who explained to me that this was the holiday to celebrate the October revolution, just moved to make for a long weekend. You know, like our current labor and memorial days.
What’s more none of my friends had the day off so I spent the day traipsing around their places of work. A jolly, if unproductive time indeed.
It was Julia’s birthday last week and we celebrated accordingly on Saturday at her friend’s apartment near the southern edge of the city. We generally made merry: feasting, drinking, singing. I felt sorry for her neighbors, but when there’s a birthday in question it’s sort of sacred territory. One of the resident babushki did in fact complain, but our Vanya seemed to calm her down. The next day he didn’t remember what he’d said to her, but we’re pretty sure he promised himself to some kind of marriage. At one point at my request we sang a splin song that my friend Elen taught me a while back. She told me the next day that she was in fact quite happy to answer my 3 am call to half-intelligible drunken singing… Я умираю с скуки когда кто-то меня лечит.
And in more musical developments at the party I met this kid Ilya (Ilyusha?) who’s not only totally all about the new Radiohead, but who’s into Joanna Newsom, Tom Waits, and the Arcade Fire. Obviously we were fast friends, this in spite of crazy Vanya’s insistence that we get into a brawl on account of Ilya’s crazy nationalism. We never talked about politics, but I’m pretty doubtful we’d have any problems.
And speaking of Vanya and politics, the former was all about going to a protest for “A Just Russia” (the purportedly socialist, pro-kremlin party) where they pay people 300 rubles to attend for 3 hours. I mentioned that my not being Russian might no go over so well, to which he replied “Fred, are you for justice or against it? Ok, then you’ll come.” Ilya refused to go, “for any sum of money” on account of his “pure moral principles,” as Vanya slighted them. I don’t doubt that sort of thing (pay for attendence) happens in the states, but it strikes me the wrong way all the same. Thanks to the night’s legacy I was in no shape for standing in the cold for three hours, although it would have been an interesting spectacle. And fodder for my restless camera. As far as I understood from one of Vanya’s phone calls, Ilya ended up going, principles be damned. I’m pretty sure the protest was for them just another excuse to drink anyways; most of my friends, even the progressive minded ones, are entirely apathetic about politics.
But speaking of politics, United Russia has plastered the city with banners and advertisements proclaiming that “Putin’s plan is victory for Russia.” United Russia is the wildly popular pro-Kremlin party, of which Putin is (weirdly) not a member but on whose electoral list his name is number one in the upcoming Duma elections. That is, in brief: Russian’s electoral laws are really strange. In slightly more detail: As of, I think, 2004 the Duma is not elected on the basis of single region mandates but according to broad party tickets. Each party puts together a list of candidates and the population effectively chooses between the lists. The parties then decide how their votes work out in the Duma proper. But thats where things get weird, apparently the lists are in no way representative of who will actually become a deputy after the election. Furthermore, it’s not required that the “candidates” be members of the party. So a couple weeks ago, Putin dropped a bomb by announcing that he would head United Russia’s list even though it’s absolutely clear he has no intention of becoming a deputy (although it has been suggested he’ll resign the presidency before his term ends, appoint a temporary successor, become prime minister and then run for President once again in 2012). Effectively he’s lending his massively popular name to United Russia and so ensuring they’ll sweep the December elections. Anyways, I much prefer the one advertisement for the Liberal Democratic Party of the Russian Federation featuring Zhironovsky’s scoldingvisage and the straight up soviet exhortation “don’t lie, don’t fear.”
On a more interesting note, we had our first snow yesterday. We woke up from Julia’s party to a gloriously sunny day and a couple patches of white. A little more fell during the day but nothing stuck. All the same, I was congratulating everyone on the first snowfall all day (с первым снегом!) which I find incredibly endearing. Anyways at Smolny we’re all suffering the fall depression thing, and the extra light from the snow will do us some good.
And I’ll leave you with this bit of endearing Bulgaro-Belgian English:
Maria (upset by her landlord’s snooping around her apartment) – “she has absolutely no right to snuffle in my stuff!”
31.10.2007
Happy Halloween, I suppose. I’m celebrating with homework, this bit of writing, and at some point some much needed sleep. Being in Russia, where the holiday has only recently arisen, has provided for yet another bit of perspective on American cultural domination. Here it’s mostly a holiday for clubs and restaurants, another reason to throw a party or offer some multi colored blini.
Time and sleep have been more and more scarce lately, which is sort of the opposite of how I’d figured this approach (descent into?) winter. You know, the darker and colder it becomes the more I’ll tend to lock myself in my room and, you know, actually try to read some of the Russian books I’ve been buying. Instead I’m running all over the city, frustrated by traffic, and only dropping by my apartment for a 20 minute power meal. All the same, I can’t complain (грех жаловаться, да?) and my social life isn’t exactly suffering, as I tend to swap sleep for opportunities to hang out. And that’s why I’m here, right, communication, socialization, or if we’re being grand, “international relations.” Yes, thanks to my important work the United States and Russia will soon resolve their petty geopolitical differences and, more importantly, our great leaders will once again gaze longingly into their mutually resplendent Good Souls. Ahem. Seriously though, bar room diplomacy is pretty swell.
On Monday I went to Vaska to visit the English conversation class one of my friends (well, friend of a friend, but who’s really keeping score?) teaches. She did me a favor a couple weeks ago and I thought it only proper to return the kindness. That and her implication that the class consisted almost entirely of студентки… just kidding, seriously. At any rate, it turned out pretty swell. The class asked all sorts of questions in English and then, deciding to test my Russian, interrogated me on all sorts of complicated matters for close to an hour. Thankfully, my tongue was cooperative and I managed to avoid embarrassment. We exchanged contact and maybe they’ll invite me back.
I’m almost to the point of buying a Russian copy of “Children of Men” so I can make my Russian friends watch it, already. I think they’re sick of my exhortations. In related news, I still haven’t seen 12, the new Mikhailkhov based on 12 angry men. I did watch “La vie en rose” which was only sort of alright, in spite of the obviously fabulous soundtrack. Better than your average rags to riches to complete degeneration biopic, I suppose. Damn, you should probably go listen to “Je ne regrette rien” right now. And did anyone see that picture last year about Diane Arbus (Nicole Kidman, I think). I heard it was pretty swell.
If you’re keeping track, that’s three uses of the phrase “pretty swell. More signs of English language atrophy. I just hope it corresponds to an increasing Russian slang vocabulary. Swell is a pretty neat adjective. All the more so in its superlative.
Fireworks are always going off somewhere over the Neva, but I have yet to actually see them. I’m not really sure what all the ruckus is about, or what sort of schedule they’re following.There was a barrage earlier this evening and another larger one at midnight. I mean, everyday is a holiday, but… It would be heavenly to find a way onto the roof of my building, but as far as I can tell, it’s all pretty locked up and secure. According to Time Out Sankt Peterburg, there are open roofs all over the city but it’s something of an art finding them as there are only certain windows of access.
As for other mysteries of the northern capital, the traffic situation here is simultaneously frustrating and hyper-manic. That is, some mornings Nevsky is completely backed up and it takes me 30 minutes to get to Smolny. On other, eerier, mornings the street is almost completely empty and I make it in 10. Of course a great deal of the travel time depends on the degree of which (I’m leaving that grammatical jewel just to demonstrate how Russian is confusing my English grammar) marshrutka driver values human life. A marshrutka is a private taxi-bus that follows a well known route. They cost just slightly more than the city transit and they are almost always faster. They absolutely crowd the city nowadays, but they supposedly appeared only about 10 years ago. Sometimes being smashed in the back of a speeding van with a bunch of grumpy Russians isn’t the best way to have a good time, but if you lighten up a little it’s a pretty entertaining experience. At the very least, there are usually amusing juxtapositions (a girl with 5 inch, no-kidding, nails; a reeking, leather-capped beer sipper; and a grinning old man chuckling proverbs to himself), to say nothing of the roller-coaster ride.
At any rate, the drivers have to be among the world’s most talented multi-taskers. They not only navigate Petersburg’s aggressive traffic, they also make change from an orderly stack of bills on the driver’s wheel and a considerably less orderly pile of coins (can anyone explain why 10 kopeek coins still exist?) all the while keeping track of who’s entering and leaving, and who has requested which stop. Oh yea, and almost all of the vans are straight drive. Also sometimes they talk on their cellphones. When I am not afraid I think it’s pretty much incredible and I really would like to befriend one of these drivers.
Alright, 2 hours of sleep last night means I’m fading fast. And I was hoping to spend some quality time with old JDS before sleep (he’s good for the soul).Oh well.
