Russia - C'est La Vie Sankt Peterburg

I've about 48 hours left in this town. I'm thinking this will be my last post from here and if I stumble across an internet cafe in Moscow, I'll write from there. My worst fears were confirmed in regard to where my relatives there live. Moscow is huge. Unlike the clausterphobic long facades and massive buildings with their courtyards here in St. Petersburg, Moscow is spread out, distance and a concentric ring pattern connote the construction of the buildings and city grid. The 1 that starts my relative's phone number means they live somewhere outside the city center. I've been spoiled living right down town here in St. Petersburg.

Did you ever hear of Administrative Ecstacy? No? Dostoyevsky wrote about it in the Idiot. We've been having many conversations regarding the rudeness or lack of western hospitality where service (lack there of) is concerned. Seems like its due to a sudden and uncontrollable power vaccum. Those that ran food stores that were owned by the soviety state were in positions of extreme power. They could choose to make those they didn't like go hungry and extolled favors in order to give more to those that wanted to pay for it. This power, connected with food, vanished with the collapse of the soviet state and the privitization of critical industries like grocery sales and food distribution. They were no longer workers for the party but just clerks behind a counter flacid and unable to lead the lives they were accustomed to because of their position. Choice allowed people to go and seek not only a western like courtesy but also variety. When I called them left over remnants of soviet era rudeness, I wasn't far off the mark.

As for Dostoyevsky and his administrative ecstacy, when you consider the kind of city that St. Pete's was, filled with clerks, 20,000 at some point, that were all engaged in running the incredible bureaucracy that Peter The Great had started, then you get an idea about how those little peons rejoiced and gloated when they were able to exert some fraction of control over their little fiefdoms. This mentality, although discussed over 150 years ago, is still alive and well here today.

How do you make a spited hostel owner mad or feel wrong for being mad and acting like a "sukah?" you ask... well simple... don't fight fire with fire, be nice to her. Sveta, the woman that runs the mini hotel/hostel, has been in an uproar, we've had to move people around, switch rooms, shift things here and there, lots of housing problems because of the Gherzen's inability to keep rooms that were promised open and available. She has been trying to make life miserable, playing a little game of sabotage and protest in not taking out laundry and so forth and so on. Instead of doing the same in return, you can melt her by playing the helpless man, just tell her yuo don't know how to sow this button on, or how to operate the washer and the mentality in her, its probably biochemical at this point, will switch from hell on wheels to motherly instinct as quickly as the storms move in from the arctic. Its a bizarre way to combat the forces of evil that well inside a woman scorned, but what the hell... eh?

Well lets see, a brief synopsis... went to Banya yesterday taking along a couple novices. They were instant fans. From there it was to the black market for a little haggling and walking around. From there it was to the reading to hear Jim Shepheard and Stephanie Bolster. Shepheard was hillarious! He read a story from the perspective of Brian Entwistle, former THE WHO basist, the quiet one if you will. The story was written in the form of a recollection and I'm assuming the book and story were written and published before Entwistle's death. It read like historical fiction, recounting the death of 11 people at the Cincinatti show and the statement that Townsend read, the parties, drugs, their humble beginnings, the violence of Keith Moon on the drums and his inability to play rhythm or backup, but rather stuck on perma-solo. It was a wonderful story and is in a book of such stories, historio-fiction, or the libel book as him and his agent have come to call it.

After the reading Tom and I waited to let the crowd pass. We decided it was time for Uzbeki food and headed off to meet two friends, a former SLS assistant from last year, and Olya for dinner. We spent about three hours eating and drinking, lots of laughs and recounting last year's shenanigans. Lets see... I had a chicken broth which lamb dumplings and dill to start with. From there I went for the Samsa again, too good to pass up, and then finished off with a shish-kebob of liver and lamb bacon... mmmm... liver... yeah I can see you all twisting your faces over there... you don't know what you're missing. But fine, it means more for me.

Couldn't stay up much past that... back to the hotel after one final beer at The Office, I hate that place, and they keep going there, and then sleep. So I'm going to cut this off here, today heading to the Dostoyevsky museum if I can make it and Nevsky's Lavra, as I'm dressed for it... do this all by Taxi. Tomorrow, skipping the reading to go and hear Osteshevsky and Galinko do another reading, hit Gez21, maybe dinner at the Uzbeki joint on the way home and then possibly dancing at Club Rossi... this is a fine way to keep one's thoughts from the fact that its time to pack it in and pack it up... the bus is heading out.

So I hope everyone is well and that you're all enjoying the remainder of the week and looking forward to the weekend. This is Captain's log, stardate whatever yuo want it to be saying... Shislivo... for now...

Russia - The St. Petersburg Manifesto

Corrections first... Nathan Aaron Kantorov weighed in at a whopping 7lbs and 11oz. Apologia for depriving him of that one ounce. I'm sure that will make the difference between linebacker and nose tackle when he tries out for the 9ers.

And now without further adieu The St. Petersburg Manifesto...

1) We intend to open our eyes and ears in order to experience the mundane through instantaneous bliss. The moment is not only the reason but the substance of every reason.

2) Poetry will contain all the elements necessary to describe life down to the smell of alkaline water. It will be ferocious in its audacity to evoke and transcend banality.

3) We need fuel like a car on the road. We dedicate our lungs to the smell of exhaust, our mouths to the taste of tobacco, our livers to the care of spirits and our stomachs to flesh from the fire.

4) The ancient world butted against the new in a constant state of decay has a magnifecence that it could never have dreamed of prior to knowing its own steady demise. We reveal hidden treasures through the oculus of a camera, extol and steal fragments of the world as we rewrite the context of presentation.

5) Let the music in our ears be like the architecture around us, borrowed and stolen, sweet and sad, simple and complicated. Let it forever be a thin layer of air beneath our feet.

6) The poet is dead. Let him rot, let his bones be beaten into the earth and turned into a fine meal so that a writer can emerge. Let the poet's blood water dead flowers from the 19th century, let the poetess lie next to him decomposing so that we can forget the sign of the poet and instead live and write.

7) Time exists only in the fact that it once existed and will again, but not just now. Time is a burden, time is a thief. Don't think too much on time nor the propriety of the daylight hours. Devoid of stars, the night time sky absolves us all. Lick the glass of heaven and taste a bit of the manifence in creating the stars that are still there.

8) If we're to be captured let it be of our own free will, posessed with the need to let go enough so that time doesn't slip through our fingers like sand. May conversation fill the glass we drink like the blue alcohol flame that burns from the stem of a green tumbler of absinthe... let it be sweet like fire and burn our throats should we forget to speak to one another.

9) The only thing more ignoble to die for than religion is literature. Die your death on the page and not for it.

10) Sick and tire of "isms" and the latineate words onto which they are attached.

11) Feel the swell of bodies in motion, their heat, their perspiration lubricating the air with the honesty of biomechanics. Forego the normal regimen of cleanliness. Offend yourself extensively. Live out of a bag. Rage at the resurection of the light as if a might flashlight had pinpointed every debauchery of the world and you as both the criminal and the victim. Feel greed when eating and drinking and equal zest in walking and waking. Sleep is a minumum, motion a maximum.

And if you're curious what started this, then you might want to go to Marinetti's Futurist Manifesto... HERE

Maybe it was Mars Field that brought this on. I don't honestly know, but I'm finding it infinitely difficult to generate original work. This could be the product of an inability to write in unfamiliar surroundsing because I'm so damn intrigued with trying to photograph everything. Writing has always been something I did in the comfort of my own home, kind of at peace with my computer. On rare occasions, I feel compelled to write during my lunch hour because there is a terminal kind of urgency in that space of sixty minutes and I have an unflinching focus. I know that pressure is something that has always motivated me to push on through thick and thin. Although the last few days have been very stressful and we've been moving faster and harder than I can remember, the ability to pause, to smoke at will, to suck down a beer and eat an exquisite meal has made writing a very difficult thing. I've been reading a bit here and there, but writing is not coming to me. I was hoping, having been here last year, that this time I would find the time to write. The only thing I'm capable of writing are these Blogs. James, maybe it was James, I don't know, but someone said to me that Blogging is a way to avoid writing. I think that journaling and public journals (blogs) are a way to preserve thought processes and ideas. I probably will go back and read over these at some point or other and see if I can remember the reason why I wrote one thing or another, or a certain walk, and maybe it will generate some worthwhile thought later.

At the stray dog last night, our second session openning dinner, Misha said that sometimes the effect of this city, its remoteness, both geographical and ontological, the fact that it shouldn't exist, and the effect it has on a person may strike you the minute you drive into town, or maybe later when you come home, after a few weeks and then WHAM! you're hit with the fact that you were here, or that you dreamed of someplace like here right now. I'm hoping that unlike a dream, I can take back something from the memory of this dream through writing about in the plainest way possible: journaling. As for poetry and high art... well seriously friends... FUCK IT... give me a little low brow so that I don't have to be a poet and can just say that I write and therefore I am.

Something just came back to mind... Absinthe! I had another large glass of it last night, but this was truly a ritual. It was a beautiful thing, unlike anything I've ever had before. The only analog I can think of was that Irish Whiskey in Bangkok that aws lit on fire as it was poured infront of my face with expert grace: flaming kalua met flaming whiskey on a bed of onyx coffee and satin cream. No, this was all emerald fire... What we had done in Cynic was fun... but this was far more memrable. It started with the order. "Do you want me to do it for you or would you rather do it yourself?" I thought about the barmaid's offer and then decided to stow my do-it-yourself attitude and let her run the show. Sasha was standing close. We hadn't really had a drink for the last two weeks as he's been busy with some columns, so I decided we should have an absinthe together as I know its an expensive treat and kind of out his reach here. The waitress began by measuring out the green stuff. Then she used a real absinthe spoon and placed a large cube of sugar on it and poured the liquid over the cube slowly out of the measuring beaker. She lit the cube on fire and let it burn for a good long time as she prepped the next glass. She placed two small plates with straws on them on the bar counter. There was a straw on each one. The sugar was still burning. She then took the perforated spoon and tipped it ever so slightly so that the sugar infused absinthe that was cooking and melting off the cube could better drip into the glass. After a ltitle bit of this precarious tipping she let the cube slip into the glass, a highball thick bottomoed affair and it burst into flames... blue fire in a green sea. She let that burn for a little while and then reached for a cognac glass, a snifter. She smothered the flame by placing it inside the highball. There it sat collecting fumes and condensation. She lifted the snifter up and placed it on the small plate making sure one end of the straw was firmly under the glass in the center will the other end was sticking up. She told me to breathe in the fumes. I complied with her order. I trusted that she knew what she was doing. She then repeated these steps for Sasha. The feeling of breathing absinthe fumes is like a dry cleaning your lungs. I mean it didn't really faze me but you can taste the minty strength of the fluid, its potency, but since my lungs are as black as asphalt right now, it didn't really burn. She went back to both glasses lighting them on fire. As soon as we were done with the fumes she handed us the glasses of absinthe which now were hot and suffused with sugar. Before I could toast Sasha drank half his glass. She urged me not to let it cool, and so I did the same. Then he pulled back and said "Za teb-ya" and I replied "Za vas, e za nas" and we finished off the glasses. The first one went down easily, but the second pull, the one that drained it burned like acid going down that was certain to come back up. It was harsh and brutally sweet at the same time the licoriche saturated every cell and pore in my body. I might have turned as green as the emerald city for a moment. Then the fire settled and I saw her take the glasses from us, dropping the last drops onto the upside down snifters, into that depression on the underside of the base where the stem terminates. She then handed us the straws and said, now sniff these drops through your nose. I decided that I couldn't. I hate the feeling of water in my nose and after spending most of October and November squirting saline up there post surgery I could do without anything else travelling up there.

We shared a beer after this, sitting in the very back of "Brodachaya Sobaka" smoking and enjoying the delerious heat that infilitrated our bodies. I didn't halucinate, nor did I go mad, I was already there on both accounts. We sat and talked about Apolinaire and Sasha's two train trips to Vladivostok. We were waiting for James to finish up shmoozing. It was his Birthday and we were going to go to his favorite restaraunt in St. Pete's: Il Patio. Its an Italian joint. Personally I find it very offensive. I ate there last year on my final night in the city. I was denied at the doors of Kilikia as it was closed for a private party. The food is ok, or was, but it didn't agree with me too much this morning. Still, it was his 37th, I mean 22nd, and that means we had to go there. The initial group that arrived was quite large, 13 of us. James made a point of inviting every pretty girl that would say yes... he did a fine job. Eventually Misha arrived and then more and more people until we had taken over an entire corner of this restaurant. Tanya wanted to come but she was on office duty and flying oh solo mio in 301. We bought her a pizza and I ran it back to the hotel for her dinning pleasure. I needed to hit the ATM anyway. When I came back to the restaurant after spending a whopping 99 rubels at the Tinkov Brewery and Pub (that "99" shit is so for the western mind set and paradighm) I found the groups had fractured and entered into either frivolous play with cameras or conversation that motivated Parker to a cigarette. It was lovely. I sat against the wall smoking and Michael proceeded to take pictures of me. I guess he was doing a whole series of "game faces" no smiling, so I gave him my best "I'm walking down the street don't fuck with me face." He and a few other people called it an "author or book" shot. Eh... whatever, smoke and black and white always go together in my book. Tony fell asleep at the table. Did I mention he's a narcoleptic and not supposed to drink. Last year he would pass out at my flat during the parties I had and I would pick all 110 lbs of him up and carry him to some corner. I was preparing myself to carry him off, back to the hotel, but first I decided to shake him and he woke up... after a few shakes and smacks. He got up quickly, regained his balance and was ready to keep the party going.

From there we headed to The Office pub which turned out to be closed and then double back around to Fort Ross. This is where the story gets hazy. Yeah, I wasn't on night watch, I was around the corner from the hotel, and I was drinking with my room mate. Need I say more? There were Scottish Accents and Braveheart quotes floating about... aimless banter. Nathan Duel's declarations of how amazing it was that Vollman is coming to lecture on Thursday. I looked at my watch and realized that James'birthday was over and we were now into Nathan's birthday... so I bought us a round of vodkas and we toasted to his health.

Oh and by the by... Nathan Duel is the editor of the online magazine, SIX BILLION DOT ORG, check it out...

Mariya's sister ordered bad Xachapuri and we scarfed it down greedily. Time came and went, we wound up back in the mini hotel crashing into walls and laughing about what I couldn't tell you. We were informed that we woke up our next door neighbors... doh! The morning was cruel with its bounty of sunlight. It was a cruel joke to be exact. I helped tom setup up the classrooms at the University and then lead students there and got everyone situated. Afterward we headed to Zoom for Bacon and Eggs... or something like it... which is eggs sunnyside up, with sala fried as bacon (it never gets crispy) with tomatoes, potatoes pushkin, a double espresso with sugar and lemon and some 7up. James and Nathan met us later, as we realized Zoom didn't even open for breakfast, yet they serve it on the menu. We arrived at 10:30, they only openned at 11. Cruel... just so damn cruel... but it was all still quite good when we finally got food and ate our hearts out. Yes, the secret sauce in our recovery.

From there it was more and more errands and things to fix and correct. Helping people get around, get situated, yada yada yada... then Tanya and I translated an 11 page menu for a group dinner tomorrow night... that took for bloody ever...

When I finally escaped I headed out with camera loaded with color Infra Red to Mars Field and around Spilled blood. I'm curious to see how the stone and metal, mosaic and all shows up on this film, what the heat absorption properties are like... an expensive but potentially intersting experiment.

Another cruise down the Nevya tonight... but first I think its high time for a nap... or maybe just a beer... whatever the case, I'm heading back to the hotel to lay my weary bones down for a spell...

Vsevo Dobroyo Vam Vsem...

Russia - [untitled]

Any madness turns
into words spanning
a substantive grief
knowing how feeling
animates dissent
as if drowning
in a dry river
like history's death
hasn't ever lost
or allowed the bridge
to bend and release
the fortunate few
to learn both shores
having slept without
really needing it
at night beguiled
to think this isn't
a day or riding
on the back of the sun
losing a hat in the rain
leaving a drop where
a puddle forms shortly
after leaving a drop.

Russia - The ins & outs + baby Nathan...

Well first thing is first... Since I now have pictures of the little devil that decided to premptively enter this world and "get it started" I thought I might post and share. Without further adieu... Nathan (blank) Kantorov:





Apologies, this is a large picture and will take some tim to load and resize. I have no editing tools here...


Well its been a few days since I've last written and I should update you with what I've been doing. In a word... chickens, heads, cut off, axes to grind, well not that many, but a ground sharp axe is best when lopping off heads.

Over the course of the last 48 huors we've had 40 in and 40 out. The people who were only staying for the first session have all taken flight, or most of them at least, and the new folks have been arriving in droves. Logistics such as housing, baggage storing, getting them registered, copying passposrts, orienting them with the basics such as where water can be had, ATM, internet cafe, pharmacy, breakfast, restaraunts, money changers etc. etc. have been my charge and duty. I spent all of yesterday giving tours every hour on the hour starting at 2pm. At 7pm we had a goodbye dinner for the lot that was leaving and an informal welcome to the new group. The formal dinner/welcome is happening tonight at the stray dog again. That dingy cellar that was so popular with late 19th and 20th century literati.

Masha has taken over the touring schedule for today. We agreed to split the weekend to give each other some breathing room. Otherwise it would have been difficult to coordinate who was to be where at what time, etc. etc. Last night as I began my "notchnoy dozor" in shorts in the thick of the rain, I got a call from Sveta who said she had a job for me on Sunday. I had been looking forward to a day off and shlepping around the city taking pictures of a few more churchs with dramatic clouds for backdrops. The day after a good rain, you have a ton of low level clouds that sweep through the sky rapidly bound for southern climbs. They tend to originate in the arctic, white travellers that drench the city and the streets forcing people to leap under awnings for prolonged periods. Svetta charged me with going on the bus trip around the city with the new arrivals. I was supposed to chaperone them. An hour later I get another call from Svetta: "Len? ti tam?"

"Da, I'm here."

"Listen Len, I have a new job for you...slushayish?"

"Da, shto?"

"There's a group of men who want to go to Banya tomorrow. I was going to send Timur but he'll go on the bus tour instead, can you do this?"

"Svetta did I mention I love you???"

"Vot... tak pravilnya!"

Yes, I was charged with the task of taking a group of curious individuals to the banya and beating the living hell out of them. In the words of Igor, now the defeated former arm wrestling champion:

"Citizens of America! Prepare to Suffer!"

Everything seemed like it was linning up to be a perfect spa day. I mean the weather isn't that great. Albeit there are dramatic clouds in the sky the rain is coming down now and again and a shlep to a church on the Fontanka does's seem quite as fun. I'm thinking I'll go anyway, but I'll take a cab and then just cab over to Pushkinskaya 10 to the art collective and Gez 21, a bizarre clothing shop run by artists that write poems and paint art onto th clothing they sell... all originals, and literary to boot. My cell phone has been remarkabely quiet today. I think after dropping nightwatch last night and being up till past 4 in the morning making sure our friend Rebekah A. got home safely as she was quite tossed and her former room mate made it to her new hostile, and a long cab ride with a very nice older man behind the wheel, who must be one of the safest and least insane drivers in St. Petersburg, I'm exhausted. Yeah, tours all day and then the night watch. The male spa day sonded blissful but alas, only one showed up and it seemed a waste. I've rescheduled the banya for Tuesday and put up a signup sheet so I get a tenative headcount.

Before the madness was in full swing, this is Friday, I think, like I said, days are hard to track here. We were a wreck of nerves. Everyone was aprehensive about the departures, getting people to the airport. We were all on the phones with the cab company getting drivers over the hotel and rounding up bodies, stowing luggage for people who checked out... it was a quite storm then. I managed to slip out for a few hours and took a walk with James. It was a gorgeous and sunny day. The fat gray storm clouds that pissed all over us yesterday were still a ways off, coming down the Nevya like Lenin in his Aurora. The sky was partitioned by them into something like the good the bad and the ugly with the blue overhead being the final vestiges of peace on Earth and the true nature of man, a weary soaked dog, approaching the horizon. The meeting poin of these two, not quite horizontal, and not quite solid, was something of a picture perfect backdrop as if painted in. I loaded a roll of b/w infrared into ye'old Nikon and we headed for the Winter Palace Plaza, emptying the roll of color slide film first and then proceeding to roll the dice with infrared. I shot it at 200 and bracketed every shot 3 to 4 stops. From the winter palace we walked down toward the Bronze Horseman and saw a baby bear cub rolling in the grass. People were paying his tender to take pictures with him, and others were just walking up to him to pet and play with the rambunctous fellow. He was adorable beyond words. I don't think I've ever been that close to a bear outside of a zoo.

St. Isaacs is just beyond the park behind the bronze horseman and we went in and bought a ticket, after waiting a bitterly long time and listening to people argue with the ticket seller about having no change. "With this kind of stampeded and this much money, how could you have no change?" One man said in a stern and unforgiving tone in the native tongue. The woman behind me kept trying to cut in but between broad shoulders and my backpack loaded with camer gear she found it nearly impossible. We finally got up to the register and were able to purchase tickets for the russian/student price because of our Spravkas and the fact that I can be rude when I need too. I really hate the people behind the ticket counters. The day at the hermitage with Saskia I nearly throttled one of them soviet era babushaks... It nearly drove me to prafanity, you loose at that point, but remaining stern and harsh is a good thing. I demanded to speak to her manager and she lookd across at her collegue and instead of callying her "Starshiya" gave me the ticket and i walked away without thanking her as I was so wound up by that point.

The climb to the top of St. Isaacs is brutal: 100+ steps in a winding stone tower. The hike is well worth the vista from the top of the tallest strucutre in St. Petersburg... its breathtaking... you gawk, drop your jaw... flip out... and see the glint of every dome in the city as the sun catches it illuminating man's glory unto G-d. I'm not so sure that it's the glory of G-d... but we glorify the notion and the house... for the temple is without as well as within. Sadly, the emphasis has been spent on the glory without. I sometimes wonder what kind of existence can be had in such ornate places. Does one come bearing a spritiuality akin to the experience of that place of worship? Or is one given less of a reason to live purely, in that W. Summerset Maugham way of "the reward for leading a good life is a good life." because the reward is already all around? I know this is a kind of empty mental masturbation on the subject of religion, but I had a conversation with Malcollm on Kazantzakis'Last Temptation of Christ and the problem we saw was the humanization of a ritual that was so deep and so devout, without room for negotiation, that a story positing Christ as a human plagued by human desire is hugely problematic to a religion based on inflexible motifs that permeate not only the art but the act and practice. Kazantzakis had to be a deeply pious and penitent man with a vast spiritual reservoir to write something like last temptation, yet he was called a heretic and expelled from the church he loved so much.

I've been digressing... back to my photoshoot... We shot most of the roll from the top and then decended along another tower. The trip down makes you dizzier but its easier on the legs for sure. Off to zoom for cold summer borscht and beef stroganoff and the very necessary .5 liter of Nevskay Beer. I got a call from Sveta saying that we had a staff meeting an hour. I left the cafe and met with the group.

Friday night was a blast though. Albeit the lot of us were aprehensive abot the transitional weekend, we had a boat ride. It was a small julietta type boat that had an open area and a long enclosed deck with windows that slid open. I hung out in the open. It was a humid and hot night. It was so nice that you didn't even need a jacket crusing out on the river. Our trip started at the Fontanka canal and took us down by the Summer Gardens out onto the Nevya where I had, what might be called, one of the most amazing post midnight boat rides. The small group was the first factor, but then there were the other factors... from out of the open mouth of the Dvoretsky Bridge a three mast sailing ship with red sails came down onto the rivver, bobbing slightly in the choppy, wind driven waters. It was "Alenay Parusa". I don't know the significance of the red sail, Tanya hinted at a long story, but she was tired and not in the mood to play historian so I left her be... but the sight was gorgeous. As we circled the river and crossed it we sailed by the Aurora and made a U turn and went out to the middle of the river. Just then the sky exploded with fireworks and we could hear classical music blasting from vessels and the bridge itself. It was mind boggling all of this for "Poslednay Zvanok!" What is that you ask? Well its the last bell, literally. This is the day that all of the university students have finished their exams and the officer schools have all let out, so the military and the college kids are on parade. The week before were the high schoolers and they join in in this celebration. When we docked back at the Fontanka canal Nevsky was a mess. They shut it down from Liteny Prospect to the Admiralty to auto traffic, students and army men, sailors, adults and teens, were walking up and down the huge fat boulevard with bottles of beer. The lines at the stores were 30 - 50 deep. The streets were covered in broken glass and everyone talked in voices at twice to thrice normal level. Here and there bands of revellers were breaking out into song while they carried girls on their shoulders waiving Russian flags or the symbols of their universities. Last year, during the solstice, Paul McCartney shutdown Nevsky for a few hours, but when I ememrged from Fort Ross several hours later, at half past 5, the bodies hadn't thinned and the boulevard was still a river of debauched teens and partiers. Its unreal to see that many people in that state for that long a period of time. We kept our eyes open and I stayed sober, kind of on guard. I knew I would have to help a few people get back to the dorms and my room mate managed to get pretty damn drunk that night, so I was on sober patrol.

So the last few days have not been without their points of fascination. Its been a wild time that isn't all fun and games, but we've managed to get some of those in as well. Its James' Birthday today. I stopped the music at the english pub, The Office, last night and rounded up a drunk band of writers to sing him happy birthday. We'll probably sneak off from the reception dinner tonight and head somewhere with an intimate band of friends to knock back a few to his good health. I have to help Tom setup classrooms for the new workshops tomorrow, this is always fun, and then I'll sneak off somewhere.

I can see giant swaths of light come and go as glare blinds me from the monitor. The clouds are openning and looks like the rain has stopped. I'm off to run down to the Fontanka. its already pushing three and I have but 3 hours before I have to return to the hotel and help manuever bodies to the stray dog...

I hope you're all well at home and enjoying a well deserved weekend...

udatchey vam vsem!

Russia - Something Wonderful!!!

So it went something like this...

Not feeling at me tip top these past few days. The sore throat has explained itself as part of an over arching allergic reaction to the poplar seeds flying through the air on their cotton parachutes. They are everywhere. I have them in my beard and hair constantly. Sometimes they pile up near the sidewalk in large clumps you can set them on fire and watch as they burn up in a fast moving combustion. Other than their incendiary spectacle they are the bane of my existence.

"Where do you want to go to eat?"

"We're around a few blocks from Caravan Sa-rai"

"What's that?"

"Uzbeki food"

"Any good?"

"Should be amazing"

"Let's go then!"

And that's kind of how it happened. At one point it seemed like everyone in the world was going to leave the Mayakovsky and head down there with us, we took the most direct route (Masha, David, Sarah, Tom and I). Tom headed the gang off at the pass and sent them to Kilikia. We found the restaurant, as Igor had said, on the corner of Liteny Prospect and Nekrasova Ulitzah. A posh joint with people in traditional dress with ornamented tea cozies on every table. The smell of incense and lamb and fresh baked bread filled the room. I felt instantly at home.

An order later, with plates of Samsa (fried/baked dumplings filled with lamb and onion cooked in a clay tandoor), Lagman (thick broth of beef with hand made noodles and vegetables piled high and a spicy sauce for dipping) and Eggplant infused with the smoke of the tandoor down to it's molecular structure, I made a call to home.

"Dad, Hi!"

"Oh! Hello! Kak deela?"

"Fine! Is mom there?" It was hard to hear over the blasting music and even harder concentrate with the belly dancer just 10 feet away gyrating for a table of uzbeks still in their business suits enjoying a late meal.

"No, she's not.. but you should call your brother!"

"What?"

"Call your brother, he's a father!!"

And with that, I would like to announce the birth of my first nephew at 10:00am PST, weighing in at 7lbs 10ozs, Nathan(iel) (TBD) Kantorov.

Two weeks early, but what the hell...

Mazeltov!
Mazeltov!
Mazeltov!

We hoisted 400 grams of vodka to celebrate his birth and then I bought everyone dinner, cause I figured Alex would if he were there...

Pictures coming soon...

Russia - Gratifying...

Well openning the office this morning really hurt. I neglected to mention that there was a boat ride last night and I'm crusising on like 3 hours of sleep at this point. I'm brutally tired but I had a ball walking around the hermitage today. A day/afternoon at the 'tage is always a joy, rain or shine. As it so happened, another hot muggy day in St. Pete's so hanging out in the hermitage is a real treat.

Not much activity in the office this morning. Said good bye to Fiona which was sad as I wanted to hear more about her project on the promise of salvation by way of Uranium in the 20th century--sadly she had to leave a little prematurely. I ran into Deborah while posting updated schedules in the hallways and in the elevator. She seemed interested when I said I was off to the hermitage and came along. She met me a bit later when I was off from office duty as Katia arrived to relieve me. Over breaky she told me that Saskia, our visiting poetry teacher, was to heading to the museum and would be there at noon.

Providence happened and luckily we ran into her fighting and dealing with the incredibly rude soviet era ticket sellers. These women are horrific. I can't describe how cold and much shit they give you in lieu of basic human courtesy and that really lost notion of customer service. I had to yell at one of them that didn't want to sell Saskia a ticket for 100 rubels, the Russian price, but rather charge her obnoxious sums as a foreigner. The beauty of our Spravkas is that we get Russian prices because we're reigstered as students at the Gherzin University.

Well yelling aside we had a lovely afternoon of first Impressionism, including the contensted collection that was found out in a bombed out building in Germany when the Russians were driving for Berlin. They sent the collection back to Russia and its been at the Hermitage ever since. The collection contains, Degas, a number of Renoires, Cezannea and several Van Ghoghs that date back from 1889 and 1890 which was shortly before his death. Saskia made note of how his brush strokes had become more and more angry at that point, or more aptly put, bolder and bolder, with thicker paint on the brush and around the stroke. The sun in the sky of a field was painted out in that style that we so well know in Starry Night, with the halo. Thanks to Molly I know that doctors believe he had Meiner's Disease which is a disfunction of the inner ear that causes the mind to overcompensate for physical imbalance resulting in fatigue, headaches, and that kind of distorted vision that would create halos. Although very stylistic, it could be very much ther esult of what Vincent was seeing/experiencing. The collection has been under contention by the german government, they want it back as its "stolen" or the "spoils of war". Yeltzin promised to return it, but as you can see, we have Putin, and its still at the 'tage...

From there we wandered around, into that gorgeous room, the war room of 1812, then up to the third floor which is dotted with early Picassos from the cubist period, some toward the very latter end that are so emblematic of the final cubist style that reduced the sign and symbol of the middle period into a distilled shape as signifier. I wonder if Pollack studied Picasso's middle cubist period because that kind of newsprint feel, that blending of styles from the early period of Le Mademoiselles de Avignon is so evident in the early Pollack that we call Abstract Expressionism vs. the later drip pieces.

Around the corner are the famous Matisse pieces like Harmony in Red



and Dance...



We skipped the Leanardo Madonna's: that's just tourist central and those rooms drive one insane in the membrane... seriously... it hurts. I was sad not to see th Michelangelo, but I didn't think about it as we pushed on into the Dutch painters and saw the wonderful Rembrandts and then off to the sculpture room with the 17th century French sculptures of Roman Gods including that fairy I photographed last year... she's still my favorite...

From there it was briefly down to ancient Egypt and then back up to visit the Raphaelite hall that is a reproduction from the one in the Vatican that is the hall of natural wonders, a very stylized painted hall that catalogues the known species at the time of its painting... its a cool thing to see.

Saskia wanted to see the 16th century Flemmish collection and we wound our way back to it. The detail is amazing, but I think the dutch, like Van Eyck have the cornerstone of inscrutable detail.

I'm running out of time... so i'll just wrape this up. The Hermitage is unbelievable. I've never done the Louvre so I can't complain, but if you ever hav the opportunity spend 3 hours in there, then go rest, then come back the next day. You start hurting by the fourth... or take breaks and go to the cafe...

K... off to a reading but first I'm taking Saskia to the pro camera shop in search of Kiev knockoffs...

shislivo vsem!!!

xo

Russia - Very short post today...

I think I'm sick, or maybe I've smoke too much... my throat is one big open wound and I sound a little like Dionne Warwick talking about Kenny Kingston. Its a sad state of affairs. After I wrote here I went to the brick for din din, tasty plate of grilled pork with potatoes all topped with onion and dill. To start I had a bowl of Xharcho... mmmm.... lamb...

The restaurant was filled with people, namely the Toms, Sarah, Masha and others. We had a couple pints and "po pedesat" then left the restaraunt and the people and moved to the mini hotel, my mini hotel. This is where we all discovered that we are still capable of behaving like college kids in a dorm, when you're in a dorm, and drinking massive amounts of beer while listening to my ipod...

(Bros, thanks man, these speakers are a major hit over here... Tom says he's gong to steal them, but I made some threats I won't repeat here, which has curbed his thieving ways...)

I woke up not feeling so very hot today... and decided to catch up on that sleep from the night before that I had been missing from Novgorod. One thing, Inga (a.k.a. the belly) mentioned this in an email to me... Novgorod is part of the golden ring, a ring of 5 medieval towns that comprise old russia known for their woodworking, churches and history. Ok... enough inteligent banter.

Today has been marked by a trip to the cafe for Chicken Kiev and mashed potatoes, great hangover food, tea with honey for my throat, a big multivitamin that James handed to me when we both woke up this afternoon and then 505...

I'm so happy we don't have 505 in the states, I would go broke. As it was I had to use the plastic, but what a trip... 505 is a music chain here in St. Pete's you can buy all of your MP3 collections, movies and software there at one stop. There are Kiosks at the metro stations, but the main shops are scattered about the city. There's one on Nevsky prospect on the other side of the Fontanka, this one is just a block away across from the Blini stand... its a great place. I'm staring at this huge bag of music, movies and software and thinking... yeah baby... I might need a new hard drive to hold all these MP3s... its so disgusting... is pure glutony and I'm ok with it.

Anyway, time to head on over to the beer garden to meet Skidan after class and talk abot Walter Benjamin and other foolishnes... tonight is the second participant/student reading/open mic... I thought abuot reading but with my voice on serious strike I think I will pass and just sit back and have an early night, I'm on morning duty at the office after which I'm heading to the hermitage and on the way back, we have a faculty reading, Jeff Allen and someone else, tomorrow at the Mayakovsky, I'm going to go shoot that roll of Infrared in Mar's field... there's an eternal flame there that should do interesting things on IR film...

Be well everyone...

paka...

Russia - Novgorod (or my best attempt)

Falling asleep on a long drive helps get you to your destination faster. This we all know. Sleeping through the potential treachery of the Russian highways isn't just a faster route somewhere but a necessary habit to adopt if you're going to keep your shorts from being soiled. Our driver today thought he was Mario Andretti in an old Mercedes van with absolutely no breaks, I could hear the rotors grinding hard every single time he laid into the breaks, which wasn't often enough. Michael and Ann, a couple from San Juan Puerto Rico said "This guy would do great in San Juan."

So now onto Novgorod. The city was founded in the mid 9th century and has recently been given back its original name of Viliky Novgorod (Great New City.)

****

Trying to write this post isn't easy... I'm exhausted, only slept two hours last night as I was dropping night watch and a large group went from the Golden Brick when it closed to For Ross... I left my notebook at home where I had scribbled down dates and so forth... but let me see what I can recount from my foggy memory.

****

The city sits on a lake that meets a river. We started the day by going to the monastery of St. Gregory built in the 11th century. Although the walls have been repainted, as was the habit of new patriarchs or princes who took it over, the windows still bear bits of the frescos that originally adorned the entire church. The iconostasis was stolen during the second world war by the occupying German forces. The monastery was damaged but has been rebuilt quite nicely along with the central church that in its time was the largest in Russia. The domes on this church are not gilded. Originally they were all covered in lead. Gilding came around in the 15th century if I remember correctly. The shape is not quite the Onion dome of Spilt Blood or St. Basil's in Moscow, its more of a helmet shape which was the original shape of Russian domes. The onion was a later inspiration.

I haven't had a moment or afternoon as peaceful as that morning walking by the lake and taking pictures. The weather was perfect (I'm going to start rambling, more than usual here.)

I've been enjoying St. Pete's quite a bit but its a big city and the pace is fast. Well my pace isn't that fast as its usually burdened by several liters of beer, but the point is that things move here, they move at a rapid pace and the sea of people is a never ending torrent of bodies in motion with big city concerns and manners.

I slept through most of the trip out to Novgorod, but when I woke, about 30 minutes from the outskirts of the city, I saw vast expanses of land which I saw again on my back to St. Pete's. The countryside is vast. The outer rim of St. Pete's and Novgorod feature these shoebox apartments that are ghastly and dreary to look at. According to my sister in law the street names are the same even and they are built exactly alike from city to city. But the actual highway road to the city was dotted with log cabins, small one family houses, gardens, cows eating grass and men clearing tall green grass with scythes. Great green expanses of land with the raised horizon of forest comprise this area. Since it rains during the summer months, there is always a reservoir of water for the flora to feed on and it stays lush all year round, except for the snows I guess, whereas we get about a month or so of lush green rolling hills that turn brown when deprived of water for a long enough period of time.

The monastery is amazing. Its simplicity and peace seem at once the product of its location on the banks of this gorgeous lake that is about 35km wide by 45km long, and the mouth of this river that feeds into the lake. I'm not sure with atmosphere I was enjoying, the air is sweet and fresh and you can feel the solemnity of the few monks that remain. It has been an effort ever since the demise of communism to revive the monastic orders that flourished prior to the revolution. Novgorod was and is the city of churches. Every street in olden times was ordered to build its own church and one had 5 churches on it, all of which still remain. Driving to the monastery we passed a wall left over from the 14th century, its an earthen wall that was flanked by towers, long stretch of earth that acted as a fortification against invaders. The Vikings were in Novgorod and were probably the original settlers of the city and one is attributed to have been the original founder of the Russian state. They were looking for trading routes through the Slavic countries when they stumbled across the river on which Novgorod sits. Of the 14 towers only 1 remains completely intact and has walls 1 meter thick with rock insides and brick exterior.

Novgorod fought many wars with Sweden, they were mortal enemies. The monument, which I'll get to, features a defeated Swedish soldier. The only ones, in ancient times, to capture Novgorod, were the Swedes. At one time, during the 10 or 11 century, Novgorod had a greater population than that of London, 40,000. It was a center for arts and crafts and was known all over the ancient world.

St. gregory's has 3 domes, which was the original configuration, the father, the son and the holy ghost, one for each. The five dome configuration was adopted later, and there's a second church in the monastery with a very stylized five dome design that was developed I believe in the 16th century.

From St. Gregory's we went to the Russian museum of wood working. Now this sounds kinda kitschy, wood working, but let me explain. Novgorod was known for its artisans. They built log houses without using any nails. None of the buildings were built using nails and they made shingles that looked like brick. The buildings that remain of this ancient city have been uprooted and moved to a preserve that is more natural in its wilderness setting than the city where they are being quickly eroded. Traffic is minimal here and they can be attended to by craftsmen that practice a lost art. The people of Novgorod made everything from birch and leather (beroza e kozha and called it brekhoza (I might be wrong on this... very tired)).

The buildings are used as museums and the people dress in traditional garb. I find this to be incredibly boring and cheezy, I mean the traditional dress. There's something so put on and they seem so unhappy in it, why bother? I'm good with them not even being there... I'm there to see the woodwork, not the people in ham dresses. The houses were incredibly function. The stove was not only a stove, made of ceramic, but also the bed that kept you warm in the winter. Often times 11 people would live in the family home and the grandparents were given the stove to sleep on. The parents would have a bed, the children slept in a loft and the teens would sleep on benches, that sometimes parents would occupy as well if they didn't have a bed. The lower levels of the house were home to the livestock which helped heat the entire domicile. There were haystacks that filled a barn space in the back and above the livestock pens. We spent a good hour or two there and then moved from there to the Kremlin of Novgorod.

Kremlin or Krepayst is nothing more than a fortress. The Kremlin in Moscow is the old fortress of the old city that happens to be the government buildings. Well Novgorod had a very impressive one that housed a number of old churches, the most impressive of which is St. Sofia. We were dropped off in the park on the other side of the river where we walked by and through small churches of varied ages and sizes. Their domes glistened in the bright blue sky, cloudless and perfect. A cold wind greeted us when we crossed the river over a footbridge. The Kremlin rolled out with its huge red brick walls on the other side. The domes of St. Sofia were visible above the walls. To the far left of the Kremlin stands the WWII monument commemorating the defeat of the Germans in Novgorod. Every city has some kind of monument like this. As I've said before, this war, here, may be over, but I doubt it'll be forgotten quickly. I may be wrong though, the new generation has no care of this war or its memory. They are more interested with meeting the west in terms of salary, material wealth and possession as quickly as possible. This may be the undoing of that memorial conscience surrounding the second world war.

Inside the Kremlin were a number of smaller churches but we went into St. Sofia to see the tomb of Theodore Nevsky, younger brother of Aleksander that founded St. Petersburg 300 years ago. He died on his wedding day from an epileptic seizure and was originally buried in St. Gregory's but was moved to St. Sofia due to restoration and excavation of the church. He will eventually be put back to rest in St. Gregory's which had a number of tombs, but not as many as St. Sofia that had them well below the floor, which is a 19th century floor, they lay around the stone floor of the 12th century. The church used to be taller, but soil settled outside and they keep things level. To keep from having to step down into the church they added new floors thus burying the previous one.

A huge brass chandelier of intricate design, a gift in the 16th century from Boris Gudanov, hangs in the center, over a cross with the iron dove. The dove was a sign of the holy spirit and there's a legend about the dove that if it fell 3 times the city would fall. It fell once by the Swedes when they occupied it, then it fell under the Nazis reign and eventually found its way to Spain. It only recently returned. There's a 12th century Icon which is the priz. Its a Madonna, and she supposedly cries visible tears at time. Take this with a grain of salt, or at your own discretion, it is a gorgeous and time worn piece however. The iconostasis of this church is intact and one wall, near the place where they are excavating the tombs and restoring the floor, there is a section of wall preserved from the 11th century with a painting of Constantine, the father of the Orthodox church and former Holy Roman Emperor done by an unknown Greek artist.

The whole place is kept in a low light and is absolutely gorgeous... I'm floored by it. I tried to shoot pictures, long exposure stuff, no tripod... left it at home trying to keep down the weight... DUMBASS is what I say now... but anyway, we'll see how steady my hands are... sleep deprivation does amazing things to them. As I walked along the paths with Sasha, we both agreed, we would have to get parker to do like a staff camping trip to the lake and spend a night v prirodi (nature) because the lake and surrounding hills are so bloody relaxing. I think if I could go to a real datcha and banya i would be in bliss. The two most intoxicating and relaxing things in place...

We wandered around and visited a monument by an artist whose name escapes me, but his work is here in Peter as well. It features figures and faces from 17 of the most important Russian epochs. From the Viking who found the Russian state, to that of the general who defeated the Swedes, Pushkin, gogol, the wife of Ivan the terrible, clergy and political figures. Since this was done well before communism it lacks any of that soviet drab elitism thankfully. During WWII it was dismantled by the Germans to be carted off to the Reich when the Russians launched a sneak attack on the fortress. It took over 1 year to reassemble it and return it to most of its former glory. You can see a big crack on one side.

The main souvenir of Novgorod is the bell. There was a legend about a certain bell that was to be carted off from the city. It didn't ant to go at all and fell shattering into tiny pieces. From each of these pieces a smaller bell was made and that is why the bell still remains the symbol of the city. We saw the largest of the bells of Novgorod that weighs in at 26 tons sitting inside the Kremlin next to small 16the century cousins of 17tons. A pile of excavated 15th century stone canon balls used in catapults lays at the base of St. Sofia.

I was sad to leave this place. Between fatigue, a happiness to be out of the city, and the quiet of that lake, the name still eludes me, felt an over arching sense of calm. I could've spent the night in Novgorod. Beyond its historical importance its a preaty dreary and dead place. There's really nothing going on, but the history of that city seems alive in all of its Deadness... You're right Mom, I do like touching history, always have loved being in the middle of it, that's probably the main reason why this day trip appealed to me, I'm happy I went.

Ok, time to say adieu... I'm off to get a bite to eat and then sleep.... sleep and more sleep... I'm opening the office tomorrow. I think I'm going to go to "Zov Iliyich" (Lenin's Mating Call), they done got bear on the menu!!! Who knows, I might just decide the four blocks is too far and the Brick is on the way home and open and the food is damn good there... Gruzinskaya Kuxhnay will be the death of me... I love it so...

Shislivo vsem... xo

Russia - Another walkabout...

Last night was a blissfully early night... only 2 am or so... I'm on night watch tonight so I'm happy to have have gone to bed early. The banya made that happen.

Have I told you what the banya is? I mean I remember blazing through it yesterday... but in essence you're talking about a super heated sweedish sauna, its dry, but there's a large tub of water near the oven that you can throw onto the coals to create steam and get that place super heated. I think its around 140 degrees F. in there. But let me back up...

The banya is on Dostoyevskaya st. number 11. Its four stories of banyas with a mens on the 2nd floor, women's on the 4th and private rooms with billiard tables etc. on the 3rd. Two hours is 300 rubles, going for less than that doesn't make any sense. There's a store on the bottom floor that sells all your spa needs, e.g. birch branches tied and bundled, machalkas (loofahs) natural and synthetic, soap, sandals etc. I wore my leather sandlas so I rented a pair from the desk. The man behind the desk looks like an ex-con, the consus amongst Parker, Burke and myself was that he was an excon and most of the guys in there had spent time in the pen. But man, these boys take their banya seriously and for that I respect them to no end. You pay your money, 900 rubles for the three of us. Then its another 98 rubles for 3 sheets and one pair of slippers for me. The birch ran about 8 - 12 rubles per bunch, we bought two. Another 60 rubles at the "opteka" for eucalyptus oil and were set. We were taken to a private changing room that had soft cushy benches, a couple tables, ash trays and places to hang our clothing. It was a large room and we stripped down there, tying the sheets around us like roman togas. No one brought more than 600 rubles or so and we left our wallets and watches at the hotel so we had blessedly little to steal.

From there one proceeds to the showers for a quick wet and to pour hot water into the large tubs that are all around and soak the birch and dump the eucalyptus oil into the water. After a good quick soak we went and sat in the sauna, none of us could take it for more than five minutes. It was that hot!!! I've sat in normal saunas for long periods of time, but I've never been in one that is this damn hot! Out the door of the "parilka" and into a pool of very very very cold water, just dump yourself in there. It stops the wooziness and refreshes you. After a minute or two in the pool, we went and got the birch and brought it into the sauna for another round.

What do you do with the birch yuo ask? Well yuo bloody flog yourself and you enjoy it! its a midl form of exfoliation and aromatherapy combined. Its quite nice. You stand there flogging yourself from sole to crown and smelling the rich thick eucalyptus scent which goes everywhere. Your sweat pours out in buckets. After about ten minutes in there we went for another dunk in the pool and back to our changing room where we ordered Kvas. This is by far the best kvas I have ever had. It was the perfect smoothness, the perfect viscosity, it was cold as all hell, it was in a word wonderful!!!

This continues until you get tired and feel fully relaxed munching on drie salted squid and drinknig kvas by the half liter and water in our case. Then a hot shower and you feel like a million bucks. There was a fine eatery around the corner, "stalovaya" that had all kinds of meats and kotletas (small meat patties that range in substance from pork to chicken to mixtures of lamb and pork). From there it was the long walk back to the hotel, we had no money for a cab at this point, not even a glass of kompot which looked damn good but at 20 rubles each it was a bit out of our league.

Today I woke and did laundry, dawning my only pair of shorts and set out for a walkabout. I headed down Kazanaskaya and then over past the Marinsky to a russian orthodox church. I must say that I'm getting tired of these orthodox. I don't mean to sound harsh, but they take their church going very seriously, even when its more museum than working church! They didn't let me in, so I took pictures outside and stood in the doorway to piss them off. I like the catholics, come on in, its about buts in the seats... shorts, no problem, pictures, no problem... you are all welcome! Same thing with the synagogue which I went to next. The synagogue is 100+ years old. Its made from a rose colored stone and strped like an old mosque almost. It openned in 1903 but construction had begun in the 19th century. The interior is gorgeous with complicated patterns of intertwinning stars of david. I was given free righn and I went around taking pictures from the floor and the balcony. It was woefully dark in there so I had to find interseting places to rest my camera and let the timer take the pic because at those slow exposures my hands would've fudged it. Its a lovely nikon, but doesn't have the leic shutter that is so smooth and seamless that yuo can shoot at 1/15 of a second hand held.

I wanted to stay in the synagogue for a while. I just kind felt at ease there, not sure why, well I do, but I don't want to go into it. The chandeliers were simple and elegant vines of silver dropping from the ceiling as delicate as spiderweb. I eventually tore myself away from the bench where I sat and stared and headed won a small canal for St. Isaac's. What I thought was a relatively direct route turned out to be quite the indirect one and took me to a rather run down part of town. More residuential and the housing was new (well consider post WWII and Stalin era new.) I walked quickly as there were some sketchy corners and I knew between the backpack, jacket, boots and earings I would raise eybrows. I eventually found my way to St. Isaacs and continued to play National Geographic photographer. From St. Isaacs I decided I would head to the Nevya and shoot the Kunst Kamera from across the river but then it snagged me... glory glory glory... an Indian restaraunt!!!! I immediately proceeded inside to one of the best gastronomical experiences I had yet. The man spoke both English and Russian. I had kima samosas with a heavily spiced lamb inide for an apetizer. For the entree it was paneer cheeze marinated in yoghurt and spices, grilled on a skewer with green bell pepers and coated in honey. A generous helping of garlic nan rounded out the meal with a mango lasi to wash it all down. Let me tell you friends, I'm no stranger to Indian eateries at home, but this would give them all a run for their money. DAMN GOOD! The restaraunt was a pleasure to sit in. The walls and celings were painted with oriental patterns and the carpet was a thick rich color matching the dark and deep toned wood of the chairs and bar. The service was friendly beyond expectation. All of this came at a price. I spent $20 there, that's pricey for this town, but I didn't mind... not one bit. I asked them to make it spicey for me complaining who russians don't know what spicey is. I mean I've eaten the spiciest thing they have at the Georgian restaraunts and it hardly tickled my throat. I suppose I need to eat some spice to make myself repellant to the mosquitos that are coming out in force.

Leaving the restaraunt I turned into the park and headed past the admiralty to the Meydnii Sadik (The Bronze Horseman.) He's very regal on his stead atop a rock sitting right on the banks of the Nevya river. I took his protrait and then asked a kindly german man "Kanst du mir photographieren?" "Ja, kein problem" "Vielen danke." "Du sprichst Deutsch?" "Ein bissien, ich habe vier jahr gelernen, aber es war ein langes zeit in die zuruck." Up the Nevya I headed taking pictures until the roll was done. Then it was back down Nevsky for the cafe, but not before I ran into trouble: the small fast handed kind that go by way of Gypsies! A pack of small girls were working the street along Nevsky. They spotted me right away. I had a lens bag styrapped to my belt and my Nikon around my neck and shoulder. I shoved one of my hands in the pocket with my wallet and the other wrapped around my lens case and went into my other pocket to protect my mobile phone. They swarmed around me saying "kusat kusat kusat" with outstretched palms. I continued to move on and rudely bumped a couple. What I can only assume was there mother was in the middle getting closer and finall I felt a hand coming into my left pocket which I smacked quit hard away, it belonged to a small girl with the saddest puppy dog eyes you ever saw. I had enough. I stopped turned around and yelled in my sternest voice "Edity ot zudivah pa haroshimu!!!!" (Get out of here right now if you know what's good for you.) At this point they backed off. I don't think anyone on the street was phased by this, it happens, maybe by the fact that I could bellow in their language, but taht was about it. I crossed the Moyka canal and stopped to check my back and see if it had been cut open or any zippers tampered with. Everything was in order and my wallet and all belongings still belonged to me. Its sad and if they weren't such bloody thieves I would feel obliged to give them something, but as they practice pick pocketing for a living well the only obligation I feel is tossing them into a canal. Last year they took Brenda for her wallet I believe.

When I came upon the internet cafe I saw her, my saddest begger woman. I sat down on the curbe behind a kiosk and changed out lenses. I had the big dog with me and I loaded some b/w. I snapped two pictures of her, crouching and hiding, keeping an eye for passerbys who might be caught in the frame and most importantly cops. One walked by and I packed up and left myself, but not before dropping some change in her box.

Tonight is the Kenyan reading that will feature fiction and poetry from Kenya. After that I'm on night watch with Anna. Happily, the entire gang should be the golden brick so I won't have to shelp to that unsavory of bars, Datcha. I think most people learned their lesson after Billy's run in and he's been spreading the word. He was very apologetic yesterday and thanked me profusely for saving his ass.

I'm going to head to the university and take a picture of a wonderfully dilapdated wall. I think its gorgeous. I think that's what I want to take pictures of this time, the way this city is run down and how it couldn't even be restored in time for its 300th anniversary in 2003. As gorgeous as it is, as wonderfully grand, its frayed at every edge. Michael Epstein wrote about the heavy iron doors taht are the porticulus to every russian domicile and stairwell as being the only way the soviet could define his space and keep out that world, at the same time, keeping in his world. These doors fascinate me when contrasted to the more ellegant but disintegrating wood and glass doors of the university buildings, There are iron doors there too, don't get me wrong, iron and concrete, marble and granite seem to be the load stones upon which this city is built, but the forgotten places, those taht are still functional, are left to the erosion of the elements, and that to me seems like an irreproduceable beauty....

udatchey vsem!

Russia - "You speak very good Russian..."

I've heard that phrase before, its not unusual and I guess for a foreigner I do speak decent russian. Its a site better than Parker's thick accent but he actually knows and understands Russian grammar rules, well some of them. I just have more practice conversationaly. But we'll get to that in a moment.

I'm not sure where the days begin and end anymore. I don't remember what I did when I woke yesterday or when I actually woke. I'm thinking it was late, I don't remember. That's the problem, everything is just one long period of light into faux dark and back to light... that's the problem here, but you already knew this.

Right ok, so now its all coming back to me. I went to the theatre after waking up late and having a snack in the cafe, then coming here. Well I'm back here, but its been a long 24 hours with little sleep and high adventure on the Russian seas.

So the opera... the Marinsky theatre is gorgeous. The celing has cherubs and muses dancing in a ring around a three tiered crystal chandelier that glows and defracts light emanating from its center. There are three kingly boxes, stage right and left, and one in the center of the first tier which I can only imagine was occupied by the czars and czarinas that sat there. The theatre itself houses artifacts and pictures going back many years and feautres displays of the Kirov ballet. We sat on the highest tier, on benches that were brutally uncomfortable. The only perk was that we were closer to the air con. I can only imagine how stuffy that place would have been a hundred years ago with canldes for illumination.

I didn't know the story of M. Butterfly going into it. I had heard the music and loved the arias but never read the libretto. Somethings you don't have to know in any kind of wrote form to understand. The stage was set minimally and the floor had a high laquer finished that made it look like water. There were Japanese styled gondolas floating across the stage and the back scrim was always the solid color of pure emotion. It went from the red of passion to the blue of night and the purple of betrayal. The drape that went across this lighted scrim would go at angles, dramatically cutting out the light so that it seemed the stage had a bend to it other than the rake from rear to foot. The costumes were gorgeous with masked individuals and a whole parade of geisha. Yet, as far as stage set, it was minial, at times larger pieces where whelled out, but the majority of the action took place on a minimally set stage with two walkways that enhanced the feeling of both courtyard and seashore. The finale of the third act was breathtaking and received a standing ovation from the audience. The orchestra, directed by Alexander Pechkin, soared in a flurry of strings and reeds as our heroine was accosted by three figures. One of them took the sleeves of her kimono and held them out while the other two tied a red sash around her abdoment tying it in back. Her head was kinked back in a pen-ultimate ecstacy. The figure on his knees released her kimono sleaves and the two that tied the sash held her by the wrists as he unsheathed a tanto blade, stood and placed it in her palm. The rear curtain went up to reveal a blood red scrim with a sun hanging in the middle: a yellow corona and a black center. And slowly she walked toward this not quite setting not quite rising sun under the blood red sky and as her lover came running out to stop her in vain, she plunged the kinfe into her sashed abdomen and fell to her knees, an arm stretched out toward the sky in a lingering and hanging crecendo of agony that finally stopped to a thunderous aplause as the house went insane. She was magnificent. We were on our feet. This was the premier and it was perfect.

I almost feel like stopping here but I'll press on... There was a general consensus that food was necessary. I went to the hotel with the rest of the kids after procuring some rubels from the ATM at the tinkoff brewpub near my hostile. This is the only restaraunt in St. Pete's that requires you to pass through a metal detector. The entrance is guarded by rather large brootish looking gorillas that have sizeable bulges under their arms, but its the nearest ATM, and the sing that reads "No guns, bombs or fiery explosives" always makes me chuckle.

Funds in hand I met the rest of the crew to a flurry of phone calls. Did I mention I was on "Notchnoy Dazour?" Yeah, I was the night shift. We had a large group of participants hanging out at club Gribojedav (like the canal but different). Jennifer Davis, an expat that lives in ST. Pete's, does these avante garde rock and roll and jazz tours for the program. She plays in several bands, had a show that night at this club which is sometimes called "The Bunker" as its in an underground bunker with a patio on its roof, which is at street level or just above. The club is near the Moscow Metro stop on the other side of town. Its a good 40 minute walk, or maybe 30, and the city was still realing from the graduations of both military and civilian schools. We took two taxis with the group from the opera that wanted to go (no food for me *sigh*). I didn't mind as I wasn't planning on drinking, and I didn't, a liter of beer and a shot at this point has the effect of curing my thirst, nothing more. We arrived to find our group downstairs. The cover was 200 rubels, almost 7 bucks, pricey for this town.

The music was wonderful and the joint reminded me of the basement of DV8 where Spundaes, when it was first being thrown, was held on 2nd & Harrison in SF (now a furniture store.) I moved form the upstairs, meeting an expat expat, russian girl who lived in chicago and moved back to moscow named Jhenya, down to where the real debauchery was happening near the bar on the lower levels. Evntually I found myself on a tiny, sweaty dance floor twisting to deep and funky house music reminiscent of felix the house cat, or jay-j. I danced for nearly two full hours taking short beer breaks to cool myself down. I must say, they're particularly bad dancers here, or maybe it was the lack of oxygen and room. That's beside the point, everyone was having a genuinely good time and that made me ecstatic.

The night wore on with discussions about Kenyan writing, poetry, poetics, the world's obsession with Uranium (Fiona is working on her thesis which is a book about Uranium.) The fuzball table is incredibly popular in this country and people congregate around them like there's no tomorrow. Its hot action on the fuzz.

Around 2 in the morning people began to go home and Tanya arrange taxis for them as they piled out 4 to a car. At first she was ferrying them home in groups of three and riding herself, but that was proving inefectual, so we just shooed them out of the club. Our kenyan friends decided they were heading to Datcha, that fucked up little club that is nothing more than guranteed trouble! By this point there weren't many people left at the bunker, and the rest could be hanlded by Tanya. I looked at Parker and said, "they're going to datcha" he replied "well man, do you want to stay here and let Tanya go there or do you want me to go with you over there?", hesitantly "i think we need to go there man, they're a big drunk group right now."

Parker and I headed back to the hotel in a gypsy cab. When I got in and asked the price he said "give me a sensible sum" I gave him 150 rubles to take me back to the other side of town with three others in the car. We took the griffin bridge to Datch and found our mates inside, drunk and drinking more. I stepped out cause it was too too packed and I didn't feel like dancing to the beastie boys, although sung with a russian accent by a bar full of drunk Russians, it really does take on a new life. As I step outside, I see Billy, one of the Kenyans being led away by the "oxrana", my first thought, SHIT!!! Martin is staning next to me and I tell him to go get Parker now!

I run across the street and begin to speak to the security guard who is leading one of my participants away. I ask him what the problem is he says: "Ohn rashuronya". I'm not entirely sure what this means, but he asks me who I am and what I'm doing. I tell him I'm responsible for him and a large group here at Datcha and that I would like to be of service as he speaks no Russian and is a little drunk. I still don't know what's happened. The security guard tells me he's broken the law and he's called the cops, they are on their way. He keeps saying something about doing something but he's not being specific. The guy asks billy for his documents, like an incredible genius he has his Spravka from the university (Student ID), a copy of the visa page of his passport, but guess what, no front page with his picture and name!!! Great, problems just keep compounding.

The police arrive and asecond black fatigue clad security guard comes out. "Ohn rashurony, ti zdes nechev nemoshish delat... "

"But listen he's one of my students, I'm resposbile for him. We have classes tomorrow"

"Well there's nothing you can do says the guard"

Parker runs up to me. I tell him, they're taking him to the drunk tank for the night and I don't know what for. Parker says, dude, I don'tw ant you to, but someone has to go with him, I hand parker my jacket and ask him how much money he has, he hands me 1500 rubels and I walk over to speak to the captain while parker rings Misha who knows some high ranking people.

"This isn't your crime, why are you concerned."

"I'm responsible" I tell him.

"Well he's borken the law, maybe he can do this in Kenya, but not here. Its not serious but we're going to take him."

"I'm still not clear what he's done."

"On rashuronyi"

"listen, how can we settle this?"

"you can get him from precinct 27 tomorrow"

"I understand, but I rather just take care of it now, there's a fine right?"

"Yes, he will stand before the judge and have to pay a fine. By the way, you know your russian is quite good, where are you from?"

"I was born in Tashkent, but grew up in the USA. My mother says I speak like a child in a kitchne"

we all laugh at this point, and parker is saying that he has Misha, our director, on the phone and he would like to speak to the cop. The cop doesn't want to talk to him and begrudgingly takes the phone bu thte connection is bad and he looses him.

"So this isn't your problem, go back"

"I understand and I'm very sorry but I can't go back without him. His passport is in the hotel, its 500 meters away from here we can run and get it."

"Thats not the problem. Ask him how much he ahd to drink"

"Billy how much did yuo have to drink?"

"3 or 4 beers"

"he had 5 or 6."

"I can't smell alcohol from him, ask him why he pissed on the wall"

BIG FRIGGIN LIGHT BULB GOES OFF AND I'M TEMPTED TO LET THEM TAKE HIM...DUMB BASTARD COULDN"T WAIT FOR THE SINGLE JOHN AND SQUIRTED ON THE WALL!!!

"Well then I apologize for his being and idiot, but I still think we can settle this here and now"

"Well you see everything is on video tape and the security guard will have problems tomorrow"

"I respect that and that you have a job to do but I will make it worth your while."

"Everything is being recorded above." pointing over my shoulder.

"Then I suggest we all walk around the corner, it looks like you're doing your job and I will settle the fine there." The bit about the security camera was bullshit... and here's why.

"Come with me, lets talk about how we can settle this..."

"Sure thing"

Five minutes later I'm having a $55 dollar handshake with the captain thanks to the money parker handed me and taking billy away, advsiing him if his penis ever comes out again, I will hack it off myself... period... piss your pants is what I told him...

I paid my first bribe to a russian cop... what a night.

I fell asleep around 7am... today, as payment for a job well done. Parker, Burke and I went to a Banya, whipped ourselves... with birch and sat in a sweedish saune, drank sweet kvas and ate dried salted squid... it was just what the doctor ordered... I'm heading to the garden and have three minutes left...

Dad happy father's day again...

e vsem... udatchey!!!!

Russia - Warm days are here...

Its warm, actually its bordering on hot. The weather turned around in less than forty eight hours. I missed it. Actually, I'm hoping that this gorgeous day will hold through until tomrrow when I go to Peterhoff. I slept most of today. I was exhausted, well wasted would be a more accurate description but not completely from alcohol. Everyone here in this program reaches a point, veteran or not, that they just need to catch up on sleep. I hit that point last night.

A brief synopsis as time is scarce, I need to eat and then head to the Marinsky Theatre for M. Butterfly, stopping first at the Synagogue as I think the one on the other side of the street from the Marinsky is the oldest in St. Petersburg.

I couldn't sleep a wink on Thursday night. It was terrible. I woke, came here and posted and then set out on a walkabout about... I went to the Michalevsky castle where an exquisite collection of russian sculpture from the 20th century was on display. The throne room of Paul the 1st was beautiful as was the 18th century painting of his coronation.

From the palace I strolled through the Summer Gardens, (today would've been the day, alas) and took pictures of the long tree lined paths and the gorgeous statues that dove tail bushes and trees. There's a large monument to Krylov who translated Aesop into Russian and wrote many of his won fairy tales. The base of the statue is wreathed in the animals he created, his imagination, molded into bronze. There's one figure that I couldn't tear my eyes away from: a monkey clutching a cello, coming out of the base, screaming. I was enamored of him... not sure why... maybe because he had such a life like look in his eyes, or maybe that simian/human link, not sure, but he fascinated me.

From the gardens I crossed the Troitsky bridge and walked down to where the Aurora is moored, it was closed, so I took some picks of the old battle cruiser that Lenin sailed down the Nevya firing on the witner palace to kick off the 20th century's communist revolutions. I made a U turn and walked to the Mosque, which too was closed... DAMN!!! Denied, twice, between the gorgeous weather that went overcast and these two closures I was definately verkakt!

I headed back down the Troitsky and into Mars Field to see the eternal flame to the fallen heroes of the soviet union in defense of Leningrad. Mars field is gorgeous and a little desolate, you feel a little like your on Mars. It reminded me of Brenda's poem Mars Field Speaks to V. Vvedensky. From the field it was a hop skip and a jump across a canal to spilled blood, and finally, after a year of waiting, I made inside the massive doors of "Spas Na Krovi" WOW! Can I say that again? Do I need to whip out the HTML tags to emphasive the WOW?! The inside is covered with mosiacs depiciting the bible, the birth and ascencion of Christ. Its massive, its gorgeous, its breathtaking and I shot an entire roll in there... Its unbelievable. To think that this church was in complete disrepair and never fixed following the war which featured a massive shell piercing a 6 square meter hole in the largest kupula. Reconstruction started in the 1970s, it was used as a storehouse for a ballet at one time as well. Finally, in 1997, restored to its original glory, the mosaic frescoes rebuilt, it openned its doors and its glory to the world. its very impressive, which also makes me curious now to see St. Basil's in Moscow as I think it was you Zach who said that Spilled Blood is more impressive.

By this time I was exhausted, completely and thoroughly. I mean trashed. I went to sleep for two hours, the dogs, my footsies, were barking loudly. I woke up and then went to the student reading... Sam Amadon was brilliant. From there it was dinner at zoom, then some running about, mobile calls and confusion trying to round up stray sheep and it was off to the waterfront for the party. All the high schools graduated last night. It was a zoo!!!!!!!!!!! There were fireworks over the Admiralty and Peter Paul Fortress, we sat at the beer garden nearest the Dvoretsky Bridge and drank beers and talked loudly as the crowd thickened with revellers... from there it was a split decision between Fort Ross and the club Red Line, I opted for the quiet of Fort Ross, after a few hours and a trip to KFC with some hungry people that wanted an escort, it was finally to bed at 5am.

Now I'm up, I'm hungry and off to get some Pelmene before the opera... mas later...

I have some stuff to put up that I've been scribbling... I hope everyone is well at home...

udatchey vsem!

Russia - A Tale Of Two Cities

This is later than I normally post but I was exhausted this morning and running on very little sleep. We had a very late late night last night and I was charged with opening and tending the office for the first two hours this morning. I was there, corporeally, not so sure about my head though.

Yesterday started wonderfully. After I posted I went to the church of Catharina Aleksandreavna. Its a large catholic church dating back to the early 19th century. The inside was gutted by fire in the 80s and it was since rebuilt. Sadly, the 200 year old frescoes were destroyed. There are brick altars that still show the signs of fire and destruction. I sat and talked with the woman who ran the place, she was selling beezwax canals. She told me the history of the church and talked to me a bit about the other Catholic Churches in St. Peters.

I left the church an headed down the Gribojedeva hoping to get into Spill blood-- CLOSED! Cerado! Zakrity! Well that's just my luck. I swear I'm getting into that place before I leave this time. I seem the have the dumbest luck there. Its terrible. I listened to a couple old men singing and playing accordion on one of the bridges. The singe had a gorgeous voice and the songs probably dated back to the time of Lenin or before. They were very old Russian tuns, probably military as both of them sported their medals. I dropped some money in the accordion case and then two hoods came up and began to harass the guys. I think they were trying to extort money from them. I was going to take their picture, I tend to ask before I take them, but once the thugs made it on the scene I backed off... I walked down the canal and passed a ballet school where a piano was banging out something that sounded like Tchaikovsky and the voice of the ballet teacher boomed from an open window. I could only imaging the terror of the tutu clad teenagers as they were criticized for everything from their posture to their grace. Still, there was something charming about the whole experience.

Back to the hotel with haste I went and wound up meeting James for the Dostoevsky Crime & Punishment walk. There was only one othe person who came on the walk, Karen. We started by an embankment on the Gribojedeva where Jams set th scene an conundrum of coming to St. Petersburg an wanting to see Dostoevsky's St. Petersburg. It doesn't exist. You must be asking yourself, what do you mean? It doesn't exist?! That's absurd! I think so too, but you're also thinking with a western mind. Dostoevsky was detested by both Lenin and Stalin. He was, in his own time, pronounced dead as a writer. Although in the west he has been hailed as a genius, a paragon of not only Russian letters, but literature the world over, he was not as beloved here in Russia. St. Petersburg played host to throngs of writers in the 19th century. They were everywhere. There were dozens of them. The city built by Peter the great, facades with courtyards, long perspective lines, was also a major bureaucracy and it needed clerks to run it. Lots of them. These clerks were amazing; they spoke four to five languages, wrote and did translations. Once the serfs were set free, people fooled the cities from the countryside. Petersburg swelled in its population and also in its brain trust. Gogol was here, self loathing, self hating, a short small man who burned his own manuscripts and thought of himself as a poet and not a novelist. Pushkin's legacy was live and well in both stone and paper from the bank of the Nevya to the Catherine palace outside the city limits. This was a place where writers lived, work, live and died. Although in our western mind Dostoevsky is Russian literature along with Tolstoy, the concentration of writers would make your head spin.

Now, taking that background into account, consider that the walk we went on never existed. The quarter of the city, just beside Sennay Square and the old hay market id indeed exist an th street on which Roskalnikov lived had over 14 bars and 18 brothels in a two block stretch, is a figment of one man's imagination. Fydor was very observant he would walk through the neighborhood muttering to himself. He would move often for he wrote about the places he live and exhausted the creative anima there and would need more inspiration thus he had many flats around the city. St. Petersburg is not only a real place, a place that carries the mythos of Russian literature, but is contextualized by western preference. We forced Dostoevsky back on Russia. When James came here 5 years ago to do research there were no maps that listed Dostoevsky's St. Petersburg, it doesn't exist, yet it does in a universe west of this place.

We left the embankment and made our way up the street to the house where a plak hangs announcing that Fydor wrote Crime an Punishment there. From there we crossed the street and went into a dvor (courtyard) and through an open door, to the top of a staircase that would have been where Roskalnikov lived. The walls at the top are covered with grafiti saying repent, forgive, Roskalnikov lives, murderer, we believe in you Dostoyevsky. The owners/occupants paint over it, but it doesn't stop. The graffiti is in 12 or more languages. Its everywhere. The mythos of that apartment, of a fictional character transcends both language and culture, yet here maybe its taken a little for granted.

Yes, I took pictures.

We left the flat and moved down the street and around the corner to the Pawn Broker's flat where the murder takes place. During soviet times, Stalin was hosting some cultural visit from some noteable scholars. They were so ashamed of soviet poverty that they installed Brass Knobs on the stair case that lead up to the flat. Some were still there, others were missing.

The stairwell is much cleaner, its not quite the cult locus as with R.'s flat. (aside, wow I love the tunes here, thy are playing a remix of Scottie Deep). From the pawn brokers flat it was back onto the gribojeiva for James' closing thoughts on both the impact of the novel in the west and what we just experience.

There's a quote from big D. I can't remember the whole thing but he said something like this: respect life. All inspiration should come from life for its far richer than the imagination. Trust life he said.

With that in mind we set out for dinner at Zoom. The food is still quite good there.

*****

7am the next day.

I had run out of time the day before and I decided that rather than buy more time and go back I needed food. It was off to the brick for tsatzivi and xachapuri. Back to my tale of two cities.

*****

Zoom offers one a relaxing atmosphere, relatively good service, wonderful ambiance and a generally great place to be. The menus are card catalog drawers. Every dish is on a notecard in the drawer. I could picture a joint like this in Hayes Valley in SF. James and I were joined by Andy, a participant that decided last minute to arrive early. Unfortunately housing is tight so he had to find his own digs until the second session starts and we can move him into the hotel/hostel/dorm.

After an hour or more of smoking drinking beers and general discourse concerning education and how people learn James and I left Andy to work on his book and we went back to the office. We stopped off at the hotel to drop off my camera. Tom met us in the office lobby and said we were off to Cynic. What's cynic you ask? Well let me tell you. If one was to take Kazanskaya Ulitza down to where you can see St. Isaac's Cathedral you would run into a short bit of street till it hits the giant square that in Dostoevsky's time lacked St. Isaacs. It was a massive, massive square that parallelled the massive city in which it resided. Half way up the first block one runs into an archway that leads to a dvor. There's a small sign that's easily missed, I didn't see it. But below the sign is a wooden door. I would call it pile of wood more than a door, but low and behold, a narrow set of stairs ran you down into the cellar and into a breakbeat haven of young kids. The tables were picnic style benches of wood with green metalic legs. The benches pulled out. They served Baltika No. 7 (quickly becoming my favorite beer in Petersburg.) After a liter or so the tap ran dry and we had to switch to Tuborg, also not bad. Our party consisted of Sarah, Crystal, Masha, Tom, James, Natalie and David. We spent a good hour to two listening to breakbeats and talking. I was feeling rather tired from the previous nights revelerie, but that's the funny thing about steady beer consumption: it wakes me up given enough of it. The alcohol kicks in and as long as I keep adding coal on the fire the locomotive keeps chugging right along.

Eventually another group of Americans sat down at another table (seemed quite the popular and out of the way place with the foreigners.) A large contingent of our party was on their way and eventually they arrived surly, hungry and ready for havoc. We moved to the back room which at that point was empty for lack of easy sitting and benches. Then more arrived but not before I managed one good glass of absinthe... man that was ridiculously strong. Some pour it over sugar allowing it to disolve. I took the sugar, dipped it in the glass letting the liquid creap into the white crystals turning them emarld green. I took my lighter and set it on fire watching the blue alcohol flame as it slowly cooked the sugar. I stirred it into the drink and then knocked it back... I don't like anis but I did like this.

The night continued on with sevearl shots of vodka, a den of smoke so thick you could play football with the whisps that fell to the ground, or trampel them into what seemed a thousand year old stone floor. We cavorted, moved about and told each other lies that strangers tell when feeling an immediate intimacy for no other reason than they're both strangers on a train.

Time doesn't matter in this city and I couldn't tell you what time James got up stating he couldn't stay there anymore. I stood with him as I had been nodding off feeling the weight of countless liters of beer, vodka and the green devil. We left the bar and then went on another walk. This time we were in the throws of the drink but filled with a certain hope. The fresh air filled our lungs and our pace quickened as we walked past St. Isaacs heading for the Nevya. It was very late, but in this part of town, between the Dvortsky and Troitsky bridge, the party was just getting primed. I know it was before 1:30 both bridges were still down. We passed the tribunal where Dostoevsky was tried before being sentanced to a mock execution that was stopped at the last moment and he went into exile for 10 years in Siberia. Through the garden and behold, there we were before the statue of Pushkin's Bronze Horseman. We stopped admiring it as a token of living literature. It was almost too much to take in.

We turned right at the river and headed up the street watching the people as we swam next to each other in a one sided alcoholic haze. I was happy that I had very little money on me. If we were stopped by the cops the shakedown would be cheap. As we neared the Dvoretsky bridge the corwd thickened with revellers. Somewhere near the walkway across the bridge a girl materialized in my slightly blurred vision, a fire dancer that was twirling two balls of flame against the white night sky that had darkened to its most purple hue. From somewhere drums sounded and it felt like I had stepped out of Dostoevsky's world and crossed the atlantic, the great divide and the rocky's and wound up in a burning man festival. This night was too amazing. On we pressed into Revolution square infront of the Hermitage and starred at the white columns of the castle ablaze with lights. The square was filled with motorcycles and people doing tricks here and there. We passed through a vaulted arch and out onto Nevsky Prospect turning right to head back to Kazanskaya when we hit paradise.

Are you ready for this? Positive? Cause I'm not sure I can tell you, but hell, I must, right? Viva la KFC!!! Oh yes... there's nothing like KFC at two in the morning hell bent with 19th century fire in your veins. The sweet smell of the colonel's chicken hit us with a vengence and we felled our bellies swell with hunger and the desire for something other than our liquid diet. We walked inside and ordered a couple sandwhiches and fries, pepsi no ice. (You don't want the ice in this town, its made with tap water and giardi lives in the taps.) I must say, or maybe its the absinthe and vodka that says this, but them fries were mighty tasty.

My cell phone began to explode. It was Burke. He was back at the mini hotel and wanted company. He called us three times while we were there. We stood, content with our walk, our tour, our score and proceeded back to our residence. We found Tom behind his keyboard with a bottle of Stolichnaya on his desk, sealed and three shot glasses. After spending the night drinking Ruskiy Standard Platinum my stomach turned at the notion of powering down Stoli at room temperature. We did, a couple shots later we went to bed, after hearing one of his short stories of course.

A knock on my door fifteen minutes after laying my weary head down roused me from my bed and my smoke. James and I were trashed but I would quickly sober up. One of our participants had been walking back from Datcha with two other people. A group of three seperated them and he was cornered alone like a wilda beast. The lifted him over the edge of the griffin bridge threatening to throw him into the water. During the commotion they removed his wallet, put him down and made off. Another group of three, probably with the first party came by and advised him not to call the cops and then too vanished. The other two caught up to him and they proceeded post haste back to the office. He was unharmed, shaken, but unharmed. The loss of credit card and money was minimal at best. He related this story to us in the hotel, he was still emotional, but we gathered around him and tried to let him know it was ok and that we were all happy he was safe. This is the first such incident in the history of SLS. People have had their wallets lightened by the cops, that's just life here, but never in this manner.

The next day (Thursday) Misha anounced that a group of thieves had decended upon downtown and had been robbing people left and right. He also advised the group gathered at the Petrovas & Dee reading to avoid Datcha. Between getting stopped there and the dark lanes one needs to take to get back to the hotel, its just a bad idea. I couldn't agree more... tis a tiny place that gets so packed you spend most of your time on the street anyway. I much rather sit in the beer garden all night, or at the brick under the blue light, which we did last night. It was an all nighter at the brick listening and dancing to jazz and blues. The time and space vortex made me think back to last year's jazz festival: sitting in this town, with no real sense or desire for time, listening to timeless music, its something that will never leave me. I didn't drink that much last night, mostly just beer... staying away from the vodka. I wish I had. I came home and from having slept late into the afternoon yesterday, my sleep pattern is totally off. I might have fallen asleep for an hour, but woke and couldn't get back to sleep. I finally roused myself and came here to kill time before breakfast, and the openning of the Atryum so I can get some more rubles. Then I think I'll walk for a few hours to burn some energy, take a nap and it will be off to the Nabokov museum for the open mic, Fat Pete's Wordshack as its come to be called over the years.

Some folks are trying to rope me into going to Maralyn Mansom with them on Monday night as translator, I'm not so sure I want to, and I may have to work that night anyway, I'll be on night patrol then (notchnoy deezhour). But anyway, that's still several days away and I'm hard up for sleep, so that may determine my schedule more than anything.

So I'm going to say adieu, shislivo, goodnight and goodbye for the time being...