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01 Jul 2001, 09:59AM GMT+5:30: NO PHOTO NO VIDEO YES TOURISTS:

Or perhaps, given the foci of my Russian classes lately: Verbs of Motion II: They're Back, and They're Going to Tell You How They Got Here!

I went to the Hermitage for the first time (having been in St. Petersburg for two weeks), I had various multilingual experiences, I saw Tomb Raider dubbed in Russian, and I thought a heck of a lot while doing it all.

Sakura. I think that's the name of a character in Puzzlefighter, which I used to love back freshman year in the Freeborn dorm. But it's also a rather good if touristy Japanese restaurant near the Nyevskii Prospekt metro station.

We were American tourists, speaking English and a bit of Russian, in Russia, in a Japanese restaurant with (I'm guessing) Chinese-Russian wait staff, and the menus were in Russian and English with, in addition, English transliterations of Japanese names. And the instructions on the chopsticks were French, and don't even ask how many countries supplied this place with alcohol.

What is the proper procedure for importing a word into Russian? "Kafe" should be, by all rights, neuter, since it ends in "e," but grammarians (I think) say that it should be treated as masculine, since it's not a native term. "Tempura?" Should one say, "Ya hochu tempura," or "Ya hochu tempuru"? Should I have declined it in the accusative there?

The Hermitage. Students get in free, which is quite a relief, since it's a few hundred rubles for foreigners. I had second thoughts about leaving my camera in the cloakroom, not because I wanted to take photos (although I eventually did), but because the attendant looked shady. I changed sections so as to find some babushki attendants instead.

My Rough Guide (Official Mediator of the Sumana-in-St.-Pete Experience 2001) said not to wander, but to concentrate on my interests, since the Hermitage is so huge. Well, I don't know my interests (and I thought a lot about Leonard's opinions on arts v. crafts), so I half-wandered and half-looked at the famous, tourist-attractor stuff. Renoir, Degas, Monet, Titian, Breughel, Gaugin, Rembrandt, Manet, Rubens. (The room with French impressionists had the NO PHOTO NO VIDEO signs everywhere. And a babushka in every room. A lot of the paintings -- well, to quote Ross, "No temperature controls, no glass, no alarms, just a system of babushki, defending the priceless art." I wanted to take pictures of the babushki, or of the NO PHOTO NO VIDEO signs, or of the captions that had Russian, French, and English on them. But it was forbidden.)

Some of the stuff I saw was really, really old -- 600 years or more -- which just heightened my sense of absurdity regarding being there for only a few hours. I mean, it's an embarrassment of riches, art-wise, there at the Hermitage. (Don't forget the WWII spoils-of-war treasure.) It reminded me, after a while, of Arlington. There, one couldn't help but turn her back on some of the graves. Here, it's impossible to pay respectful attention to every work of art.

I saw a Breughel that reminded my of a W.H. Auden poem -- Musee des Beaux Arts. It was called something like "Robbers Stealing from Peasants," and one of the robbers had this beatific look on his face. It was kinda cool that I got to see the brushstrokes on the painting, since there was no glass between it and me. I was Close to The Machine, er, Art. But that also worried me, since I had heard about, and later actually saw, Rembrandt's Danae, which a visitor slashed and splashed with acid years back. Glass has its virtues.

There was more Russian spoken around me, and less English, than you might think, seeing as this is pretty much The Tourist Spot here in Leningrad. Lots of Russian, some English, some German, a bit of Japanese, some French, was what I heard.

Imagine a Microsoft-run gallery. NO PHOTO NO VIDEO NO NOTE-TAKING NO REMEMBERING-AND-TELLING-OTHERS-ABOUT-IT-LATER...and so on.

I sometimes forget that, for a really huge part of human existence, works of art were mainly about the Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman mythologies and histories. All these religious themes, and all these white people being portrayed. But I'll get to the White Male gaze later, in the Tomb Raider section.

I wandered, while looking for the exit, into a display on trumpets. Dan plays/ed the trumpet. In fact, the last time I was out of the country, in India, I bought a little toy trumpet (not to be confused with the piece "Toy Trumpet," as played by the Canadian Brass, which Dan also enjoys/ed), which I gave to him. I also played the trumpet once, for approximately three months, in fourth grade. But I never settled down to an instrument -- the piano I gave up at an even younger age. I kinda wish I had. Certainly thought-provoking.

I have to write more sometime to articulate my feelings on What It Is to Be a Tourist, and whether I'm getting better at spotting the national origins of tour groups -- distinguishing USA from Germany and so on.

Maybe the Hermitage isn't for me. Or maybe I should, next time I come by, try to sit a while with some stuff that interests me. And I'm sure that there's gotta be something. And, if all else fails, I can look at the interactions among babushki, tourists, Russians, foreigners, and the priceless art.

On my way out, I saw crates and crates and crates marked "FRAGILE" and "THIS WAY UP" and so on. I can only conclude that it's all art, but -- on its way out, or in? (One main way the Russian Museum makes cash is by loaning out its collection to museums in the west. Hence, my group's expedition to its 20th century collection in a few weeks may or may not be worth it at all. Sad.)

I bought some calendars.

Tomb Raider. Saw it last night with Katya, who is terrific, in some theater on Nyevskii. It was rather passable in Russian, seeing as we could rather tell what was about to happen sans audio comprehension. "She just said 'fifteen years.' What happens in fifteen years?...Oh. There's a picture of an old-ish man, and there's a gravesite. Oh, he turned up missing fifteen years ago. Think she'll see him later on in the film? Yeah."

Aha! I knew that I hadn't heard that bit of banter from the trailer!

The Male Gaze was rather prominent in this film, what with all the unnecessary and rather counterproductive PG nudity and nudity suggestions focusing on Ms. Jolie. And every main character was white, and there was lots of exotic-nonwhite-natives-of-foreign-lands cultural imperialism. Rather annoying. My previous exposure to lots of White Male Gaze stuff in the Hermitage probably primed me for this to annoy me.

The theater's concession stand was very comprehensive. Alcohol, popcorn, slices of cake, probably pirozhki. This is something could stand more of in the States -- real food, and not horribly priced, at movie theaters.

On our way there, Katya and I saw -- in the underground passageway/street crossing -- a Russian band covering lots and lots of Tom Waits songs. Katya says they were terrific. We gave them some rubles. Around $3.50 total. They were pretty neat.

We. I finished it. More later.

Note to Alex, Susanne's friend. Cryptonomicon is a book by Neal Stephenson, who also wrote Snow Crash, Zodiac, The Diamond Age, and other sort of cyberpunky sci-fi books, as well as the long essay In the Beginning Was the Command Line. Cryptonomicon is very long and incredibly geeky at times, and covers a wide swath of ... lots of topics. I tend to find opportunities to quote Stephenson often. Once my sister forbade me from quoting or referring to Stephenson, Seth Schoen, or Leonard Richardson for a day's worth of conversation with her. It was pretty tough.

Things that kind of remind me of home. Hare Krishnas, Scientologists, rollerbladers. Oh, and Young Communists. And weird variants of franchises and corporate foods that we have in the US. Example: Pringles, flavored Paprika or Cheese & Onion.

Salon. I think sometimes that Salon is just trying to be the exact opposite of Reader's Digest.

Bluesville, Tennessee. Is there one? There should be.

First published by Sumana Harihareswara at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/7/1/95917/48550
Filed under: Reading

02 Jul 2001, 08:53AM: Jacques Sirok (Jack, the Little Cheese): Did I ever write about sterile tears? They remind me of the problem of symptoms. I was about to take some sterile tears in my eyes the other days. Then I thought that dry eyes are just a symptom of dehydration and fatigue, and instead of using an enabler such as sterile tears (eye drops), I should fix the "underlying problem" and get some water and sleep. But then I thought that simply taking a nap and drinking some water would just "cover up" a lifestyle problem, and that maybe I need to change my work or study habits more fundamentally. It's layered. One person's "fundamental solution" is another's "Band-Aid."

It's time to quote Alexei's diary of June 30th.

"Tokyo has gone to ground. The heat has now past the point of being oppressive, moving directly into the "Military Dictatorship" phase, where it knocks on your door at three in the morning and demands to see your papers, then roughs you up when you show them. It's not even dry, nice heat, it's muggy, humid, mean heat. It's heat that's wandering around under cloudy skies, that seem to promise relieving rain, but never deliver until you're inside. Then, when you rush outside to cool off in the rain, it's stopped. When you DO manage to catch the rain it's either a torrential downpour or a superheated vapor. In all of this, I have managed to catch a cold. Don't ask me how."

Young Russian pairs. On the metro, I have now met two pairs of young Russians and tried to communicate with them. They have somewhat broken English, I have rather broken Russian, and still somehow we try. A week ago it was the Russian girls who assuerd met hat they love Limp Bizkit and Eminem. Yesterday it was the two young boys, Sasha and Zhenya, who saw me reading the Lara Croft special in Komsomolskaya Pravda. (It's not just Pravda anymore. Really. If you ask for Pravda at a kiosk, the clerk and everyone around you will look at you funny, as though you've been under a rock for the last ten years.)

I'm not quite sure what I've accomplished on these little missions of hope. I mean, sure, I'm an ambassador for my country wherever I go. I kind of have an obligation to try to interact with the young'uns, when they excitedly start conversations. But I also kind of want them to leave me alone to struggle with Pravda.

Oh, and there's a joke section in Pravda. I was able to understand the words of one joke, but the context escaped me -- the punchline turned on the hilarity of some celeb named "My-My" borrowing Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea from a library.

The "Open Your Windows!" Open-Air Rock Concert. I went to Kirov Stadium last night to see some Real Russian Rock. A person named Alexei kindly led me to the stadium from the metro station. He likes to play music of many sorts, and his brother is a computer-graphics artist and wishes to get into Hertzen University, where I'm studying for the summer. At the stadium, a nice young woman named Nastya got me into the show on her ticket, for free. She studies and lives in the town where Tchaikovsky was born.

I heard Chaif, Akvarium, and Aty-Baty. I understand a bit of the craze for Akvarium and Chaif now. They're pretty fun. Chaif did an impromptu (I think) bit from "La Bamba." Cute. It's been a while since I'd been to a rock concert. I felt the thump in my sternum, and felt the at-oneness with other music fans, and that was the type of thing that made me start thinking of St.-Pete as "my city" and resonated with some weird wish-to-be-Russian that I've been feeling. As in, "Gee, I wish I were Russian." Don't ask me.

I keep remembering parallel incidents back in India, the last time I was out of the country. Last night I remembered one time I really felt at one with my cousins and extended family in Bangalore. So help us, we were singing and dancing along to the Backstreet Boys. Jeremy Richards of Lyrics Schmirics called their harmonies "emotion-pimping," and, well, that's what they are. Oh, wait, it was "expectation-pimping." Anyway, N*Sync and the like sort of get past my defenses when I'm abroad and away from the good USA stuff. Russians -- and yes, this is a truism -- take the worst of American culture, as in Britney Spears and greed and neo-Victorian sexual junk. Next thing you know, I'll see pork rinds next to the Fanta and ads for monster-truck rallies at Kirov Stadium.

But I digress.

Rock music is pretty universal. At least, I felt as though Chaif could have been, minus lyrics, some random American (or British, or Canadian) band that I'd hear at Blake's in Berkeley, California. I heard nothing especially Russian about the harmonies or melodies. And I got a little sense of belonging there, in the crowd, cheering Chaif, that I hadn't felt before here.

Yay, police. On the way back from the concert, rather far away from me, I saw two (presumably drunk) people sort of fighting. Within a minute or two, some uniformed cops were on the scene, cooling stuff down. I was actually glad for the large militsia/police presence, for once.

Metro moments. I get lots and lots of eye contact on the metro. Russians stare -- that hasn't changed between 1975 and now (it was around than that Russian Journal was written). I'm not used to it. Probably when I get back to the US, that'll weird me out again, and I'll have to get used to the lack of eye contact. That and walking around without my passport and visa, and not locking my backpack when I get on BART, and ice cream costing more than 25 cents for a popsicle.

Yesterday night I saw a funny little scene, and laughed along with all around me. A man had fallen asleep on the shoulder of a woman he didn't know. She wasn't quite sure what to do. I mean, it's not nice to wake a sleeping person who is obviously very tired (and, one is pretty sure, not drunk -- he didn't smell of alcohol, and so on). It was pretty funny, even to her, and to the babushki and so on around. Eventually she got up really quickly when the train stopped at a station. The guy kind of straightened up, especially when some other guy on his other side sort of told him to wake up. The sleepy guy went back to sleep in some less bothersome-to-others position. Just another day in Leningrad.

First published by Sumana Harihareswara at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/7/2/85348/18712

03 Jul 2001, 10:01AM: Declension and Fall of the Roman Empire: Maybe the reason the Roman Empire fell was that its inhabitants were just sick and tired of asking, "should this be in the dative or the accusative?" and instead said, "[expletive] it, we'll just stop talking." And the empire was doomed. If only they'd had Esperanto.

I Can't Stop Eating Cheap Ice Cream. Twenty-five cents for a yummy cold chocolatey snack on a hot summer day. Yum.

Today, a small entry, followed by a larger one.

I should mention, regarding Seth's mention of my bit about layers of symptoms and problems inherent in my decision to take or not take some eye drops for my tired, dry eyes, that I eventually took the eye drops. But I'm also trying to get lots of sleep and water. Short-term and long-term solutions. After all, when the short-term and long-term solutions are not mutually contradictory, and one is relatively trivial, why not use both?

At least I haven't had a really bad eye day yet.

Ancient [Chinese] sitcom. I remembered, bizarrely, an episode of the sitcom "Mr. Belvedere" today (premise: he's an English butler, she's a suburban Pittsburgh family, they're cops), in reference to the phenomenon in which a person lies about some fact so well and for so long that he forgets the original truth.

Obligatory Cryptonomicon reference. What is the term Stephenson uses in his description of the -- striated! That's it! Captain Crunch nuggets are "striated pillow"-shaped! Finally! I've been trying to remember all day! I remembered that it was a word like "serrated," but not. And now I remember. "Striated." Ah, I can sleep now.

First published by Sumana Harihareswara at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/7/3/10152/15800

03 Jul 2001, 12:35PM: Dude, Where's My Dignity?: More seriously, right now I want to note some rather trite-seeming (to me) observations that I have made whilst studying Russian here in St. Petersburg, and before. And a shout-out to Sean and Cinzia, who are classmates of mine back in the States, and who are also in Russia right now.

Neuter. There are three singular genders in Russian: masculine, feminine, and neuter. Mostly the categorization depends on the ending of the word. Karandash (pencil) is a classic masculine word, ending in a consonant. Ruchka (pen) is a classic feminine word, ending in "a" (although words ending in "ya" and a soft-sign, or myakii znak, almost always are feminine as well). Moloko is textbook neuter, ending in "o" or "ye." There are other rules and exceptions that mostly annoy me.

Any regular conversation in Russian forces you to do certain things differently depending on your gender. A female has to use different forms of verbs in the past tense, for example (usually add "a" to the end of them). But, if I were writing in Russian, and I wanted to hide my gender and show that I was hiding my gender, I could use the neuter when I had to refer to my own sex. I couldn't do that in, say, French.

Process v. Product. Imperfective v. Perfective, respectively. There are completely different verbs to refer to process and product in many cases. And native speakers don't even think about which one to use. "I was buying" is different from "I bought." "I will be buying" is different from "I will buy." And there is no perfective present tense. And there's no present tense for "to be."

The difference between "I was buying" and "I bought" (and the future tense equivalent, mutatis mutandis) reminds me of a typical Indian-American error, if you want to call it an error. Indians in the U.S. often use an imperfective-sounding form when they could, and possibly should, use the perfective. And lots of extra forms of the verb "to be." "If you are being late, be calling me. I will be sleeping for a few hours." And so on.

(Students of Russian, e.g., brainwane, sometimes cheat and use the imperfective future instead of the perfective future, because it's easier to avoid conjugating verbs. Bad students! No biscuit!)

Voluntary and Involuntary Actions. Listen and Watch; See and Hear. All of these are different verbs (respectively, slushat', smotret', videt', slishat'). And that reminds me of an opinion that free-speech types (libertarians?) might believe, which is that you should be able to hear/see everything available, and to watch/listen to only what you like.

First published by Sumana Harihareswara at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/7/3/123530/4112

04 Jul 2001, 01:35AM: Row, row, row...down the Neva: Recently, I've attempted to row a boat, sung patriotic songs, attended (in body but not in spirit) some Russian theater, and seen some Russian art. I guess I'm in St. Petersburg, eh?

Happy US Independence Day, y'all.

It's Wednesday, Weekly Excursion Day for our happy band. So we started out at the Russian Museum (it's the state art museum), which was better than I'd expected. After the Hermitage and Tsarskeyo Selo, I'd thought that I might be tour'd-out. But the guide was suprisingly understandable and funny, even. And I liked the art. Maybe I was in a more arty mood.

It's the Fourth of July here. So a bunch of us set off on a picnic on a nearby island. We walked a lot through some very picturesque areas, where we were the only foreigners in sight. I felt as though I had just stepped into some of the paintings that I had seen a few hours back. We had one Russian with us (a guest of one of my American classmates) who did not speak English. I was the only one to sing patriotic songs in honor of the Fourth of July. And translation...well, it just wasn't possible for some things. She seemed quizzically confused whatever we did and said, so perhaps it wasn't our fault.

Then we went over and rented rowboats. I have more geek cred than anyone in the group, I think, because I can't row. I have absolutely inadequate hand-eye coordination, and/or upper-body strength, and/or whatever else one needs to row a boat effectively. John did much better than I, and he, too, had never rowed before.

(In the interests of accuracy: we were not actually on the Neva, but on some lesser body of water that somehow connected to the Gulf of Finland.)

After all of this, I didn't have nearly enough time to go to the Russian Political History Museum, as originally planned. I just went home and changed clothes (from "Hi, I'm a tourist" t-shirt and shorts to "Hi, I'm a well-dressed tourist" garb) and scarfed some food and went to the theater.

The Maly Drama Theater is near some important Dostoyevsky landmarks. For example, one name of the metro station nearby is "Dostoyevskaya."

Katya and I went in and I really shouldn't have insisted on the better seat that I had paid for (and that someone else was sitting in), because I fell asleep almost immediately, and didn't wake up till ten mintues before the end of the 75-minute performance. Well, I only understood about a word per sentence! At least I don't think I snored. Too much. I also slept quite a bit during the performance last week of "Son Smeshnova Cheloveka" (a Dostoyevsky short story).

At least I only wasted 45 rubles.

Oh, and the woman next to me, after the performance, seemed to be saying that I had made a mistake involving my seating fuss. I meant to say, Prostitye (sorry). I instead said, Cprositye (ask me a question!). Oops. It's not as bad in my application essay, where I used "children" instead of "people." "I must learn from the Russian people...The culture of the Russian people...." sigh.

First published by Sumana Harihareswara at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/7/4/133523/2939

05 Jul 2001, 08:58AM: Your Mileage May Very Cherry: "It would be nice to have a soundtrack to my life. Because then I could go out and buy it, and I could tell what's going to happen. Like, if Barber's Adagio for Strings is on it, then I know someone's going to die."
"Like, 'hold on, why is the Imperial Death March on track 10?'"

Very little of importance, even though I'm still in St. Petersburg.

A little non-white-looking kid in a wheelchair on the metro last night said "Namaste!" to me quite enthusiastically. It gladdened me. I look Indian (because I am) even though, when people ask me where I'm from, I say, "America" (with all necessary declensions and so on). I guess one thing I liked was seeing a stranger express a smile, apropos of nothing. Maybe I miss that.

Lots of class today. Russian history lecture. Then conversation practice. Then grammar. It's an ostensibly, and most probably actually, useful grind. I suppose I'm the ax, then.

I may have finally acquired a tough city look. People have actually been saying "excuse me" and so on to me recently. That's new.

I guess I'm just slightly down for various emotional reasons that have little to do with almost anyone except myself. Maybe I'm in Stage II of the visit to the other country: Culture Shock. Nah, it's just non-euphoria. I suppose that's acceptable enough. I'm glad I know enough not to medicate away my melancholy.

Anyway, for the first time ever, I will tonight visit a Club. It's called Money Honey. It's a rockabilly club, frequented by St. Petersburg college students. I'm not quite sure why I'm going, except that my Russian peer tutor likes to go, and that I've never been to any club of this sort, in the US or in Russia. So there you go. Trying new things, hoping I feel better soon. Maybe drinking more water will help.

First published by Sumana Harihareswara at

06 Jul 2001, 05:17AM: The Pakazhitye Mnye State: Missouri is the "Show Me State" (in the USA), and I lived there once, and "Pakazhitye Mnye" is "show me," and never mind.

I had a very involved dream last night. I've been having lots of very involved dreams recently. A number of the other participants in my program here in St. Petersburg have been reporting the same phenomenon. It's not surprising.

I remember using verbs of motion in this dream, and speaking Russian to my family back in the USA (none of my family speaks or understands Russian). I also remember distorted allusions and references to Kazan Cathedral (near which I study), Ender's Game, alligators and crocodiles, an old political science teacher of mine, the discussions on race that I had with a Dutch woman recently, and my rather unfounded fear of document checks by the militia.

I think yesterday I was just in a pretty bad mood for about three or four hours. I'm a lot better now.

Moscow! We leave on the train for Moscow late tonight, and return to St. Petersburg early Tuesday morning. I'll try to post every day when I'm there.

I miss The West Wing.

The Dutch woman -- Shaklin? -- and I had a lot of conversation about Russia, the USA, Holland, race, feminism, individualism, and community. I really am learning a lot about the USA from being here.

Today, whilst bored in class, I found myself remembering a Disney TV movie -- Principal Takes a Holiday -- and thinking of it as an argument for voucher and charter schools.

Today in Grammar we talked about the logic puzzle of the Christian trying to cross a river and bring across a wolf, a goat, and some cabbage. I had always been too lazy to solve it before, but today I solved it.

There is at least one stunningly beautiful woman in our group. I mean just jaw-dropping, statuesque loveliness in every aspect of her body. It's amazing! I don't think I've ever just wanted to admire the Divine Sculptor's artistry like this before. Walking through museums next to a piece like this is really quite an experience.

First published by Sumana Harihareswara at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/7/6/51729/34531

06 Jul 2001, 08:39AM: The America Club: Curiously enough, the two topics I have to comment on are related. I want to write a bit on the stuff I've learned about the USA by being away from it. Also, I did *not* go to a club last night.

My tutor and I missed each other. So I didn't go to Money Honey. It's a club. And America is a club, too. In a different way, of course. Especially in terms of race -- and I can only talk a wee tiny bit about this here -- the USA is so very different from so many other countries. In the USA, for example, someone's skin color or race is really not a legitimate reason to identify one person as less American than another. But in ethnically homogeneous countries, or at least countries with more of an ethnic fabric -- let's say India -- I could easily imagine a non-ethnically-Indian citizen being called less Indian than, say, me.

First published by Sumana Harihareswara at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/7/6/83916/29003

09 Jul 2001, 07:30AM: A Square in Red Square: I'm almost done with my excursion to Moscow. Right now I'm posting a small "I'm alive" entry to soothe my parents. (I'm fine, Mom and Dad.) In something like an hour or less I'll post the really, really interesting journal to document my excellent adventure. Oh, and happy birthday to Leonard.

First published by Sumana Harihareswara at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/7/9/73032/86991

09 Jul 2001, 08:17AM: Lenin, booze, metro, uniforms, guns: Five-ride pass on the Moscow metro: 20 rubles.
35mm camera film, 24 exposures: 85 rubles.
Finally coming face-to-face with the fact that Russia has not, by a long shot, shed the last vestiges of the Communist State: priceless.

You see, the highlight of my Moscow weekend was an incident on Sunday night on Red Square, in which a member of the militia very politely, if arbitrarily, asked for and inspected my documents -- that is, my passport and visa -- to make sure that I was in the country legally.

I had just been awed. My second time on Krasnaya Ploschad (Red Square) really did it for me. It was night, I walked on the cobblestones, I saw the painted lines that must have indicated parade routes or places for ICBMs. Saint Basil's Cathedral awed me. The Kremlin awed me. I was in love with Russia. I was, as Lonely Planet's guide said, pondering the grand sweep of history.

John and I were walking back towards the main entrance gate, away from Saint Basil's.

What the hell happened here?
The canonical question.

Marx thought that human nature was just a product of economic conditions? That it could be changed? And I thought about some lectures I'd been reading (as a supplement/replacement for my almost-unusable Russian-language lectures on Russian history), and the odd nostalgia for the idealism of the early USSR.

John and I saw a man and a woman walking towards Saint Basil's. She was almost tripping on the cobblestones, what with her heels, and the fact that she and her companion were quite drunk. They were both clutching each other, and beers -- Baltika, I think. They passed us, singing quite loudly some traditional-sounding Russian song. Yet more canon.

And I wrote that down in my notebook, and a militia officer sort of near us approached us, and -- according to John, who heard better than I -- said hello, and introduced himself (obligatory as per Russian law, and to John "the stupid application of due process I've ever heard"), and asked for our documents.

I believe John said "of course." We reached for our money/dox belts. I remember the bright lights over the neighboring restaurants harshly illustrating the scene, the pattern of my clothes, and my hands as they unzipped the pouch. It was my first time that I had been asked for my documents in Russia. I think I was a little nervous, not in a threatened way, but -- at that moment -- more like a child about to recite a poem in front of his class.

He looked at John's passport, and unfolded his visa, and looked at it, and gave them back to John. And then he looked at my passport, and didn't unfold my visa -- my picture doesn't really look like me, everyone says so, what if he thinks it's not legit? -- but gave them back to me, and said something that meant that we could go on our way.

John had the presence of mind to say, Dobrii vecher (good evening). I don't know if I said anything.

So I've been thinking about this for almost a day now, as you might imagine. For goodness' sake, I got my documents checked in Red Square! I may as well come back from Russia right now, as it seems at the moment that nothing here can top that for sheer historical resonance.

First published by Sumana Harihareswara at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/7/9/81711/32916

09 Jul 2001, 08:22AM: More later: I'm such a jerk for posting a "more later" entry, but it's true. I have a great deal more to say about my Moscow trip, and I intend on a blow-by-blow chronolog. Maybe in a few days.

Oh, by the way, an explanation of my previous entry's title, "Lenin, booze, metro, uniforms, guns". I'm pretty sure that at least once for each of those items, I've said sarcastically, "You know what Moscow needs more of? [Item]. There's just a decided lack of [item] in this town."

First published by Sumana Harihareswara at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/7/9/82212/10384

10 Jul 2001, 05:26AM: Political Insane Asylum: Today we are all so, so tired from the lack of sleep on the overnight train ride back from Moscow to St. Petersburg. So, so tired. And then we have classes. Some conversations from this morning follow. Also a poll.

Number one.

Maria (pronounced "Mariah"): I took a taxi home.
brainwane: You taxiied home?
M: No, I took a taxi home.
b: I see. Because you're not an airplane.
Siri: As we can tell, since she does not have any plane features.

One should note that, upon my laughter, Siri disclosed that she had not realized that she had made a pun.

Number two. A number of us were having a conversation about vitamin pills and the tendency to megadose on vitamins and minerals as different as molybdenum and C.

Susanne: I don't know what good it does to take more than your body needs. I mean, it just ends up... (gestures down)
brainwane: My urine is worth nine dollars an ounce at the recycling center.
S: What?
b: It's a line from a song.
S: You just sounded so serious.
John: Deadpan humor!
b: Yes. Putting the "dead" in deadpan. Putting the bedpan in deadpan.
J: Keep this up and you'll have a Tonight's Episode.
b: I think I already did.

I really am working on the huge, huge entry/entries to document my excursion to Moscow.

Poll:
Would you go on a Soviet roller coaster?

Originally published by Sumana Harihareswara at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/7/10/52631/1548

10 Jul 2001, 10:10AM: Moscow, Part I: This is approximately the first third of my Moscow travelogue. I plan to also have it available at my own personal webspace soonish.

Day One: Friday night.
A buoyant bunch of twenty ACTR students and a few authority figures piled into Muscovsky Vokzal (Moscow Train Station) in St. Petersburg around 10:30 on Friday night. (My Russian-language successes that day and in the previous few days included calling a clerk-girl "devushka" for the first time and bargaining down the price of some flowers.) A lot of us brought food and drink -- not by choice, mind you, but because our homestay mothers had made us. I, for one, got away with only bringing a liter of apple juice. Unopened box. No food -- well, none that she had chosen.

We met by the bust of Peter the Great in the big hall. A huge head on a huge pedestal. (A room or two away from slot machines and kiosks selling everything from toothbrushes to CDs to pirozhki.) I arrived early and saw Marcus, a British/Spanish student on a rather ad hoc study-in-St. Petersburg program, outside. I know him only from this International Telephone / Telegraph Office, from which I write these very words. He was leaving for a Moscow visit, too, but he'd be leaving the country soon after. I wished him well. I'm really glad when I contrast my program with his -- I get more time in St. Petersburg, more actual interaction with Russians (with my lovely homestay), and probably a better social and academic overall experience. Thanks, ACTR! Thanks, Mom and Dad!

Kate (a.k.a. Katya, since "Katya" is a legit Russian-declinable name and "Kate" isn't), John and I were the three non-Russians in a four-person "coupe`." The fourth turned out to be "Misha." Misha did not speak much at all. Katya and John and I had been laughing away, and then he entered, and ... silence. I tried to engage him in conversation, at least to introduce ourselves. As John put it, my attempts fell into a conversational black hole.

Translation of the intro. conversation, during which I was barely containing my laughter, since even I knew that it was funny at the time, follows.

Hello.
Hello.
[Long pause] We're students from America.
Ah.
[Long pause]

My name is ... [John and Katya follow in suit]
I am named Misha.
[Long pause]
Would you like some juice?
No, thanks.

Eventually, we got some cracks in Misha's facade. He -- I'm sure quite sarcastically -- asked, "And where did you learn to speak Russian so well?" and spoke some in English. He claimed to be a computer programmer, although John and I now flirt with the idea that he's something a bit more underhanded.

We all tried to sleep, although the noise and the White Nights didn't help too much. I think that when Misha said the next morning that my friends and I had prevented him from getting a good night's sleep, he was joking.

Day Two: Saturday.
Early Saturday morning we arrived half-dead in Moscow. We got on a bus, got to the hotel, waited to be processed (during which downtime Lauren and Melissa ate animal crackers and discussed their favorite authors), checked into our rooms (Hot water! And water I can brush my teeth with! "I'm going to brush my teeth four times a day, for the sheer novelty of it."), ate a non-wonderful breakfast of bread and cheese and blini (pancakes) and cheese, and got on a bus to see the sights of Moscow, narrated by a friendly Russian guide.

The guide was nice, but her cadence and vocab bored and confused us respectively. (When she started mentioning Kiev and early Russian history and names thereof, a number of us got shivers, recollecting recent Russian history lectures that were even more impenetrable.) And I just felt like such a ... a tourist.

I bought a shirt. After some bargaining, it was $4, rather than $5. It featured a map of the Moscow metro. In Russian, of course.

There are lots of clocks in Moscow. I feel as though there are more clocks in public spaces here than in St. Petersburg. Maybe this jibes with the stereotype of Muscovites as always in a hurry. Forget not that

Moscow : St. Petersburg :: New York : San Francisco

A number of people have bought rather large soft drink bottles -- around a liter or so -- and had an odd phenomenon occur in which:

  1. Person opens drink.
  2. Drink does not explode.
  3. Person drinks from bottle, closes or does not close bottle with cap.
  4. A few minutes later, drink explodes, froths over, etc.

John thinks it's the unusually long neck of these particular bottles. Any chemists, fluid dynamics experts, or Coke engineers in the house?

The last stop on our bus tour -- the fifth or so time we got out of the bus -- was Krasnaya ploschad. Red Square. The Kremlin, Lenin's tomb, Saint Basil's, the works. How in the world did I get to Russia?! Saint Basil's Cathedral is amazing, bar none, wow, oh my goodness, wow.

Krista, her Russian peer tutor, John and I wandered for a bit. We ended up eating near the Kremlin at -- I debase myself just mentioning the name -- Sbarro's. Yes, the fake-Italian mall-food-court "restaurant." There is one mall, it has been said, with many convenient locations. Well, one of them is off of Red Square. Yeesh. The soundtrack from The Godfather actually played, a bit, while we were eating.

It could have been worse. There was a T.G.I. Friday's in the same complex. And "Friday's" was not translated into "Pyatnitsa," as one might expect. "Slav Bogu, eto Pyatnitsa." No, it was all just transliterated. Darn it. I prefer more elegant representations of economic and cultural hegemony.

That night was dinner in the Chinese restaurant, inside the hotel, where our waitress spoke worse Russian than we did. Reassuring. I was hoping that that would be a sign -- as in the US -- that the food would be good (where the ethnic staff doesn't speak the native language of the country in which the restaurant in located, the food is usually better, no?), but it was merely adequate and overpriced. John and I did, however, have a great conversation -- which continued throughout the weekend -- about the morals and il/legalities of alcohol ab/use, gun control, and other sociopolitical issues.

Originally published by Sumana Harihareswara at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/7/10/101014/296

11 Jul 2001, 07:42AM: Erin Brockovna: The Dostoyevsky museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, and other stuff.

The title refers to the transliteration of Erin Brockovich into Russian, which looks very wrong. This goes for the translation of X-Men as People X as well.

acec, who are you? I'm thinking I know -- I took at least two polisci classes with you at Cal, and I've introduced you to Leonard, and you use a free, web-based email service, and right now you're in some rather prestigious summer program on the East Coast of the US. Am I right?

Today was the weekly excursion. We had a bus tour around "Dostoyevsky's St. Petersburg," hosted by a very nice woman whose voice reminded me of Sesame Street Muppets. I kind of got bored -- I haven't read the books she mentioned -- and so here are some of the notes from my notebook.

Then I helped some French tourists find the Hermitage. I only remembered "On y va!" as "Let's go!" because that was the name of my French textbook, during the four years when I studied high school French. Jeff, a linguistics grad student who has studied Russian with me at Cal, is amused that I once assumed that Nachalo, since it was the name of our Russian textbook, might also mean "Let's go." He tells that story to lots of people.

Early-August note: I'm returning to the US on August 6, and to California via San Francisco International Airport on August 7. I would really love for people who know me to meet up with me for some type of celebration soon after that -- or, in fact, people could meet me at the gate and I could feel important! You could email me for more info.

Originally published by Sumana Harihareswara at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/7/11/74254/2011

12 Jul 2001, 06:08AM: Feelings Mixed -- Shaken, not Stirred:

Argh! I really should write several entries very soon, about my mixed feelings about mixed -- or any -- alcoholic drinks, and about the last few days of my Moscow trip a few days ago. But I will have to put those off till I have a bit more time. How do you do, hectic life?

Yesterday, I met a fella who looked remarkably like Ben Affleck. When I used my poor Russian to tell him so (I'm never quite sure how to use pohozh), he quite graciously noted that, before, [people had told him that] he resembled Hugh Grant. He told me that he's a musician. Seems as though a lot of people around these parts ID as artists of some sort. St. Petersburg as, once again, the SanFran of Russia.

Moscow: Real Soon Now.

Food. I miss Mario's La Fiesta in Berkeley. Today I played tour guide (the topic was Directions/Locations in Grammar class) and I could have talked for 20 minutes about Berkeley. "And across from Rasputin is Cody's..."

And yesterday I was in a restaurant, where -- as is usual in Russia if there's not enough space -- I was seated at a largish table with a stranger, another solitary customer. She started a conversation with me -- unusual, as usually in these arrangements the two parties don't communicate. (Think Misha & the American Gang from the first part of my unfinished Moscow travelogue.) Turns out that she's a native Leningrader who's been in New York for the past five years to study... accounting. (?!) We spoke in English.

Insights:

  1. I prefer the Russian solitude/privacy-preserving custom of NOT trying to start a conversation in every instance. Maybe I like the apparatchiks for just doing their jobs and not trying to make a specific relationship into a diffuse one.
  2. I dislike the lack of a formal second-person pronoun in modern spoken English. I wanted to use vui to imply respect and distance, and I couldn't. I felt as though I were taking a liberty.

Sandwich boards. I have seen men wearing sandwich boards to advertise really unlikely-seeming products and services.

  1. Currency exchange.
  2. Strip show. Krasota ("beauty," and yes, John, I'm sure, because every morning on the bus I pass a salon labeled, in Russian and French respectively, "Salon Krasoti"/"Salon de Beaute").
  3. ISP. This one cracks me up. It's a first-wave ad for a third-wave product. It's like billboards with URLs.

Whenever I see someone wearing a sandwich board, I think -- rather facetiously -- Oh yeah, that's why I'm in college."

Originally published by Sumana Harihareswara at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/7/12/986/18861

13 Jul 2001, 12:23PM: YASE -- Yet Another Short Entry:

Argh. I saw "Swan Lake" tonight, here in [my hometown] St. Petersburg. And it was rather interesting, especially since I saw it with Susanne, who has actually been in a production of "Swan Lake," but the upshot of the whole thing is that I haven't time to write a proper entry. I don't even have my Harry-Potter-Pensieve of a notebook with me. What follows is just stuff I remember from today. Believe you me, this weekend I'll be writing thousands of words about Moscow, art, alcohol, race, and more.

Opera seems to bemessibng up a bit, so I'll just leave it at that for now.

Originally published by Sumana Harihareswara at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/7/13/152320/137

14 Jul 2001, 08:19AM GMT+5:30: The Intersection of Doom...and Death:

A lot of very eclectic material in today's entry. The title refers to the intersection near my university (university may not actually be mine), Herzen Pedagogical something-or-other in St. Petersburg, Russia. This intersection has no lanes, no apparent traffic signs or lights, and lots of cars and vans and tour buses whizzing by. I'm thinking that Kazanskaya Ulitsa would be Doom, and the little minor street right behind Kazanskaya Sobor (Kazan Cathedral) would be Death.

Leonard:
You mentioned that the only times you've ever read something in second person was in text adventure games and in A Canticle for Liebowitz. I was rather impressed by the second-person chapters in Dave Barry in Cyberspace.
Also, it turns out that you and I are starting trips on the same day. You leave for Utah on the 18th, which is the same day that I leave for the island of Solovki. Uh, Mom, Dad, other readers, you should know that I'll be gone till Monday, and I am pretty sure that there are no Internet connections on this island that was once a monastery and then was a Stalinist gulag. I'll try to call. Just Mom and Dad. Not you, if you're anyone else. Well, maybe my sister.

I do not think that they will sing to me.
In one of my Russian classes, possibly grammar or literature or current events, we translated in a casual, offhanded manner, davaite syezdim as "Let's go," which now reminds me of that other entry about Nachalo and On y va, but which back then reminded me of the line from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot. "Let us go, then, you and I..."

That, then, reminded me of an incident with my "uncle" N.S.L. Bhatta, an Indian poet. He had picked up my mother and me in his car when we visited him in India.

"So, what are you doing these days, Uncle?
"I just finished translating Iliad."
"Wow, that sounds like a big project! Was it from the original Greek?"
"He wrote in English."
"Huh?"

And it turned out that he had said "Eliot," not "Iliad," and we had a good laugh.

Reading material.
So I finished We a while back, and enjoyed it, and recommend it. I do recommend that you read it a bit more chunkily than I did, though -- I read a few pages each night for about a week, and I think I should have just read it in a few hourlong sessions instead. (Yes, I am avoiding the perhaps inevitable compare-and-contrast with other dystopias. I may be just staving it off.)

I finished The Nine Hundred Days by Harrison Salisbury a few days ago. That's on the subject of the siege of Leningrad during the Second World War, a.k.a. The Great Patriotic War for the Fatherland. It's quite good, if very concentrated on the first few years of the blockade. There are maybe twenty chapters on the first year, and then the next two years are, say, two chapters total. And Salisbury is generally quite good about remaining unschlocky, which is why I was so surprised to read the occasional lines such as, "the Germans had on their sides Generals Cold, Fatigue, and Hunger." It sort of reminded me of my earlier complaint about Caleb Carr's The Angel of Death and the ending of each chapter with some melodramatic sting.

As well, I felt a tinge of disturbance at Salisbury's "Only Leningraders would do [x]" sentences. For example, there were Leningraders who kept feeding their pets a few morsels, and did not abandon or kill them. Perhaps it's not just Leningraders who would do that, or not.

But at least the schlock and stereotyping prepared me for my latest book. Last night, I finished my very first book by [my Aunt] Agatha Christie, Dumb Witness. It has Hercule Poirot.

"Yes, the curry may be of some significance, perhaps."

I mean, come on! And I realized that I prefer "mysteries" in which I have all the facts at my disposal early on. I shouldn't have to know obscure poisons, or Victorian etiquette. I further mention that one Sherlock Holmes story in which it's a lot easier to guess the twist if you live in the modern USA and only think of one thing when you see the letters KKK.

Speaking of Sherlock Holmes, Christie gives Doyle a nod in the first few chapters of Dumb Witness. The assistant-type, Hastings, who speaks in the first person, speaks with Poirot, and Poirot calls Hastings "Watson"! I was confused for a moment. Was "Watson" just the nom de rigeur or something for these superfluous narrator-assistants in mysteries? But no, it was a little joke.

Why do Poirot and Holmes keep Hastings and Watson around, anyway? The twenty-first century answer: to provide a premise for slash fan fiction. Because there aren't enough premises for slash fan fiction writers already, you see.

Acrobatics of the Mind.
I see "WC" (water closet) and think "W3C."

The graffiti "2KIT" on the steps of Kazan Cathedral remind me of 2 Legit 2 Quit (M.C. Hammer as an AOL chatroom fiend?), which reminds me that in the former USSR, it's Hammer [and Sickle] time, which leads me to conclude that I Can't Stop Referencing!

Notes from Swan Lake:
"What is this juice? It's not cranberry..." "They have a lot of weird berries here. We just got some at my house. There are these really weird green fuzzy ones, and you wouldn't think it to look at them, but they're the best." [sip] "It's ... Russianberry."

The swans in the background -- not the ballerinas who were swans according to the plot, but the setpiece props that actually anatomically resembled swans -- moved on a little rail or something along the back of the stage. I wondered if I would get a prize if I shot one.

When the guy in black, the Evil Enchanter, came onstage, I whispered, "Oh no! It's Alexander Lebed!" See, lebed is the Russian word for swan, and Alexander Lebed is a kinda scary Russian politician, and never mind.

There was sort of a flamenco touch to these dancers in Spanish-looking costumes and their theme during some big scene. I thought that was pretty interesting. I imagine that composers have expressed political sentiments by associating evil characters with the musical motifs of certain cultures and nations.

The cafe in this theater, which was rather run-down and definitely not the Mariinskii, played American music and had a cardboard cutout of the Spice Girls. All five, all together.

Food.
My Russian mommy feeds me really well. [I Can't Stop Using Iambic Pentameter.] This morning she gave me some sort of ice-cream dessert. I was halfway through the thing before I realized it was cheesecake. Cheesecake! Covered in chocolate! At 9:30 in the morning! She's fattening me up to make sure I can get through the cold, harsh, Northern California winter.

I've had French fries at some point each day yesterday and today. Here, you have to order the ketchup separately.

Things I see.
I see solitary men carrying objects that can only be called purses. Here, the law says you have to carry some sort of ID with you at all times. But passports fit in pockets in most men's clothing. What's going on here?

I saw graffiti that said "FACK" today. This is a "Collect All Five Wrong Vowels" contest, I guess -- a peer of mine said she took a picture of some scrawled "FECK."

In the past week, I have seen (presumably) Russian men who looked almost exactly (in most cases) like Ben Affleck (see previous entry), Rudy Giuliani, Charles Manson, and Alan Alda.

Originally published by Sumana Harihareswara at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/7/14/11196/2357

Mix-'n'-Match Matroshcki

Sat Jul 14th, 2001 at 09:16:43 AM PST

We had a presentation the other day regarding matroschki dolls. Yes, the ones with nested dolls inside. As opposed to Intel Inside. Anyway, the tourist traps here in St. Petersburg are infested with vendors selling cheap knockoffs. Sometimes they feature babushki, sometimes politicians, sometimes sports team members. Wouldn't it be great to have a mix-and-match matroschki? Say, inside the babushki is a ninja, then a Brezhnev, then Kobe Bryant, then Ricky Martin, then a Teletubby, then Nixon, then Cal Ripken, Jr....

I just want the ninja inside the matroshki.

By the way, I bought -- for a ruble -- a piece of gum labeled, "Fruit Flavoured Ricky Martin." Not a word about gum. And a picture of Ricky.

  1. I can buy Ricky Martin on the open market!
  2. Is Ricky Martin ever not fruit-flavoured?

Oh, and it turns out that you can't just add "skii" to the end of a word to try to make it an adjective. My Russian mom laughed at me for trying "gidskaya kniga" (guidebook?) and "marionetskii teatr" (puppet theater?) this morning.

Originally published by Sumana Harihareswara at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/7/14/121643/285

Moscow: Part II

Sat Jul 14th, 2001 at 09:28:41 AM PST

Part II of my Moscow odyssey. Part I was here.

Day Three: Sunday.
Some stuff, first, that I had forgotten to mention previously.

First: on Friday night, in Moscovsky Vokzal, belying all the very progressive and enlightened thoughts I've been having about race in this 80% white country, I approached a group of Indians -- familiar faces, what? -- and found out that they identified themselves as Russians, which made me feel like a boor for asking where they were from.

Also: it's a bit of a Russian tradition -- in Moscow, at least -- to see the sights, especially Red Square, on your wedding day. So there were lots of brides about. I liked it. I love feeling festive. I even wished one of them good luck.

Moreover: I was near one of the many metro entrances/underground passageways on Saturday afternoon when I said, "What's that violin music?" I peeked in, and ten people on violins and other string instruments were playing. Not badly, either. Lots of people were watching, and I took a picture, and I was happy. The San Francisco subways can just roll over and die; they can't even compete now. There are no chamber orchestras on BART.

At some point this weekend, I realized that I am a lot darker than I used to be. I am pretty sure that before-and-after pictures will show me a milk chocolate in early June and dark chocolate, kind of like Shweta, in mid-August. I should probably use more sunblock.

So. Sunday. I copied down a bunch of stuff from Kate's Lonely Planet guidebook. (Lonely Planet is the Google of guidebooks to the ACTR kids. There's just no contest.) Netcafes, restaurants, places to go. It may have been that morning, or the next one, that I saw, dubbed in Russian, the prom scene episode from Beverly Hills, 90210. And it was dubbed quite well, too. I could have sworn Brenda was saying, "Konyeshna" (of course), to the question of "shall we get our pictures now?" Also, the previous day, on some channel that never again appeared on our TV, I saw a test pattern and listened to "Walk Like an Egyptian" as I surveyed the Moscow skyline from my hotel window. Very apropo.

We breakfasted to no one's delight, really, on some porridge-and-milk that only vaguely resembled my idea of kasha. I actually like kasha, the way my host mom prepares it, where it's kind of like plain brown rice with butter. Anyway, we headed out for a tour of the Moscow metro system -- ony five interesting stations out of about eighty. I made conversation with our guide on the way to the first stop, and she complimented me on my Russian! Goodness.

I thought of a Kodak ad that features some comically non-native-language-speaking tourists in, I think, Italy. They ask for directions and eventually get where they need to go so that they can get a picture of themselves at some emotionally significant spot (I'm simplifying the ad). Maybe part of what I dislike about tourism is the way it objectifies the place and the people you are viewing. Ray Bradbury talks about this in some short story of his. I can't recall the name.

There are lots and lots of statues in Moscow. My goodness. It's generally noted that Prince Vladimir rejected Islam for his country because of its alcohol restriction. Maybe it was also because Russians can't stand not making representations of the human form. Also, they need lots of public meeting places. "I'll meet you by the bust of [minor bureaucrat who played politics well]." "Wait, maybe it would be easier to see each other at the statue of [obligingly patriotic agitprop hack]."

I wasn't feeling particularly awed during some of the excursion. Maybe I just ran out of awe too early on in Russia, I thought.

Then I saw Mendeleevskaya. I took quite a few pictures of Mendeleevskaya. I am very happy that there is a major metro station in Moscow named after Mendeleev, and also that the chandeliers are shaped like models of molecules. Crystal-formation-looking things. John groused that they didn't look enough like authentic, scientifically valid molecular formations. Don't look the Bronze Horseman in the mouth, John.

A few of us failed completely to find the cemetery attached to the Novodevichye Convent (the entrance was far away from the convent entrance, and the rest of the people went back the next day to look at famous people's graves). But the convent was very pretty and peaceful. I actually saw a nun, dressed in all black, scurrying along to do...whatever it is that Russian Orthodox nuns do. How different our worlds are!

On the way to a restaurant from the convent, as we gradually gave up on seeking the cemetery, we came upon THE CUTEST THING I HAVE EVER SEEN. EVER. There is a park next to the convent, with trees and a stream. I saw some little bronze ducks that immediately reminded me of Make Way for Ducklings. And I was right! Ten years ago, Barbara Bush (First Lady B.B.) presented this thingie to the children of the USSR from the kids of the USA, in honor of the classic work by Robert McCloskey. And I sat on the big mommy duck and had my pic taken. And then, as I rested on a bench, I saw a little kid of five or so come over with her gramma, and she played with those ducks for half an hour, and set the bar for any future cuteness display I may ever witness. She "fed" things to the duck, she created interactions between some stuffed animal and the ducks, she just embodied cuteness. Oh, and she used (of course) really simple Russian, so I could understand her. E.g., "There!" Yeah, that was the highlight of my day, and possibly of my entire trip to Russia, in terms of cuteness.

From a good lunch at Guriya, a Georgian restaurant on Komsomolskaya Prospekt:
TO DO: Figure out how I feel about alcohol.

On the way back to the metro, I finally realized that Sprite ads that say, "Don't believe ads," are an example of the Liar's Paradox.

To what extent do advertisements and signs in general assume that the viewer already knows the city? That question kept coming up -- as Caleb Carr wrote, "like the only hummable melody in a difficult, nightmarish opera," or something like that. Well, it wasn't nightmarish. Neither was it "like a splinter in your brain, driving you mad," as in The Matrix. It just kept coming up.

Later that day, I remembered Michael Crichton's Travels, a very good book. I especially remembered the chapter involving the Dyaks and the Something-Kundalkiki Gorge. It's a chapter about missing what's right under your nose.

After the restaurant was Gorky Park, which I just viewed from the outside. Today it hardly seems a place of skulking, of Cold War intrigue. Today it just looks like a circus.

The perehod, or underground passageway, to the other side of the street, was chock-full of people selling paintings. Somehow I liked that better, seeing the walls full of art and viewing them as a consumer, trying to figure out what I liked and what would be worth my coin, rather than gawking touristically from one "masterpiece" to the next and feeling some sort of obligation to like everything.

There was a sculpture garden, and then there was rain, and then back at the hotel, there was dubbed X-Files ("Malder"), and I made some joke about the tsar of wishful thinking.

I'll write more about Sunday night in a bit.

Originally published by Sumana Harihareswara at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/7/14/122841/118
Filed under: Reading

15 Jul 2001, 07:26AM: Moscow, Part II.V:

This documents Sunday night of my Moscow travelog. Parts I and II, if you please.

Day 3.5: Sunday Night.
The "tsar of wishful thinking" joke was basically a refernce to some 1980s (?) song in which a line from the refrain was "I'm the king of wishful thinking."

I saw, in the sculpture garden (or outside its gate, actually) a statue of several people. One of them was a woman holding a shield, upon which was printed Mir zemle -- World peace. The idealism of that, and of early Communism in general, really hit me. It also seemed connected with my personal/emotional life. This problematic attitude of mine shows up both in politics and in relationships: isn't it possible to just sidestep the bad parts of human nature, with enough planning?

The "advertise on the Moscow Metro" signs in the Metro are rather clever. They insinuate the red "M" logo into unexpected places. Nice.

There are Communists everywhere. Some of them are Young Commies, so they kind of have an excuse -- they weren't around during Stalin's reign. But others are old people who just yearn for order, I guess.

I see too many little tourist-merchandise-vendor stalls and tables wherever I go. This makes me fantasize about two different unexpected vending situations. One is seeing a vendor of standard Russian items (e.g., matroschki dolls, icons, vodka flasks) in some touristy spot in the US. The other actually happened (sort of) today. A random stall in a perehod had incense and Ganesha icons and the like. It took me bizarrely home for a moment. I kind of wanted to pray. (The last time I saw a Ganesha icon was in the Ethnography museum. There I actually did stop and say a prayer.)

I have explained in my entry, "Lenin, booze, metro, uniforms, guns", that I got my documents checked on Red Square. I described it there. I had all sorts of emotions and thoughts running through me all night.

I saw My First Arabic Graffiti in the metro.

Linda Crew's children's book Children of the River made me cry several times when I read it in high school. I remember it now because of a moment when someone cries because someone else calls her a good person.

I miss home, I thought. And I thought of St. Petersburg as home!

There were stares and possibly judgment on the metro that night. It was a long metro ride home, and halfway through, since I had a seat and John was standing, I got up and successfully urged him to take my seat. He later reported stares from other passengers, although I'd hate to employ post hoc, propter hoc. People stare a lot here anyway.

Is the metro faster, louder, and inhabited by louder and rowdier drunkards here, or is it just me?

The hoo-ha over blue M&Ms strikes me as Boorstin-esque fake news.

Argh, I thought, asking what horrible concoction we'd have for breakfast the next day, and thinking I had homework due the day we came back. John and I grabbed a late supper at some cafe near the hotel, where American music from Russian MTV blared from a TV on the counter.

I had weird dreams that night, including a document check at an airport.

Originally published by Sumana Harihareswara at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/7/15/10269/3364

16 Jul 2001, 02:21AM: Three Weeks to Leningraduation:

"Want some bread?"
"No, but I'd sure like some land and some peace!"
-Me and Gregg, yesterday.

This is more of a placeholder entry than anything else. It's fifteen minutes till my third class of the day. Here's some more expanded shorthand from my Little Notebook.

When I say the word for "earlier," ranshe, I have this random French-sounding accent that doesn't really show up at any other time. Very odd.

I miss NPR Morning Edition.

I'm going to attempt to visit a club on Tuesday night. Yes, the aforementioned Money Honey. In Russian, if translated literally, Dyengi Myod. Not quite the same effect.

I find myself not actually making jokes, sometimes, but rather design specs for jokes.

If my love were a Supreme Court case, what case would it be?

Who came up with perforations to make it easier to tear off paper? Genius!

Originally published by Sumana Harihareswara at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/7/16/52142/2092

17 Jul 2001, 07:09AM GMT+5:30: St. Petersburger and Cheese:

"That's not blasphemy, that's just plain common sense!"
-- Katie yesterday

Okay, first priority is a long-delayed link to John's Journal of St. Petersburg happenings. Just another perspective. Link to it, read it, comment on it once he writes his own backend for that.

Note also that tomorrow I leave for Solovki (the actual Gulag Archipelago of Solzenhitsyn fame), and there may be no net access there, and tonight I go to Money Honey, and that yesterday my notebook got soaked in a rainstorm, so before stuff crumbles and smudges and generally disappears, I'm going to try to immortalize the last nine days or so in some diarizing here.

Back when I was in D.C., I saw some color photos of the Caucaus region of Russia, taken a hundred years ago. Very disorienting. I'm pretty sure Slashdot had some mention of this thing. It was an exhibit at the Library of Congress, if I recall correctly.

Stuff to read: A while back I was thinking that I should really read The Telling by Ursula K. Le Guin. Now I'm starting Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence, which was a bargain at 62 rubles at Dom Knigi. (It'll take up some time on the train, and I'm glad.)

I'm bonding with some of the people, especially the females, in my group. Erin and I, for example, share a common kitsch experience with Siri. We all watched "Jem" -- the cartoon based on the Barbie knockoff doll -- in our youths. Jem, Truly Outrageous! As well, Kate and John were with me when we got caught in a huge rainstorm yesterday whilst taking in the extraordinary view from the colonnade of St. Isaac's Cathedral.

Incentives. What market incentive makes a currency exchange feasible and profitable? I just wonder why there are so many Obmen baliuti about. Is there some statistically significant relationship among rates, commissions, location, friendliness, service capacity, and so on? What heuristics could help me get the best deal?

Russian roulette is not here called, as I had hoped, American roulette. It's just Russian roulette.

Intimidation. Yesterday at St. Isaac's, the cashier was really gruff and very mad that I didn't have exactly 5 rubles (the student fee). She said something about "these foreigners" in Russian. Excuse me? As John said, "Sorry your infrastructure is crumbling, but that's not my fault." Hey, I gave her a ten. Maybe St. Isaac should switch places with the Patron Saint of Pocket Change or something.

But the other day I saw a guy in a military uniform eating ice cream on the down escalator at Cherneshevsky metro station, and that cheered me up.

Literature. We're reading Akhmatova and Tsvetaeva on love. Which, of course, makes me think of unorthodox love metaphors. Anyone care to take a gander at Love As...

I actually was very bored today during Russian press and tried my hand at a love poem.

My love is like a long, long lawsuit
That's newly appealed in June.
It cannot die, it cannot fade,
Tho' it recesses each day at noon.

For some reason, recently I remembered a moment in middle- or high-school literature. We were quite intensely discussing some metaphor-laden bit of lit. And then someone raised her hand to ask, "Could we open the door?" And it took everyone else a moment to realize that we had to take her literally. It was amusing.

Baby Sitters' Club. A series of books for pre-teen girls, basically. There was -- early on -- a book, entitled New Girl or some such, in which Claudia had a new friend and that took her away from her established group of friends. Claudia was an artist, and so was Ashley! A common interest! But it turned out that Ashley wasn't such a good friend after all. She was untrustworthy. Perhaps I, too, should beware of new friends, and remember that common interests are not all, and do not always supersede personality. Or maybe I should remember that the author of that book had a vested interest in keeping Claudia with the Club and not letting her wander off with Ashley at the end!

Dreams. I've had several strong dreams recently. Making cameo appearances have been Weird Al, Tom Green, Isaac Davis-King, and Alice Hoffman (the last two are people from my high school), for no good reason, really.

Rynok. An authentic Russian market. I've seen one now.

Twisted phrases. One of the first phrases a student of Russian learns is "vui ne znayete, gde... [x]?" because that's the polite way to ask where x is. (The example is usually "metro," aka "nearest metro station.") There's a certain exaggerated intonation, too, coming up heavily (?) on "znay" and down on "ete." So, inevitably, I've combined that oft-parodied phrase with "Dude, Where's My X?" (sort of) to get, "Dude, Where's My Metro?" and (funnier): "Vui ne znayete, gde maya mashina?" (You wouldn't happen to know where my car is?)

Museums. I went to the Russian Political History Museum and the Anna Akhmatova Museum this weekend. I recommend the former highly and the latter tepidly. More later.

Originally published by Sumana Harihareswara at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/7/17/10914/1919

Musing over Museums

Tue Jul 17th, 2001 at 07:45:15 AM PST

I'm trying to transcibe my thoughts from the Anna Akhmatova Museum, the Russian Political History Museum, and the Piskarov cemetery here in St. Petersburg. The rain yesterday smudged up the ink in my notebook in some highly symbolic way or another. So here's what I've got.

"Who is not with us, is against us," is inscribed on a dinner plate (!) in Russian at the Russian Political History Museum. 1918, Petrograd.

I have only seen one sculpture, in my life, that I felt might come to life quite suddenly and naturally. That is "Mother," 1945, V. Eishev, in the middle of a room dedicated to WWII and the Blockade. Also disturbing were an actual Nazi flag and a picture of Molotov with Stalin in the background.

Sometimes I see an "i" -- not Cyrillic -- in a Cyrillic word. Yes, it's ancient, but it still bugs me.

Posters, posters, posters. Yeltsin (!) in "Strong President, Strong Russia." "Have you forgotten that you are Russian?" (Have I forgotten that I'm Indian? Or American?) And the very funny one linking your first time voting in free and open elections with your first sexual experience.

A great calendar with wordless and hilarious cartoons for every month.

I got really lost on the way to the Akhmatova museum. I saw a dead cat near 8 Fontanka . "FACK" was near 28.

In the museum, the question (posed by some non-Akhmatova artist) "Is there God on Mars?" interested me.

For some reason, I wrote "Snow Crash and Toilet Paper" in my notebook, next to a note about having to order ketchup separately when eating fries in a cafe here, but I can't recall why the Snow Crash/TP reference is relevant.

I've taken a lot of classes. High school, college, enrichment. And yet I've never received systematic training to enable/aid me in creating a sense of taste regarding art and music and literature, I think.

I visited the British Bookstore "Anglia" (near the Anichovsky Bridge, on the Fontanka) after the cafe, after the museums. It was a weird experience, English shock. There was no Russian! Anywhere! Withdrawal! And then someone spoke in Russian, and I was fine.

Sunday morning, I saw Russian boys running in the park near my house, evidently in a heat for some track-and-field meet.

I was on my way to Piskarov. There are mass graves there, because that's where most of the victims of the Blockade are buried. The ground was so hard, and the dead so many, and the living so hungry and weak, that eventually people dynamited the ground there to make trenches into which to shovel the bodies.

A kid next to me on the metro was also takig flowers and also seemed to take the way to Piskarov, at least, he got off at the right stop...does he come every Sunday? Or is today an anniversary?

I thought of Moxy Fruvous's "The Gulf War Song."

The Eternal Flame at Piskarov was very warm. The mounds covered with grass flickered, distorted in its convection, and so did the statue of Mother Russia, laying a garland on the dead. There is a wall behind here with sentiments such as Let no one forget and nothing be forgotten.

The Germans suffered, too.

I'm glad that there are no tourist vendors outside Piskarov. No Blockade Bread souvenirs. Not even flowers. Only the piped-in music is distasteful at times.

Should the living suffer, as they did during the Blockade, to pay respects to the dead?

But my visit was bookended by two enjoyable food experiences. Kafe Marko on Nevsky ("What country are we in?!") and a place near Vladimirskaya Metro. They played the Beatles in the background. The last time I heard a lot of Beatles was with Leonard.

I have to go to a club with my tutor now.

Originally published by Sumana Harihareswara at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/7/17/104515/343
Filed under: Reading

22 Jul 2001, 04:27AM: Moscow Last:

Last part of my Moscow Travelogue.

Day the Last: Monday & Tuesday Morning.
Reclaiming a word, e.g., "queer," that was used in a derogatory manner previously -- it's kind of like off-label prescription of drugs, no?

I marked down more stuff from Katie's Lonely Planet before breakfasting on a surprisingly edible omlet (and bread and cheese and tea, of course.) Then people set off on their own.

The metro in Moscow has something like ten lines. One of them is a circle -- very useful. They call it the Ring Line. I've taken it so much that I'm the Lord of the Ring Line.

I've seen very few really attractive Russians here. In St. Petersburg or in Moscow.

I think it's hilarious that many of the stations still have Communist names. I mean, everywhere I go I see labels marked "CCCP" (USSR) or the hammer and sickle, or the five-pointed star, or in St. Petersburg "Leningrad," or the like. But when I give or get directions like "Get off at Proletarian Station" or "I'm sure there'll be a cafe near Place of the Revolution," I crack up.

There is lots of book-reading on the metro here, and less newspaper-reading than I recall from St. Petersburg, D.C., or San Francisco. Books take up less room.

"A three-hour tour" in Russian is Tri-chasa exkursiya or some such.

Kate lost her shirt. Literally. On the train on the way here. And lately, someone gave us the slip - literally, the one we needed to get in someplace. Very funny. (Amelia Bedelia, the children's book series, is basically a bunch of case studies on the dangers of idioms.)

I can so easily imagine a Salon story about sex on Red Square. Communism, sex, travel, etc -- it's all Salon. Related: recently I read some Salon teaser that, while only two sentences long, satisfied me such that I felt that I did not have to read the story. What a failure of a teaser! Doesn't the front page have editors to prevent this sort of thing? We wouldn't have done such a thing back in high school at the Tokay Press! Goodness.

I'm remembering a conversation that Alexei and I once had about kitsch and camp. I noted that loving camp and laughing at yourself for living it might be considered evidence of self-loathing.

I took a boat tour on the River Moskva. Alone. It was a pleasantly brisk day. I got to sit alone and breathe river air and look at lots of sights. I even discovered a brand of chips that I like -- Estrella. A European make, I imagine.

Last night -- I remembered -- John and I had decided not to visist the Bely Dom at night, even thoguh I read that it's spectacularly lit up then. We'd already seen it, not knowing what it was, whilst searching for a bokostore on the previous day. See, the White House was the scene of one of Yeltsin's coups. He shot at the building! From a tank! I think. Anyway, that's partly what reminded me of the Crichton Travels chapter on missing what's right under your nose.

I'm sure that there's some continuity between the old Russian tradition of making icons of Christ and the Lenin fetish in Communist art. Lenin as saviour! And over the weekend I mused that perhaps the Lost Seventh Case (the vocative) in the Russian language disappeared because Stalin didn't like it. (You stll hear the vocative in old constructions, often referring to God. "Bozhe moy!" --My God! Curiously enough, in Fonetika before we left for Moscow, we saw in our old Soviet textbooks that only four examples of the "soft g" were given, omitting the fifth, "Bog" -- God.)

I had thought of the Stalin-didn't-like-the-vocative thing whilst on the bus excursion on Saturday. We saw a Bog-awful statue of Peter the Great. It doesn't even have the virtue of being old -- it was commissioned in 1990. What a boondoggle! Some anarchists tried to blow it up recently. My sympathies for anarchism just went up a notch.

I'm sure you can find a picture yourself.

The hotel window opened out, and was big, and had no screen. We were on the 23rd floor. Easy opportunity for death! Katie is too well-adjusted to see how this is different fron everyday life -- she said, "Yuo have yuor life in your hands every moment of every day." Well, yes. But it just makes one pause to think, "It would take so little, right now. If I really wanted to die."

Note that I did not take the opportunity.

John isn't suicidal. As he said on Sunday, "I would not go on a Societ roller coaster for all the money in your pockets." (We saw one on the way to Gorky Park.) I also saw a Ferris [Bueller] Wheel. Whee!

I've mentioned the weird TV.

I'm reminded in this country of Neal Stephenson's remarks in In the Beginning Was the Command Line on the virtues of transparent failure.

It's overcast today. You wouldn't think it, but perfect boating weather -- for the sole passenger. I liked the lack of a tour guide, the solitude, the sitting.

I've been confusing "ruble" and "rupee" and inordinate amount. Well, it's about the same exchange rate!

I need to tell Lonely Planet and Rough Guide about cafes and such that no longer exist. For example, the netcafe "Chevignon" doesn't exist anymore. I was directed to "Nirvana" (ha ha) a number of blocks away.

I had dinner with Susanne. We met up, discvered that the restaurant where we had planned to eat didn't so much exist, and ate somewhere else, which was more than adequate. We saw/heard a verb that we were pretty sure didn't exist. I made a pun involving the word for "diverse," the word for "vegetables," and Izvestia ads saying "We Have Different Interests." We headed back to the dorm to go back to St. Petersburg.

I volunteered when I heard that someone had to be the only American in a coupe of three Russian strangers. I ended up with a Russian family that was very nice. A man, his wife, and their two children, one of whom was so small that she slept in the mommy's arms. I understood a great deal, and talked in Russian (the dad understood and spoke a wee bit o'English, the older daughter a bit more), and even made them laugh! I learned words for "sour" and "opposite" and got their address. During a mix-up with bedding, I got to say, "I only seem stupid. I'm not, really!"

Oh, and I got to use something from Oral Culture class -- dogs in Russia don't go "woof," but "gaf-gaf-gaf." When telling them my age, I told them that I often confused numbers such as "twelve," "nineteen," and "ninety" (they sound alike in Russian). They laughed at the thought that I might be ninety years old! And then I explained dog years, and said that if I were ninety, I wouldn't speak Russian or English, but only "gaf-gaf."

I thought of hijacking scenarioes when I woke up. But we got back to Piter fine. But then I had to go to class. Argh. Grr.

Originally published by Sumana Harihareswara at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/7/18/7272/84743

23 Jul 2001, 05:50AM GMT+5:30: Hi, I'm fine, and back in Piter:

This is the "I'm alive, though my forehead is one large mass of bug bites" entry. I'm back in St. Petersburg, working on the Solovki Islands travelogue. John's diary of the trip will probably be updated much faster than mine, since he does macro/summary and I do micro/details.

Originally published by Sumana Harihareswara at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/7/23/85021/1510

Some Solovki with your bits today?

Mon Jul 23rd, 2001 at 09:04:55 AM PST

I took a group excursion to the Solovki Isles in the White Sea, escaping St. Petersburg for the past few days. Here's the first part of my travelogue.

Wednesday: The Departure.
So, on Wednesday, we had no class, and -- unexpectedly -- I had not gone to a club the previous night with my tutor (she was too tired), so I got to wake up somewhat early and very bright to pack and do errands before getting on the train for the boat to the Solovki Islands in the White Sea.

Here's my list from that morning, slightly edited to take out really personal stuff.

And I had to change money via a traveler's check and do Internet stuff. (That was when I finished my Moscow travelogue, by the way.) I was able to leave my stuff at the university while doing most of the errands. I did not get to buy a hat or anything else I'd wanted in the way of traveling supplies, or find Gulag Archipelago at any bookstores. I only tried Dom Knigi ("house of books") on Nyevskii Prospekt, the big, well-located bookstore across from the Kazan Cathedral by the university. They're surprisingly low on English translations of Russian authors. All they had was August 1914 and a few Tolstoys, that I could see. I bought really cheap editions of The Great Gatsby (to reread) and a collection of Guy de Maupassant short stories to read for the first time.

While on the Internet and whilst packing, I found out that I'll be arriving in San Francisco, CA around 10:45 pm on August 7, via San Francisco International Airport, on SunCountry Flight #27 from Minneapolis/St. Paul. As a bit of a side note, if you'll be in the area, it would be great if I could arrange some sort of welcoming party at the gate.

When I came back to the university to pick up my stuff and head to the train station, I heard a discussion in progress among three of the four men in our twenty-person group of ACTR participants. It would seem that all of the men had to be in coupes with three unknown Russians each. The consensus (in male-banter manner) was that Gregg would be stuck with three large, hairy, male homosexual Russians, and Gregg declared, in typical profane Gregg manner, "As long as they don't have AIDS, I don't give a shit." (Gregg is John's roommate; they're the only two of twenty not in homestays with Russian families.)

People grabbed their stuff and left for the metro. Poor John had a really hard time with the crowds, cranky turnstiles, the heat, and a HUGE suitcase. We got to the train. Katie and I were in a coupe with a cute little boy of around maybe two years, his mother, and her mother. (The consensus, among those who would know -- namely John and me -- was that this kid was cute, but not nearly as cute as the girl playing with the bronze ducks in Moscow.)

The eighteen hours of train loomed in front of us as a void of pain. It was very, very, very hot and humid, and many of the windows opened little or not at all. As well, no one had a coupe composed of only Americans. Ergo, when we discovered that two of our happy band had only one coupe-mate, and he was away for most of the evening, that coupe became "the party coupe."

The "party coupe" was not just a nice place to socialize, in English, free of guilt at excluding Russians, although it was that. You see, during the Moscow trip, when other passengers in our group had discovered a lamentable lack of vodka with which to socialize, a number of them had vowed to correct the fault during the trip to Solovki. And so there was a great deal of sloshability, of booze, of drink, of alcohol, available to anyone who wished to partake, in the "party coupe." And in Russia the law says that the drinking age is 18 years old, and even that is not so much a limit, as drinking is so a part of the national culture that families teach their young'uns to drink, all together.

I wish that I'd written that long, rather impassioned entry before I left for Solovki, the one in which I described the various pressures I was feeling to change my beliefs, ideas, and behaviors regarding alcohol. But I didn't, so I'll just try to discuss it now.

I was in D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) back in elementary school, and fell for it hook, line, and sinker. (Hey, I won the class essay contest on "Why I Will Never Use Drugs" and I loved it, okay?) I even signed the little pledge to never use illegal drugs -- including alcohol, if I recall corerctly! And my parents don't drink and never have, and since I didn't have many friends of my own before college, in my younger days I didn't see many non-negative portrayals of alcohol use in real life. Only in the last few years have I come to see alcohol drinking, possibly, as a not-necessarily-evil thing. And even that wavers sometimes!

I mean, I don't come up against many huge ethical dilemmas in my life, I think. But the question of substance use makes me wax philosophical, at least privately. If Alice is tipsy, or even flat-out drunk, and she says or does something that she would not do if she were sober, then did Alice really do it? Generally, I believe that if people choose to ingest psychoactive substances, then they should be responsible for what they do under the influences of those substances. But what about opinions? And behaviors? If I ask Alice whether she loves Bob, or feels guilty about using Windows, and when sober whe says yes and when drunk she says no, or vice versa, then what does that really tell me?

I want to be in charge of myself. And I already second-guess myself all the time. I really didn't want to ever do anything that I would not choose to do if sober. So what, then, could be the appeal of alcohol? Differences in perception? But I wouldn't be able to explore those differences without taking some risks and behaving somewhat differently than I would if sober. What a mess.

I generally don't like to mess with my body. It's doing a fine job, on its own, taking care of my business. I generally stay away from caffeine, and don't smoke, and don't do any of the illegal drugs (e.g., cocaine, marijuana, MDMA), and try to eat and drink in a way that will keep my body slenderish and working well. And most of these precautions and preferences don't set me apart from my peers. Except drinking. Almost everyone my age drinks in the United States, I think, even if it's just one or two drinks a month. And, in Russia, not drinking alcohol sets one apart even more. I, the only vegetarian, the only nonwhite, the only one from UC Berkeley, the only one with less than two years of Russian classes under my belt, in these twenty ACTR St. Petersburg students, was also -- I'm pretty sure -- the only teetotaler when I arrived in Washington, D.C., six weeks ago for orientation.

But I was curious, and it's legal here, and I am with a bunch of people whom I trust not to take advantage of me when I'm vulnerable, and it was a safe environment, and Mom, Dad, I know you won't like this, but I tried drinking alcohol. And I didn't do it to rebel against you, to make you mad or to dash your hopes or anything. I did it to ... well, I'm trying to figure out why I did it, just as I was trying to figure out whether to do it.

Note that all of my previous tiny excursions into trying alcohol were Russian-related and had absolutely no effect on my state of mind.

  1. A year ago, back in the States, on a field trip into the Little Moscow in San Francisco, I drank some kvas at a Russian restaurant. Kvas is a fermented black bread beverage that is -- so I'm told -- an acquired taste. Well, the food was kind of unpleasant, but not nearly so much as the kvas. After a longish car ride home, I threw up. I'm not sure to what I should ascribe the vomiting.
  2. I went to Cafe Idiot almost exactly a month ago. I wrote about it in my K5 diary. Basically, I was with four friends, and everyone gets a free shot of vodka with dinner, and I tried about three drops of it, and it tasted vile and reminded me of a dentist's office and affected my consciousness almost none.
  3. At my homestay, about three weeks ago, I had a sociable dinner with Vera (my homestay mother) and two of her friends. They accepted that I don't drink, but they were drinking, and I decided to try some. I had, on a full stomach, a shot of vodka. I felt nothing in my head, only a burning warmth spreading down my gullet.
  4. Also at my homestay, about three or so days before I left St. Petersburg, there was a little party going on when I arrived home around midnight. I was already tired and my Russian skills were already slightly worse for wear that night. I didn't know the people, they all spoke at the same time, they had already been drinking, and one of them kept trying to speak to me in bad English -- to translate, helpfully, I suppose. So it was already hard for me to understand what they were saying and what was going on (besides the obvious obligation to eat, drink, be merry, and eventualy sleep). I was offered a small glass of "champagne cognac" with which to make toasts and join in the general festivities. I drank most of this very small glass during the course of eating a big dinner -- that took about an hour, I think. I remained confused.

John, who is not opposed to drinking, has had many conversations with me on the subject. He and I have noted a problem somewhat related to my last experience there. I'm already honest (read: uninhibited), extroverted (read: loud), and not completely graceful (read: clumsy). He imagined that I would not change that much, under a mild tipsiness.

Well, I decided to try to find out. I grabbed a plastic cup, and over a few hours, I drank about four servings of vodka, some with pineapple juice and some without, in the convivial atmosphere of a crowded train compartment.

Quotes from the evening include:
"It has been requested that you walk like an Egyptian."
"This is an epistemological problem." "If you can still say 'epistemological'..."

Here are my notes from the epedition into haziness. Actually, it wasn't that hazy. It just felt -- in retrospect, it just felt like a slight exaggeration of my normal clumsiness when tired and trying to maneuver in close quarters whilst on board a rocking (not rockin') Russian train. But, in any case, here are my notes:

So I'm drinking for the first time. Vodka, usually with pineapple juice. After a few drinks, my quick-vision-switching seems somewhat affected, and moving around (getting up, walking) seems different. But inhibitions seem intact, as does fine motor control (I reached into my $ [shorthand for "money"] belt to get this pen & notebook), and hand-eye coordination. Kyem [circled]. Our stop. [Jon Stone, our Resident Director, told us that the town of Kyem -- the name of which which I wrote in Russian -- was the stop where we would have to exit the train the next morning, to catch the boat to Solovki.]
Originally published by Sumana Harihareswara at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/7/23/12455/1352
Filed under: Reading

24 Jul 2001, 06:15AM: Construction:

I'm listening to National Public Radio right now. It's a story about Dmitry Sklyarov. Wow, I didn't know how much I missed Bob Edwards's voice until just now.

"Construction" refers to Nyevskii Prospekt, which is -- by far -- the road here in St. Petersburg upon which I walk the most. There's a bunch of construction going on along both sides. Sidewalks are appearing, slowly, and every day it seems that there are more and more square feet of concrete upon which I may walk. It's an unusual, always surprising feeling to have the luxury of space where before I had to scruffle around Russian crowds. And the relatively steady pace of the construction gives me optimism about this country.

Did anyone else's family ever tell them to "act your age, not your shoe size"?

Originally published by Sumana Harihareswara at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/7/24/91538/3717

25 Jul 2001, 04:16AM: Chto-ever!:

Dmitry Sklyarov news has been rather hard to find on the morning news program "Vesti" for the past two days. Blah blah blah, earthquake in Pakistan, raising of the Kursk, Macedonia riots. Tell me about Dmitry! Maybe I need to venture into the world of newspapers, which are much harder to comprehend, what with the lack of pretty pictures.

The title takes the word for "what" and tries to go "Clueless" with it. I tried and it didn't work, back on the train here to St. Petersburg, a few days back. I'm still working on my Solovki travelogue.

I finally saw some proof of Linuxness the other day -- for the first time that I can recall, I saw a fella walking along Nyevskii Prospekt in a shirt with a penguin and a SUSE logo on it.

I've seen some people who, just physically, remind me of my friends back in the US, especially Seth, Darin, Alexei, and Ed Cruz, the brother of my friend Ana. A picture on some ad on a banner near my metro station has this character who looks like a demoniac Ed Cruz. It's rather disturbing. As well, about a week ago, I swore I saw Ann, my old Russian teacher, in the stairwell at the university...but it wasn't her. At least there would have been some rhyme and/or reason to her presence, as opposed to, say, Ed Cruz's. He's an English teacher at a high school back in Stockton.

I had a conversation with John the other day in which he had the gall to call me relatively well-adjusted. Apparently, he knows a demographic that is wildly more mentally off-balance than I am, back in the United States. If I've had well-meaning and intelligent parents, and two or more cultures battling it out for my soul, and a heck of a lot of moving-around and introspection, I mean, sure, maybe I have forced myself to become a little clearheaded, but I think too much to be contented. Voltaire wrote quite a bit about this, especially in Candide and in a short story about the Hindu priest wracked with doubt and his ignorant, contented washerwoman. Can't recall the name.

I still haven't recovered from being told by my family all the time, during the vast part of my life before college, that I was the bookish intelligent one (as opposed to my "smart," social sister) and that I had no common sense. Certainly I am incredibly sensitive now whenever I feel that I've "done the wrong thing," broken some protocol that I didn't know about. There are thousands of rituals -- say, camping, and dealing with pets -- that most Americans my age just know because their friends and families helped socialize them, and sometimes I feel as though I'll never catch up. Being a person is a skill, like Russian or judo or sewing or swimming, and I don't expect to routinize it any time soon.

Perhaps more pleasant topics are in order.

My family had a little saying, when I was younger. "Act your age, not your shoe size." Did anyone else's family say that, too?

It was amazing, the first day back from the Solovki Islands, because I could wear t-shirts and pants/shorts that exposed skin without feeling vulnerable to some raging menace of biting insects. The mosquito bites still itch. Yes, Mom, I'm using lotion and so on.

Yesterday in Russian Press class, after we discussed the Solovki trip and I found that the teacher had heard nothing about Sklyarov, we attempted to learn about the history of Yugoslavia. This reminded me of last year's US Presidential debates, in which then-Vice President Gore made a funny face and used an odd voice to say that the Balkans are "where World War One STAR-ted." If you recall those debates, you may also have independently arrived at my witticism that Gore's main point, in the first debate, was that he would put the wealthiest one percent in a lockbox. I'm still laughing at that now.

Did you know that there is some language indigenous to the Balkans -- perhaps Serbo-Croation? -- in which not only is there a singular and plural, but a DOUBLE tense? Yes! It does happen a little bit in Russian that one must decline something differently, sometimes, if one mentions two of something. But in this language, always! One, two, many. Imagine if it were even worse! Imagine single, double, triple, plural! That would be the anti-Esperanto, I guess. Sort of a human INTERCAL?

In reading news, I finished the book of Guy de Maupassant short stories. Earlier, I had finished The Great Gatsby (which strongly reminded me of Mr. Hatch and eleventh-grade English class, in which I first read the book) and Lady Chatterley's Lover. I'll be talking about Fitzgerald and Lawrence in my Real Soon Now Solovki travlogue.

My sister will be glad to note that I no longer find Dave my favorite movie. I'm getting too old for that particular work of fantasy. Perhaps what I used to find harmless fantasy I now think of as searingly bitter.

My host mother, Vera, is very good to me. And she's very glad that I take an interest in the Blockade of Leningrad that occurred during the Second World War, or, if you prefer, the Great Patriotic War for the Fatherland. I've been to the mass-graves cemetery, I've borrowed her copy of The Nine Hundred Days and read it, I've heard her mention the people who left from her apartment and apartment building for the war and never came back. She believes that I don't really need to go on the Blockade Museum excursion this Saturday. Maybe I'll ask my Resident Director to excuse me from the outing on the excuse that I've been there, done that, got the despair.

Which reminds me: "I went to a real Russian banya [bathhouse] and all I took off was this lousy t-shirt."

The trains I've been on recently, and the metro, remind me of the film Save the Last Dance and one of its few less predictable motifs, which was the association of train wheels with a sense of inevitable tragedy. But then this morning I saw a Starburst ad featuring the Russian metro (the Moscow and Piter ones look the same to the extent featured in the commercial) and that was incongruous, and perhaps tragic in a different way. I'd like my Old World Charm with All the Amenities of Home, please -- Cosmopolitan with Character. I don't want to see Starburst ads in St. Petersburg! I paid thousands of dollars to come to Russia! The nagging inauthenticity of my experience, brought on by this double-edged sword of globalization, moves me to be a MixMaster of Metaphor and get all Gatsby-esque, pouring my hopes and passions into yearning for some purity that never was.

I'm going to go see where Pavlov worked now.

Originally published by Sumana Harihareswara at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/7/25/71649/3306

26 Jul 2001, 06:24AM: I only want to find the statue of the dog!:

Yesterday I went and saw where Pavlov worked, here in St. Petersburg. It was pretty funny.

So I searched for No. 12, Akademika Pavlova, near the Petrogradskaya metro station. On the way, I found out that paprika Pringles are not that bad. Hey, a small canister was only twenty rubles at a metro kiosk.

I walked a heck of a long ways to cross a river and Professor Popov Street (really) before getting to Ulitsa Akademika Pavlova. The various Institutes of physiology and experimental medicine are still there. No. 13 has -- no kidding -- a Xerox Service Center. The guys lounging around outside were audibly wondering why I was taking a picture of that sign.

So I sort of snuck through the gate to No. 12. I had read in my Rough Giude that Pavlov had erected a statue of a dog "in the institute's forecourt." I wanted to see it. I took a picture of an actual dog near the sentry's post. I saw a row of busts. Descartes, Pasteur, Pavlov...where's the dog?! I took a picture of a doorbell. I asked a random person if he knew where the statue of the dog was. No luck.

The sentry saw me, called out to me, and rather kindly if gruffly asked me to explain what I wanted. I stammered out, in Russian, that "I only want to find the statue of the dog." He, along with the first fella I'd asked (who had seen it and kindly returned) directed me to the statue. The sentry also told me to return (to the entrance and, presumably, to leave) as soon as I'd finished with the statue. I did.

That was a wee bit scary.

I also "saw" a play based on Gogol's short story "Vii." I say "saw" because -- as invariably with Russian-language theater -- I slept through a good deal of the first hour. From what I could tell, the production alternated broad physical comedy (with a bit of sexual suggestion) with scenes REALLY WEIRD special effects stuff involving silver confetti, black sheets, wind, smoke, and a woman wearing diaphanous white gowns and really disturbing catlike makeup. Very "huh?" - perhaps even to the Russian speakers in the audience.

On the metro on the way home from the play, I saw a woman reading a book. Not unusual. The title made me do a double-take, though. I could tell at first that it was

Skoraya [something in a different, harder-to-read typeface] Pomosh
which means "Ambulance [something] Service." In fact, I have a flashcard I made specifically to learn that phrase. I figured it might come in useful. And, indeed, I could make out some odd scene involving an ambulance on the front cover of the book.

When I looked harder and tried to make out the middle word, I saw "Kriminalnaya." Criminal Ambulance Service?! For criminals? Of criminals? By criminals? My head spun. It felt all Tonight's Episode-y! It must be, I could have concluded, one of the thousands of cheap crime thrillers that flood metro station book kiosks.

But then I read more carefully and saw that the word in the middle was "Kulinarnaya." Sort of Cooking First Aid, then. Silly me.

When I came home, there was some sort of little party going on. Two Americans (me and one other student, sort of) and a bunch of Russians. (The American and I almost never spoke English. Hurrah for etiquette.)

And, now that my host mother knows I've tried drinking, I've given up the "I never drink" excuse, which I now realize was very handy in the face of Russian hospitality. I only drank a tiny bit of what I was poured, which was some sort of "almost no alcohol" (I was assured by Russians) amber-colored wine. Now that I've tried The Alcohol Experience a few times -- not thoroughly, by any standard -- I realize quite empirically what I predicted years ago. I really don't like blurring my senses, and I really don't like second-guessing my decisions, actions, and feelings because I'm Under the Influence. I'm pretty sure I'll avoid most psychoactive drugs for the near future.

Originally published by Sumana Harihareswara at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/7/26/9249/38292

27 Jul 2001, 05:46AM: Cheap, Tasty, or Blessed: Pick Two.:

One brand of mineral water available here in Russia is -- it says right here on the bottle -- blessed by the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church. (When John discovered this, he said, "I hope that's not how they get rid of the giardia.") It's pretty cheap, although Erin (classmate) says that she doesn't much like the taste. How demanding!

Today, homesickness, resemblances, reading material, and conspiracy theory.

On Tuesday night, I forgot to mention, Krista came over for dinner. She's another girl in the group of ACTR Summer-in-St. Petersburg participants. We had some really nice conversation about a wide range of topics. (Me and Krista on Russian TV news and anchors: "Do you ever get the sense that Russian news shows aren't quite as, you know, professional, as in the US?" "He's no Tom Brokaw.") And I was rather embarrassed that her Russian comprehension, with regards to my host mother, seemed better than mine, even though I'm in a "better" group than she in our classes at the university!

As I walked her back to the metro station, I stopped dead in my tracks. Hindi music! And it stopped, and then started again. Yes, a parked car was emitting Hindi film music, which I had not heard in any form for ages. I had to stop for a moment just to listen. (No, I don't know Hindi, but you don't need to understand Hindi to understand anything about Hindi films. Love, songs, dance, women in white under waterfalls.)

Maybe that was the first moment I realized that I was homesick.

-----

Yeah, I have the blues. The postcommunist blues. The St. Petersburg, Leningrad, Petrograd blues. I have the too-long-been-a-tourist blues, the language breakdown blues, the cliche blues, the royal blues.

I've got the blues! The friend-losing blues, the Grand Hotel blues, the another-day-another-29.15-rubles blues.

Oh, yes, I've got the blues. The blues! The lock-on-the-backpack-on-the-subway, spare-change, television-shows-that-don't-start-on-the-hour-and-half-hour, stupid-feeling blues.

--------

I find myself singing all sorts of nonsense, in the shower, on the street, between classes. It runs the gamut from Moxy Früvous to "Dixie."

And she's watchin' him with those eyes
And she's lovin' him with that body, I just know it
And he's holdin' her in his arms, late late at night
Y'know, I wish that I had Jesse's girl
I wish that I had Jesse's girl
Where can I find a woman like that?

And this morning on the bus I saw a fella who looked just like Lenin.

And when we passed a plaque of good old Vladimir Ilyich it was even more obvious.

And I'm reading -- or starting to -- Guns, Germs, and Steel, just to take my mind off it all.

And I wish I had the power of having nothing to hide.

Did you know that in Russia, it's bad luck to give, say, knives or handkerchiefs as gifts (because they have to do with, respectively, cutting and crying), so people give, instead, money earmarked for those items?

Today in Grammar, the teacher got a bit caught on some obscure point of, well, grammar. It involved collective v. cardinal v. ordinal numbers, and the fact that if you're referring to 1, 2, 3, or 4 people you use chilovyek but for more than that (usually) liudey. We saw an example that seemed to break this rule. As she tried to figure it out, I briefly entertained the fantasy that what we're learning is some impossibly complex fake Russian, with four extra cases and all sorts of gratuitous rules. When we're not looking, maybe Russians only use the accusative and the nominative, and they use liudey all the time, no matter what the number, and they're just putting us through this for spite at losing the Cold War! And now, revenge! Bwahahahaha!!!

But eventually we got an explanation and I reassured myself -- mostly -- that we're learning real Russian, and not some ginned-up facsimile thereof.

And today was the last Phonetics class. (Or, as I like to call it, "The Weakest Link.") Thank the Maker.

Originally published by Sumana Harihareswara at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/7/27/84638/3955

28 Jul 2001, 08:37AM: The Return of the Native Speaker:

First of all, this Modern Humorist story made me laugh a great deal, and I'm quite grateful.

Second of all, I saw a Britney Spears matryoshki doll today. No, not kidding. It was inevitable, I see now, but Greek tragedy isn't less tragic for its inevitability.

In today's first entry, I hope to cover My Second Boatride Through the Canals of St. Petersburg, My First Bar, My First Club, My First Beer, and lots of other observations from last night.

First, Galen, Katie's old friend from Reed, invited all the ACTRers on this boating excursion with a bunch of Russians who are trying to learn English. We had an excuse to speak ONLY ENGLISH and not feel guilty about it! A number of us (including John, who has new pictures up) jumped at this opportunity.

So last night was this boat tour through the Piter canals. No guide, thank goodness. Just free, awful (or so I'm told by people who know better than me) beer, really stilted conversation, and song. Yes, song. Some of our little exercises involved such classics as Shania Twain's "That Don't Impress Me Much." Of course, the first group song was "Yesterday" by the Beatles. That was hilarious. Oh, and sandwiched in the middle was this song that sounded too stupid even for kindergarteners (but then again, my standards are pre-Barney):

Hello, hello, it's nice to meet you
Goodbye, goodbye, it's time to go
Hello, hello, it's nice to meet you
Goodbye, goodbye, it's time to go
and continuing in that vein. Musta been for non-native speakers.

More conversation from the boatride, regarding a guy who looked like a stereotypical geek:

"He uses Windows." "To hell with him."

After the boat and an inordinate amount of photo-taking by Russians, a group of Americans ended up walking way too far to go to a Georgian cafe. Almost everything we wanted from the menu didn't really exist once we asked the waitress about it. "Oh, tonight we don't have that. No, none of that, either." I couldn't even get the canonical Georgian vegetarian bean dish, lobio. Two people ordered Cokes; one got The Last Coke in the cafe, and the other just drank from my liter-and-a-half of Blessed Spring Water. (The Last Coke reminds me of "Kto poslednii?", which means "Who's last [in line]?" and is the standard phrase when you enter a nebulous line situation in a store in Russia. I imagine that Kto poslednii...ymerit'?! would be the translation for "Who's last...to die?!")

Conversation from the cafe:

"That's kind of judgmental of you." "I am judgmental. In fact, I'm Judgmental Judy."
[regarding the "iz" and "izn" convention in Ebonics, e.g., "house" --> "hizouse" or "hiznouse"] "Hey, the "izn" in Ebonics is kind of like diminuitives in Russian!"

It was around midnight (thanks to the slower-than-a-comatose-apparatchik service) when we got out of the cafe. Most people went home. I visited My First Bar, right next door, with Galen.

How do I explain this bar? It has character. Someone spent a LOT of time arranging the decor, what with papier-mache of sows and a "Titanik-2" and a Lenin and so on. It is also where middle-aged Russians evidently go to dance badly to "live" (synthesizer) music. And I danced. Goodness, I'm awful. I haven't tried to dance in any rhythmic/formal way since high school, three or four years ago. Maybe I should take a class.

Anyway, Galen and I then decided to visit a club. (Part of this was the "something to do until the metro opens again at 5:30 am" factor.) At first, it would have been Money Honey, but we decided on Club Havana instead, as it was closer. No difference to me. On the way to the club, we talked about our mutual friend Katie, Reed, and our respective experiences (or, in my case, lack of experience) with psychoactive substances.

The Havana Club. What's to say? It's a club. If you've been to clubs, you know, and if you haven't, you don't. It's impossible to hold a thoughtful conversation over the noise, it's hot and sweaty and everyone is more beautiful than you (especially since I was wearing my touristy "Moscow Metro Map" t-shirt and nonnice slacks), all drinks -- including bottled water -- are too small, the lighting tries to be psychedelic, the coat/bag check guy is gruff and won't break the language barrier first.

But there were lots of chairs, and I liked some of the music, and strobe lighting always inordinately pleases me. As well, there was pool. Galen and I watched a curious pair play a long match. One man danced -- even while shooting! -- to the reggae from the next room. ("This interpretation of 'Don't worry, be happy' is so angsty! As though he doesn't believe it! It's like he's quoting advice that someone else gave him, and that he shouldn't have followed!") He also seemed slightly off, in that mentally-impaired kind of way, and for some reason he got twice as many attempts at hitting a ball into a pocket as did the second guy, but at least you could tell what he was trying to do. He had a bit of strategy. The second, more gruff-looking fellow also danced a bit. He seemed a better player, but would alternate between very good shots and "what the hell was he trying to do there?" moments. He either had no strategy or some brilliant scheme that never quite jelled.

More about the rest of the evening later. I have to go grab dinner and then go to a birthday party. Happy dyen rozhdenia, Casey.

Originally published by Sumana Harihareswara at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/7/28/113723/477

30 Jul 2001, 06:24AM: Solovki, Part II.:

Here's the second part of my Solovki travelogue. This promises to be longish, overall, when done. Part I was here.

Thursday: We Arrive.
The next morning, I had no hangover that I could tell -- although the previous night, after about a drink and a half, I had experienced some small headache. Here are my notebook notes, slightly expanded, covering that morning's reflections on the previous night and its effects:

Thurs. Morning. Still on the train, konyeshna [of course]. "This is an epistemological problem." "If you can still say 'epistemological'..." [you're fine.] Last night, I couldn't remember, I think, the word 'experience' and the title Lord of the Flies. Question of fault: since I chose to drink, aren't I wholly responsible for all my behavior under the influence, including spilling apple juice on Carolyn?

And now, the handwriting comparison!...Yes, there seems to be a difference. But the train was moving...but that probably can't account for the whole difference. The alcohol affected the form of my writing -- but the content? How do I know whether it affected the way I think? I'm already, when sober, rather loud, clumsy, uninhibited, and rambling, right? Solutions: recording observations of the moment, and asking others' opinions (during and after), and video/audio recording.

I also compared sober-and-train-moving handwriting with Wednesday-night-train-moving handwriting. Very tough to figure out where the independent variables were.

Wednesday night/Thursday morning, I had some sort of dream in which I saw the Race For the Cure or some such marathon raising money to fight breast cancer, and I looked for Eve from InPassing.org.

For the first time in my life, I think, I peeled an orange completely without assistance from any other person. Yes, I used my Swiss Army knife (possibly for the first time ever) to make a prelimiary cut, but from there on out, it was all me. I ate almost the whole thing. I was quite proud. (The little Russian kid in our coupe ate quite a bit. He was quite an eater. His mom, and his nation, should be proud.)

I read some more D.H. Lawrence. Lady Chatterley's Lover is a very interesting book -- didactic, erotic, very character-centered.

It was still very, very, very hot and humid on the train.

Me: We've got about an hour left.
John: Yeah, only an hour left of this crap.
Me: C'mon, we're bonding.
John: We're bonding because we're sticky!

That, of course, reminds me that John's journal of those days, July 18-22, might be of interest to those who wish a different perspective. As well, he has pictures.

We arrived at some coastal town, and took a bus to the dock, where, ti turned out, the lateness of our train meant that we would have to wait a number of hours for The Boat. (The number of hours that we'd have to wait sort of lengthened as time passed. I think we eventually ended up spending something like six hours on that rather rotty-looking pier.)

We conversed with an Ukraninan girl who spoke English with a British accent, and I discovered that I Can't Stop Using American Idioms. It seemed as though ever sentence I spoke in front of this poor non-native speaker contained some saying like "throw me into the deep end" or something. I felt pretty bad, especially since most of the Russian speakers who have had conversations with me have seemed successful in remaining idiom-free. I know I usually try to keep my speech colorful and vivid, but I felt bad that I couldn't speak clearly and simply when I wanted/needed to. OK, Mom, you're right. I should try and speak simply sometimes.

Oh, and Katy's long hair made her look a little like Venus in Botticeli's painting. And there was a moment when Rasa very kindly and very gently and diplomatically asked me to shut up. (pout) Yes, yes, I talk a lot. It's not as bad as it used to be, okay?

The four-hour boat ride was a relief, post-train. I read more D.H. Lawrence and slept a bit.

We got to the main island on Thursday evening. Immediately we spotted a bus -- hard to miss its plumage. I dubbed it The Beatles Bus. Its colorful paint scheme, in addition to the quickly-apparent engine problems, led me to analogize it with THE GRACE OF GOD from Cryptonomicon.

We drove through the island to the tourist complex. The islands have been a monastery and a Stalinist gulag. But that didn't seem to make much difference to the kids playing soccer under a gorgeous sky, to the forests and lakes and rivers, to the small-town denizens who sat on stoops under street name signs that are faded and unreadable and have been redone with different names at least twice. No one much cares -- they know where everything is. Do they care about the things the tourists come to see? Why did we come here?

My philosophizing didn't stop at dinner. After choosing roomies -- John got stuck with Jon Stone, our Fearless Leader (Resident Director) and putting stuff in our cottages (where Katy and I laughed and laughed and laughed at the pitcher that said "MILK" on one side and had a picture of a cow's teats spraying, presumably, lines of milk on the other), we ate dinner in The Restaurant in the Tourist Complex. The two vegetarians sat together -- that is, me and Anatolik, the helper for our guide (excursavod), Sergei. Not only was dinner surprisingly good, but Anatolik and I conversed -- almost all in Russian! He's been to India, it turns out, and Gets It regarding the spiritual atmosphere that completely suffuses some parts of it.

And then, that night, I discovered a chance and took it, as did many other people in our group. The tourist complex had an authentic, functioning banya, or Russian bathhouse. We went that night. I made a crack about Dyada Banya, punning Chekhov's title Dyada Vanya (Uncle Vanya), but, as usual, most ignored me.

The banya was really quite fun. I prefer for people not to be uptight and Victorian about nudity and so on. (I wonder sometimes, in that respect and others, about the real, fundamental differences between Russia and the US, or "Tennessee v. Solovki.") I now have very vivid memories of the following:

That night I used the Swiss Army knife to open a mosquito-repellent fumigator packet. Have I mentioned the mosquitoes? They're everywhere. It's The Birds in miniature -- a koshmar komarov (nightmare of mosquitoes). At some point during the weekend, I joked with John that the mosquitoes would steal his OFF! and reverse-engineer it. To his discredit, he did not make a DMCA joke. Of course, at that point we hadn't known about Dmitri Sklyarov (Free Sklyarov! Osovobodim Dmitriya!), so it might not have seemed as urgent.

I arrived back home and saw Cara, Susanne, and Erin sitting on "my" bed and being companionable with Katy, who had her foot elevated. Also that night, I remember looking through the first aid kit with Katy, trying to figure out what was what. ("Is this morphine? No, probably not.") Very little English there, so we had to look a lot of stuff up. Katy wished she had brought her more weighty dictionary, and said of the one that she had brought, "This dictionary is completely useless for Russian pharmaceuticals!" There was something called "brilliance of green" that came in a bluish bottle. There was something with belladonna and bicarbonate. I imagined it might try to combine the emetic powers of belladonna with the stomach-settling characteristics of bicarbonate of soda. But...why not just an antacid? In a nice, English-labeled package? And where was the sterile gauze?

But my most vivid memory of that night was the storm. It began while we were banya-ing. I decided to cut my experience short, since I didn't want to risk being in the lake whilst lightning was going on. (The ladder was metal.) As I dressed and ran home, the lightning and thunder got closer, and the rain began. I was already wet from the banya -- I hadn't dried off too thoroughly there. The sky is usually light around half-past midnight at this time of year, near the Arctic Circle, but it was darker because of the storm. I hadn't brought my glasses with me to the banya. Flashes of lightning, twilight, and a little ambient light from the tourist complex lit the dirt road that rose up through the drizzle. The lake was on my left, and beyond that the dark green forest.

And then I got home, and Katy asked me if I would go back and retrieve the soap and shampoo that she had left there when she had so unexpectedly left. And I ran there and back, as the sprinkle turned into rain and then into a summer storm. I got drenched! In three days, I had been drenched three times -- once at St. Isaac's Cathedral back in St. Petersburg, once in the banya, and once in this storm, which I later heard was the worst in three years. It continued until after we fell asleep.

Originally published by Sumana Harihareswara at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/7/30/9240/79450

The Almost-Last Weekend in Piter...

Mon Jul 30th, 2001 at 06:28:33 AM PST

I'll diarize it soon, really I will. I had some great and very interesting experiences and I need to empty out more of my notebook. So, Real Soon Now. I promise.

Originally published by Sumana Harihareswara at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/7/30/92833/2783

31 Jul 2001, 06:32AM: Lenindependence Day in Less Than a Week:

Today, a bit about dreams and funny quotes from here in St. Petersburg. I leave on Sunday.

Yesterday: "That's a war bookstore." Okay, I'm not going to tell y'all why it's funny, but it is.

Last night I had a dream that reminded me of dreams that we've read about in Seth's diary. In fact, I remember thinking, within the dream, "I'm going to have to tell Seth about this dream!" I was at the U.S. Supreme Court. First I was in the "secret" meeting of the nine justices, and there was an African-American woman who arrived late. I was there, and surprised that I was there and that no one was kicking me out, and also that there was an African-American justice on the Supreme Court, since, as far as I could remember, there was no such person last time I checked. She was wearing a baseball cap. And some other justice was scolding her for being late.

Then I got in line to get tickets to view the "oral arguments," and I had forgotten my passport, so I had to show them my California "driver's license," which doesn't exist in real life. And for some reason it seemed that the arguments might not take place in the main chambers, but in some nearby church. What?!

But then I went into the main chambers, and bought a large blue rug to place on my seat. (I have no idea why.) There were many other rugs of some different hues, mostly blue and green, on nearby seats. And then some people were carrying a coffin down an aisle. I commented that it contained Justice, referring to the Court's decision on the 2000 Presidential election. And it turned out that one of the people carrying the coffin was John, and he dropped his end. That's all I remember.

Oh, and today, when I was playing Guess the Case! in Russian class, sort of trying out suffixes and case endings one after another, my Grammar/Russian Press teacher suggested that I was creating "Some new case in Russian, perhaps." That's it. I'm bringing back the vocative, the Lost Seventh Case!

Originally published by Sumana Harihareswara at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/7/31/93214/9708

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