Useless Worries #2

The part about cleaning
constantly, cleaning
before leaving, anticipating
the return to clean
is nothing shy of who
will clean when I die
and if I should leave
kitchens and sinks
replete with morsels
abandoned and something
that seems sedentary
like I lived here once
and the crows above
fighting with gulls
and the daffodils
unwattered bamboo shoots
stalk green to brown
will somehow wilt faster
far away, where I can't
quite imagine the way
it might be, after I'm gone
dust born bunnies
will choose the breeze
that best suits
through the open crack
meant to freshen the air
allowing for circulation
through the domestic
organisms will surely
breed out of control
and the germ-fare
fantastic born colonies
will leap and cause sedition
among the fruits
everything will start
the lambic dance
while inanimate
objects will memorize
and provide direction

Useless worries

In the end I'm actually afraid
that I'll die in the fall,
loosing an hour when I was born,
in the spring, I'd have time
enough to write the last chapter,
read the last one written,
and maybe play that game
with petals and flowers,
the one that magic eight balls
were meant to replace
so that the 20th century's need,
for every mess to be hidden
until it can be written, back
into existence in an op-ed
after it stales on the front
page, of this or that local rag
comes to bear fruit,
it either is or it isn't the case
when counting leap years
that the best ones are common place,
and I'm afraid that death'll come
between the fours, and I'll miss
yet another olympiad when we all
feel something like kings,
watch the critics make critics
of us all and that instant
expertise evolves us into tyrants
on the couch, I'm afraid
that there'll be dishes left to do
and that I'll still never have
owned a nice new car that purs,
like she might've been a brand
name, or else I've thought about,
spending way more than I had
the means beyond which I worry
about useless shit and wane each day,
that I've grown closer to knowing,
when exactly it is I'll die.

Rituals of Truce & the Other Israel (Reviewed)

If you're interested in the middle east, specifically what's going on there, then you should read Benjamin Hollander's Rituals of Truce & The Other Israeli, but you should start with Khaled's review of it which can be found here in the Palestine-Israel Journal.

This was my take on it when I first read it...

This is a book, this is not a book. I think Magritte would agree with me when saying this about Benjamin Hollander's work. One part citation, one part recitation, one part interior monologue, one part exterior dialogue makes for a complicated read that asks questions that are begging to be asked. However, in asking the important questions about conflict, the writer and the book take into account that the solutions may not necessarily exist in the current discussions about the conflict, but rather in asking fundamentaly different questions. There's a tension that can only be called frustration over a problem that is at once local and foreign. It's as if the book and its auther are refugees from each other and are searching for nothing more than a mode of communication regarding something that has pages and pages of preemptive "essays" in anticipation of the dialogue. How, in this kind of atmosphere, where the opinions are formed and declared before the discussion ensues, are answers to be found? At this point, it's safe to say that the conflict in question is the Israel/Palestine crisis. This book doesn't claim to be the spawn of a Jimmy Carter peace effort, but rather an intriguing inquiry into a problem that has been fought within the context of a stalemate. If you are looking for a political diatribe you will not find it here; however, if you are looking to read something that is fresh and invigorating, something that posits a problem outside of the normal battlefield in which you can't see the hills from the craters, then read this book. Even if you don't know what the green line is, or why this latest intifada broke out, you will gain a perspective outside of our sound bite culture into the possible rituals of truce that exist beyond the assumed positions of friend, foe and other.

A few more pictures

Just going over stuff... finding more pictures that should've been put up... go look...

The Last Days...

In past years I’ve been really bad about posting the “last days” of my trip, but I thought I’d write a closing thoughts or summary of what happened and perhaps even how I felt after the trip. I mean I didn’t write a post home after my first year at the program where I drank till the moment I left and suffered from the absolute worst flight in my life, sweating beer and vodka all the way across the Atlantic and North America until we touched down in Seattle where I thanked the powers that be for depressurization and cursed the authorities of Seattle’s airport for confining smokers to a 6x9 foot square on the lowest level of the multi tiered structure. No I didn’t write about that or how on the drive to the airport I saw a dead body on Moskovsky prospect, a woman lay there between police cars in a pool of blood and how it seemed that either she had been shot or brutally hit by a car. I omitted these details and the fact that St. Petersburg bid me farewell that first year by saying: “your romantic notions are just that, and here’s the grim reality of being mortal.” No, my love affair with the city didn’t end there, but every year I find another reason to hate and love the city all at once. That first year, I hadn’t seen the sun actually rise in two weeks as the buildings obscure the “act” of sunrise, but that morning, when I reached the airport and found the door to the domestic terminal check in and registration locked, I stood outside on the 2nd floor of Pulkova and smoked a cigarette staring at a ball of crimson fire in the sky and how the pool of blood on the road and this cosmic event seemed to be a mirror reflection of the microcosm of human existence. No, I didn’t write about any of this, or the anti-semitic cab driver who said “Bloomberg (NYC’s mayor), is a bit of a Jew isn’t he?”

The last days of my trip this year weren’t quite as visceral as the previous years. In a strange way, they were the perfect juxtaposition for what I had experienced; you might say that the scales were balanced after this year. My trip with Sergei was fantastic, we started at the Hermitage, the clouds weren’t really cooperating, but it was still a treat to be out there on Aleksander’s Square during the wee early hours of the morning when very few people were out and the DPC (cops) were asleep in their cars, that blocked certain street entrances to the square. It didn’t quite strike me at first how many cops were out on the roads, but as we left the hermitage and began to drive to the small church near the Marinsky theatre taking the long route along the Fontanka canal their presence became an undisputable fact. Every corner had either several DPC’s or young soldiers in camouflage standing guard. The G8 which starts today, was still several almost two weeks away. The city seemed to be undergoing some kind of rehearsal for what I can only imagine is a massive show of force where they will be shooting first and asking questions later.

The street that the small church sits on has a small canal that runs along it. The marinsky is a block or two away. The sky was just becoming right as we pulled up along a sleepy little street. Sergei stayed in his car and I got out and began to take pictures. Every now and then I couldn’t help but look over my shoulder and at the shoddy building behind me with its darkened courtyard entrance. I imagined that some drunken hooligan would come out at any minute and I would have to make the decision of weather to brain him with the monopod of my camera or make a dash for the car. I thought back to last year and how I had visited this church then and been denied access as I hadn’t remembered that I need to wear long pants when going to orthodox churches, even those that are museums and not working churches. I used my telephoto lens to peek inside the church, into its gilded bowels. This year, the sky blue paint, seemed a cold husk against the slowly warming sky that was turning different shades of rose, and the clouds that still weren’t lit from below and hung heavy in their gray lifelessness.

After I snapped a few and stood there staring at the waters of the canal I decided we needed to make a dash for the small rose church, way out near the airport. Sergei lived in a large building, in what he described as a good neighborhood, a few blocks from the church. We arrived to find it sitting there, perfectly picturesque in a setting of gravel and trees and a playground behind it. The church was built in the 18th century to mark the victory of a naval battle. During festival days people flock to it, due to the size the party spills out onto the grounds leading up to the church. It was beautiful and I was happy to finally find this little structure which seemed to be the perfect counterpoint to the massive and heavy domed churches that line Nevsky Prospect. This small memorial chapel with its very simply crown of spires and stripes, and the pink color of its walls, seemed to sit there humbly adorning the trees behind it, waiting for someone to come up to it and acknowledge its beauty. I was reminded of Bramante’s Tempietto of San Pietro and how perfect it is in both size and decoration. What is lost in terms of grandeur like the Pantheon in its classical perfection, is gained in the subtlety of its form, the way it doesn’t impose but makes the eye trace its circular circumference, it makes one desire to see what is on the other side or stand atop the balcony that although held by a round of columns has the appearance of floating.

Once I had my fill of trying to capture the fleeting, and now flat light of morning, we left and wound up at a coffee shop near Kazanskay. I bought Sergei a mocha and he began to tell me stories about “driving” in St. Petersburg. The most memorable was about train tracks. According to him, the driver who pulls closest to the tracks, in an act of bravery, is “the man” (krutoy), and will be the first one to peel out once the train passes. A land cruiser had made its way pretty close to the tracks as a long freight train was passing through. A small Lada , this thing is tiny, made its way through the crowd of cars, skillfully weaving in and out of the lane of traffic and using the sidewalk managed to pull in front of the big shiny new Land Cruiser in a move of total defiance. The guys inside the Land Cruiser took this as an insult and got out of their car and began to beat the crap out of the Lada smashing the tinted window to reveal four passengers. They took out the headlights and riddled it with dents as they had money and thought themselves tough guys. Once they were done they got inside their big shiny car and sat there content. The doors to the Lada opened and four guys with machine guns stepped out of the car, the real mafia. They proceeded to do to the land cruiser what was done to their “fly” soviet ride. As three of them took the land cruiser apart, shooting out its tires, one man stood in front of the car with his machine gun pointed inside the cab. Once they were done demolishing this once shiny and new piece automobile, they climbed inside their newly ventilated ride and drove off… the moral of the story is: never assume that expensive cars are driven by mafia, never assume that cheap ones aren’t.

The next few days were filled with last minute shopping, packing, a trip to the banya with Parker where I watched a replay of the Italy vs. Germany game where the Italians scored 2 goals in the final minutes of the second overtime. It was beautiful, and as I sat, recently baked in the parilka, smoking a cigarette next to other toga wrapped men, we all agreed, it was pretty the way the Italians knocked the Germans out of the World Cup. After the banya we went to the Ukranian joint for a quick bite before the final open mic. Shinok, the name of the restaurant means puppy in Russian, and so we sat, hungrier than puppies staring at the menu. I found something that seemed to fit the bill as I didn’t want eat a huge and heavy meal for fear of falling asleep during the reading. I kept the alcohol intake to 1 beer. The waitress, dressed in a quasi traditional headdress, and the waters in their billowing and baggy red satin pants make the whole theme a bit laughable. Still, she comes over and I order cauliflower friend in egg. Its something my grandmother makes here, and it’s a wonderfully simple and not very heavy dish. A few minutes later she comes out of the kitchen and says that they just served up their very last portion of cauliflower and I needed to choose something else. I ask her “so what else is good here vegetable wise?” She looks at me and says “well the chicken in curry on a skewer is nice.” Aha, so as I had previously thought, chicken is a vegetable. I went with the chicken on a skewer as replacement for my cauliflower.

My departure, on Friday, was fast approaching and there was little time to do anything. I decided that I would take things easy, instead of running myself thinner than I already had, I would just “chill” and take in the sights and sounds. I started packing early so that I wouldn’t be bothered by it on Thursday. Wednesday night turned into a bit of a late, late night at The Datcha. In truth, we hadn’t quite planned for that late of a night, but that’s the way things go. It started something like this: Sam Lipsyte, James and I were sitting in The Office Pub. I asked Misha, the bartender, for one last round of vodkas, were thirsty, what can I say? He apologized saying that they had closed down the register. The way that the pub closes down is this, first they ring the last call bell, then they turn on the lights if they’ve been dimmed, then the TV goes off, then they kill the music, and then they throw you out if you still haven’t left. During the process they put away the register and cash and stop serving booz. The three of us weren’t quite ready to put the axe down and after stepping outside for fresh air and the 30 millionth smoke of the night, we decided, what the hell, two vodkas at Datcha and then we’re done. Ok, so we all went back to the hostel so I could unload the camera, no way was it accompanying me to Datcha without a well built and well strapped security guard. As we were leaving the hostel we heard voices emanating from Nancy and Sarah’s room. We knocked quietly and found the two of them plus Kristin, all in black cocktail dresses, fresh from the ballet. Try as we might, they didn’t want to join us for drinks at Datcha, so we were off… And when we arrived, we found a good number of SLSers dancing the night away at that asshole of a bar. Well we drank, and kept drinking, and drank some more, and danced to remixes of the doors, it seemed to be funk night and the James Brown was flowing free along with Sly and The Family Stone. Ryan was there and he was dancing as if he fell off some lost episode of soul train. We left, eventually, and hit the sack around 6 in the morning, could’ve been seven, I simply can’t remember, and I was the most sober one among us.

I woke the next day and blundered around the hotel, finishing the packing, throwing this and that away, figuring out how I was going to smuggle as much vodka as possible back home, the odds and ends of leaving a place after living there for a month. Sveta called me around noon to tell me that I’m going with them to the Datcha, now I had heard about some staff dinner that was going to take place at a real Datcha an hour outside the city. Originally they told me that we’d be back around 9 the next day, or so I thought they meant 9am, so I had turned down the invitation as my flight was leaving at 11. No, they were coming back around 9, it actually was more like 11 or 12 at night, but that was fine, I wouldn’t of minded spending the night there. So at 4 in the evening I made my way to Gherzen to meet parker. Sveta’s mother, Victoria, and a driver, were there to pick us up. We drove north onto Vasilevsky Island and continued down into the thick of Krushev apartment buildings where we picked up Lana. Now with Parker, Lana and I squeezed into the back of this Lada station wagon, we drove another 30 – 40 minutes beyond the city, into the country, to the home of Edward and Vera Romenko. Vera is the “Dean” of Victoria’s program at the Gherzen. Victoria is a liason for foreign affairs if I remember this correctly. Edward is retired and was our host for the night.

How do I begin to describe this experience? Well I think I’ve mentioned that Datchas are the country residences that Russians with means keep outside the city. Some are small and quaint as in the case of my relatives in Moscow, and passed down generation to generation, and others are more opulent, as is the case with Edward. Their Datcha is a modest 3 story affair that has 3 bedrooms, and I’m sure the dinning room is used as sleeping quarters for large parties, sits on a very nice chunk of land that is planted with all sorts of flowers, fruits and vegetables. Off to one side there’s a banya, and beyond that another datcha that will dwarf Edwards, its probably twice the size, which has an indoor pool and banya in a separate structure. Although that Datcha is beautiful, I like Edwards, with its brick façade and near Dutch staircase that has a vertical angle that makes it seem more like a ladder than anything we know in the west. Parker and I were taken in, shown the house, complete with a Gym, which Edward says keeps him young, and at 70, he’s definitely ahead of the curve. We settled at a table outside with Jenya (short for Jennifer Lopez), Sveta’s dog, jumping and prancing around us. Victoria brought out a plate of freshly cut vegetables that included giant tomatoes, pickles and yellow and red bell peppers, a plate of various salami and home made hachapuri for appetizers. I was terribly thirsty with a wicked cotton mouth, so instead of starting with beer I asked for Kvas, and eventually made my way to the beer. We sat outside with Edward who seemed as if he was sizing us up. He asked us questions, wanted to know how I spoke Russian so well, and we simply sat there having a conversation. He told me that he was a survivor of the blockade of Leningrad. He has a card that designates him as a “blakadnik”. He shows this card to police when they stop him and half of them don’t believe him and ask where he bought the forgery. I can only imagine that this is one of the biggest insults that you could give to someone who lived during the days when food rations were 100 grams of bread per day. If you think about it, 50 grams is 1 shot of vodka, maybe that puts the ration into perspective. His father came home from the front, a couple years into the war, and caught pneumonia and died on the couch. Edward was alone with his mother and would surely have died of starvation if it wasn’t for his aunt who worked for the KGB. They were given a larger food ration and they shared it with Edward and his mother. He said that when you ate bread in those days, whatever crumbs fell onto the table or the floor, you would lick your finger and carefully collect every single crumb and speck of bread dust as food was that scarce.

An hour or so after we arrived the rest of our dinner crew made it to the Datch, driven by Alina and Sveta. After greetings, a beer outside, it was time to dine. We went into the hose to find a long table with five different kinds of vodkas, as many salads, juice, sparkling water, salty goods, everything that I’ve come to know as home, growing up, that my Mother will tell you as a child, my brothers and I would refer to as Russian Torture, that now is ambrosia to me. It was all there, and so we dug in amazed by the variety, the freshness and the absolute pleasure. Needless to say there were many toasts and I was expected to act as translator, alternating with Sveta and Tatiana. Edward doesn’t drink, he kept a glass of champagne that he nursed through maybe one refill during the entire dinner. Yet he was fond of giving toasts, and even more appreciative when you would give one in return. James and Sam both stood, in drunken wavers, and toasted his health. We thanked each him, Vera and Victoria for their hospitality, we drank to friendship between peoples and countries, to good times, to Russia, to America, to peace on Earth and nothing at all. We drank, oh boy did we drink, and we ate. The meal was multiple courses, of course, and they decided to omit the hot fish course, after we had the meat course, and the potatoes before that, and the 2 cold courses before that. We just couldn’t do it anymore, I later found out that Ryan had to purge not because of the drink, but because he had eaten way too much. I know that I was in pain at some point. I made the mistake of coming last to the hot course, had to use the facilities, and being a rather stout fellow, they decided that I needed two of everything. So as not to be rude, I ate it. Danny hardly touched his food and he got an ear full, that “you don’t like it?” Which we nudged him and said eat, doesn’t matter if you’re full, keep eating, you’re eating for those that starved to death during the blockade damn it!

Over the dinner table hung a portrait of Edward from when he was 25. He was bare chested and his abdominal muscles were painted and exaggerated. Edward told us that he was a “master of sport” which is a designation that doesn’t really exist in the states. During the days of the soviet union, all sports, all professional athletes were state sponsored, so there was a designation, a degree if you will, called Master of Sport. Its hard to imagine, but its when you reach such a profound level of skill in your chosen sport that you are given this title. Edward was a weight lifter, not body builder, weight lifter, and as such was a master of sport. He used to pose for artists as a model, after one such session he lined up all the paintings and bought his favorite for 15 rubles. That was a sizeable chunk of change 45 years ago. I asked him if there was a cubist among them, he said yes, and he couldn’t tell if he had painted him or the female model, so he passed over that citing a lack of understanding or appreciation for such styles of art.

We all agreed that spending the night would’ve been an ideal way to digest the food. I mean they pulled out young garlic from the ground, washed it and there we ate it with pieces of salami. It was divine, but alas, it was time to go, so we bid Edward farewell. Sam happened to have a copy of The Subject Steve in his bag and he gave it to Edward, after signing it, as a parting gift. There were pictures, handshakes and hugs. A thousand thank yous to our hosts and then we were off, heading back for the wilds of St. Petersburg. Alina drove like a bat out of hell, I mean this was normal for ST. Petersburg, and Parker and I sang hair metal songs in a drunken haze as we went flying by. To be honest, I put my seatbelt on for the first time in Russia, she made me very nervous… poor Parker, there wasn’t one in the back seat for him to wear, otherwise he would’ve.

So we came back, spent a few hours at the office pub, said boodbye to friends and then headed for the hotel where I set out my clothes for the next morning, put away the laptop, camera and everything else and went to sleep for a few hours before I woke and began the very long trip home. And so here I am home… missing the fact that I could get meat on a stick in any restaurant, that I can buy cigarettes in every restaurant, that beer is once again an alcoholic beverage, that I’m not walking everywhere, that I’m stuck in my car, that I can’t buy vodka in Subway, that the nights are truly dark, and that hitchhiking isn’t an acceptable mode of transportation. These things I miss… I’ll probably always miss them as they’re touchstones of the romance I have with a place that is at once a home I never really knew or understood, and a destination that I know well enough to enjoy and help others enjoy. Shislivo…

The Pictures are Up!

The pictures are all up! You should go see them, they're located HERE

One last post as to the final days will come soon... once I aclimate to this thing called home...

Sergei is coming...

I hired a driver to take me on a cruise of St. Petersbrug at dawn. The goal is to capture dawn in its varied and sumptuous colors. The sky here is a long exapnse broken by massive pancake buildings that the light struggles to overcome. That night that I drove Wendy back to the Astoria, and the driver went down Admiraltastvay, and I saw the sun crest over the top of the winter palace and hermitage floored me. I got the idea to do this then, and I'm finally going to make it happen. There is no way in hell I'll walk these streets at this hour with two thousand dollars worth of camera gear on my back, just not happening, I'm even a little nervous about getting out of the car with gear on my back, hopefully 19 year old Sergei is more of a man than me and will intervene with shit bag cops if the need arises. I'm going to pay him well, we still haven't settled on a price, but he's a sweet kid and picked me up at the airport, and since he's a friend of Katia's I trust him more than most other people. He has an infinitely cool car, called a Moskvich, only 500 were ever made, I'll take a picture so you can see, but its like a volvo, but smaller and sleeker, with tinted windows, a radar detector and a thumpin stereo. I'm going to give him copies of my CDs, just as a little thank you gift, my last ones, the rest have been dolled out... anyway, he knows the pink church with the stripes, I've been dying to find it for three years now, its at the ass opposite end of the city and will take forever to reach by metro, which is closed now, it happens to be near where he lives, hopefully its not skin head central.

I forgot to mention, I saw a cat with a swastika on his forearm, it was very disconcerting... he wasn't a skin head, rather he had hair and was rather handsome, but plain as day, there it was on his forearm with old english script, in German, around it. With what happened to this city because of the Nazis, you'd think someone would've cut this fuckers arm off and shoved it up his ass by now. I went to the siege museum, maybe this is what spawned this tiraed, but anwyay, it used to be 3 square blocks of the city, until Stalin shot the directors, it was started in 1944, before the war and the blockade was fully broken. The city was besieged for 900 days, 1.5 million people were starving and kept the Germans at bay for 3 years. During the first year of the siege the river, from which the Nevya flows, froze over, it was the 100 year freeze and they called it the road of life, as trucks would drive across it carrying supplies bound for leningrad. The last freeze happened during the Napoleonic wars, how very timely and convenient, no? The museum was filled with old guns, propoganda posters, military uniforms, and a display showing how a storng, healthy, atheletic woman, who before the siege was gorgeous and in the prime of life and one year into it, was reduced to looking as if she was in her 60s. It was frightening. Pictures to come of this and more. So based on just this, this reminder of the past, how could someone have a swastika on their arm here? I suppose assholes are everywhere, but especially here, it seems so very wrong. I ran into Resa shortly after this and she said, well, you have to have compassion even for the racists, as its the most extreme people, the ones least worthy of compassion that really test the limits and define an all inclusive compassion, she's right, but I'm not that zen. When I walked into the museum an old woman, one of the "guards" came up to me and tried to speak English, I finally convinced her that I speak Russian and she began to tell me the history of the museum, as I walked furhter back, she would come running up to me to detail how and what happened, it was really amazing, even more startling to find out that she was in 1st grade and remembered it. There's still memory walking this streets, still there, still a heart beats, and still someone cries, somewhere, in the dark of this darless night, for what happened here. I thought back to my grandmother and how her youngest brother starved to death in her arms during the war and just had to sit down for a while, I'm sitting now, and wondering if anything I do here as any real significance or meaning, considering what was done here. Eh... too much and too big for a small body and place.

wish me luck!

Ring down the days...

Time is flying by, this last week is going to be a blur. I've resigned myself to do two more "cultural" things: one more day at the Hermitage, 3rd floor this time, and then a trip to the siege memorial that sits in the giant round on Moskovsky Prospect. The museum is underground, under the giant memorial, and easily accessable by the metro. At this point I've less than 3 days left in Russia.

Last night's concert was good, but strange. Let me explain, when seeing a show in the bay area I expect to be swimming through a cloud of pot, regardless of the act, this is just a fact of life when going to see shows back home. There wasn't a trace or hint of pot anywhere in the ice palace. The concert was undersold, which I didn't mind, we were like 20 feet from the stage and could see the wrinkles on his face. Steve Stevens, his guitar player, is a legend, and has two solo albums that I'm going to pick up when I get home. Stevens played a solo bit when Idol went off stage that started with flamenco, dropped into classical, moved into heavy metal, back to flamenca back to classical and ended with stairway to heaven, all on acoustic guitar. Yeah, he's god-like. The only drawback of the show was, well my right ear hasn't stopped ringing, I think I did some damage. Some of the solos during the 15 minute rendition and finale of mony mony hurt, they were amazing to watch, but they hurt, or rather my ear is hurting because of them now.

After the show, we tired, and battle hardened few, Tanya had to leave during the show, some emergency, we lost her as she went to smoke and we rushed in when the lights went to black, Katia went home after depositing us off at Nevsky Prospect metro station, Ryan, James and I wandered to the office pub where we met Sam Lipsyte and Peter Gizzi. I spent a long time talking to Peter about various things, observations, the city, my work, his work on the Spicer Collections, as he's "the spicer guy" now. It was a good and easily flowing chatter. He eventually bid us all goodnight and I found myself heading for the beer garden, slightly drunk, only to get slightly more drunk with the beer garden gang. I really didn't have that much to drink, like three or four beers and 2 shots of vodka, that's like breakfast here, I think it was the sheer elation mixed with fatigue that lowered my normally superhuman tolerance, and caused me to feel quite "gawn".

So today I went back to the art bazar to haggle for a painting, but the guy that I was looking for wasn't there, he probably was running late. Tom and I went and had a quick bite, went back to the bazar to see if he had arrived, no dice, so we headed to the Gribojedeva Canal and bought nice eurotrash jeans, comfy I might add.

Now I'm gearing up to go to the Banya, just a select and elite troop of people to getsome heat and hopefully relax the tension of leaving, of packing, of the goodbyes and the forthcoming helos... or something like that. A little more shopping to do, one more party to attend, at someone's Datcha, outside the city, Sveta's mom's friend has offered up her place for a staff get together that may or may not go down, if it does, I'll hate life, cause its thursday night and we'll be getting back just about the time I have to be stepping outside to meet my cab to the airport, so, as always, till the last minute, till the last breath of this foul air, rage, rage against the coming of faux freedom back home.

Rebel Yell

That's right, Billy Idol is in town and performing tomorrow night at the Ice Palace, your's truly is off to rock the cradle of love along the blue highway as we're just eyes with a face... wooo hoooooooooooo! Fuck the ballet, its about Vitol Idol!

Ran the participant open mic reading today, Ryan and Ken did a piece with guitar, it was great, turns out they used to run a radio show in San Diego together, it was brilliant, really was... wish we could've recorded it, but the photographs will have to suffice.

Tomorrow I'm not sleeping in till 1, no way damn it, I think I needed it today, but tomorrow I'm going to make a beeline for the defense of leningrad museum and then if time remains, for the Hermitage to do the 3rd floor.

Alright, that's it for now, still bummed about Brazil loosing, but a part of me really wants to see Germany and France in the world cup; its like settling old aggressions methinks.

Paka...

Funny Sign

Before I forget, I stole this off the wall of the bathroom in "The Office" pub. Either they've grown weary of serving drunk foreigners that refuse to leave when the damn place is closed or they really are out of booz, but the sign just killed me:

Dear ladies and gentlemen!

Because of the issuing new bill "About the realization of alcoholic drinks", starting from 01.07.06, and the delays of the bureaucratic apparatus of Russian Federation we can provide you a little choice of the drinks containing alcohol. We bring our apologizes. The quanitty of the drinks will rise up as soon as they appear on the market.

-Administration

hahahahh!

Amsterdam to Moscow to St. Petersbug

I’ve been trying to find a way to talk about Brussels and Amsterdam without breaking the road code. Funny thing is that not much happened, not much that would incriminate me, or cause me any kind of grief per say, still it was an interesting and eye opening experience. I was glad for the company in Amsterdam; Foy took the train with me in the morning from Brussels. He’s spent quite a bit of time in Amsterdam and knows the town inside and out. At one time he worked for Lotus (notes), and would spend 2 weeks in the dam and then four weeks at home.

Before I get into the details of the dam I should back up. The last night of Brussels was absolutely wonderful. We, Dennis, Jennifer (his wife), Greg, Laura, Steve, Madkins, Robin, JD and Foy all went to dinner at our favorite little French haunt in the alley where we had enjoyed three previously successful and gastronomically pleasing meals. The owner recognized us immediately. It was a particularly hot day and the area outside the restaurant was jam packed with people. There was seating for maybe 6, we insisted that we sit outside and so he pushed things around to accommodate our group of surely MAAWGers. I quietly came up to him and said “would it be possible to get a bucket of ice, I’ve brought this Vodka back from Russia and we intend to drink a liter of it with dinner.” He paused for a moment and seemed a little puzzled, perhaps mulling over the ramifications of having a bunch of tourists swilling vodka near his regular patrons. He looked at me and with a half smile and in the thickest and most sonorous of French accents said “Because I know you, I will do it.” With the table set and our vodka found its way into their glass chiller for 5 minutes and then into a bath of ice and water, conveniently located near me, the bar man for the night. Our host gave us 10 tall shot glasses that I filled. The entire table ordered a round of Chimay and we washed down a round of Rusky Standard Platinum with large brimming glasses of divine Chimay and bread with rich sweet and creamy butter. This was the beginning of the end, in a manner of speaking. Our appetizer order was no less extravagant than the previous night: frogs legs, two orders of calamari in olive oil and anis, burgundy snails, crab ravioli, shrimp in a butter garlic cream sauce, the divine monk fish Carpaccio, foirse gras and fried goat cheese with some other delights on the side. For the main course I decided to go with the tar tar, it was high time I had a cannibal sandwich and I trusted this place to serve up a fine piece of ground meat mixed with mustard and herbs. My lump of ground was accompanied by pom frits which were excellent, and of course I drowned them in mayonnaise, but this should come as no surprise as I do this back home. We ordered a round of deserts, then Dennis, Steve and I had Sambuca, they served it to us with ice in the glass, a strange way as I’m used to it lit a blaze to infuse the Sambuca with the flavor of the coffee beans that float in it, it wasn’t bad, turns it milky the way that water turns perenod milky, just different. A double espresso with lemon and sugar to round out the evening and give the stomach a little extra acid for digestion made us all delightfully drunk on food, the warm night and being strangers in a strange land.

From there we wandered up to the bar we went to before, People, as it was called, and Greg ordered another round of Sweet Chateaus, a deadly concoction of vodkas, juices, crushed ice and some other stuff. The floater on top is raspberry vodka that when mixed into the drunk turns it black. There are photos of this alchemical mess on the Flickr page, six of them lined up to do us in.
The next morning I woke and met Foy downstairs. The rest of the conference was to be board meetings and very little pertaining to my job function per say. We headed for the train station and after some difficulty of trying to discern where the hell the Amsterdam train was stopping, found our way to track 13 and headed north.

It doesn’t take long to figure out that you’re in Amsterdam. The city is like a horse shoe that radiates out from the train station. The area directly north is the main hub of the city filled with “coffee” shops, windows and their red neon lights and every other western taboo that you could think of. Not a 100 meters from the train station I passed my first red light and there she was, sitting in a window, in lingerie, smiling at people who passed her and waiting for business. I felt instantly giddy, perhaps not the right word, but trust me, this wore off later, but it was a kind of giddiness because five feet after that came the strong and unmistakable scent of scensimila wafting out of a coffee shop. We headed for the B&B run by Ken & Vlad, that Foy has been staying at, on and off, for years. He went up to drop his stuff, and I headed down and across the Kaisergratt canal to my hotel, Toren. It was very close, and the size of the city became apparent as I walked around. The buildings are narrow, leaning at precariously odd angles. It’s a very small city that Amsterdam and one can get lost and found in the space of a minute. Once you know the canals, you’re set, and can find almost any point you need to go to by way of the name of the canal that you are standing on a few general streets. If you run into any rain track, then you know taking them south should lead you to the train station and or Centrum, the main street that runs out from the train station that the trams run on.

My hotel was lovely, at least the lobby was. The building was several hundred years old and I was greeted by two Scandinavian beauties with thick accents. They told me my room wasn’t ready and that I could leave my luggage and or wait at the bar as it would be no more than 20 minutes or so before I could check into my room. I opted for the bar and called Foy to let him know where I was. I had Heineken on tap, from its homeland, and guess what; it’s the same damn thing. I suppose there must be some consolation knowing that the consistency of the beer is the same wherever you go, but that’s not what I hear about Guinness, if you’re fortunate enough to have it on tap in a pub on the same side of the street as Dubliner’s Gate in Ireland. After a spell I went to my room, dropped of my stuff, left the credit cards and what not in the safe and headed out on the town. The first order of business was lunch which we had sitting at a table right on a canal overpass. As I looked around I was dumb struck by the number of bicycles in town, and everyone rides them. They are strapped to everything that they could be, canal railings, sign posts, trees, anywhere you can park one, one is parked. Bicycles have the right of way in Amsterdam, you make room, and the majority of them are like beach cruisers. I saw a handful of mountain and ten speeds. Everyone from the young to the old rides a bicycle through the city. You’ll see business men, fresh from the office, with their briefcases dangling from the handle bars peddling aside grandmothers in sundresses and girls in miniskirts. People ride on the bars and on the back where there’s a place for goods to be stored and put atop in case you have to carry a large quantity of groceries home. Back in SF we have critical mass, great, yeah, whoop, but here, critical mass is a way of life and even cars make way for passing bicycles. I tell you, it’s the way to go in that city. The trams are great, but a bike is absolutely perfect.
From there it was off to a “coffee shop”, The Cricket, which came highly recommended to me on two continents. The “menu” is hidden behind a two way glass mirror, one hits the big red button to backlight and expose the “specials”. The selection is wide and by the look of it, quite good. And that’s all I’ll say about that.

The rest of the day was spent wandering the canals and streets until we made our way into the Van Gogh exhibit. The 2nd floor is the collection which spans about 100 pieces from different epochs of the great Dutch painter’s life. I saw the sunflowers, right there, in the flesh, or the canvas as the case was. I stood there and stared at those yellows and felt as if sunlight had penetrated the air. The Japanese influenced paintings were stunning. I didn’t know that he was so influenced by wood block cuts, but they were amazing. I contemplated bringing home a print of “The Courtesan”, but decided against it. I settled on a catalogue of the museums collection and some magnets for the fridge, yes I know, I have too many already, but allow me a silly obsession.

From the Van Gogh we stopped for a hot dog, quite good, and then headed to wander around down town, pausing at the flower market, which sells everything from Tulip buds to marijuana seeds. Everything you need for a healthy and vivacious garden of edibles and smokeables can be had at the flower market on the canal. I must say, I never tire of canals, and cities with waterways seem like ethereal places. San Francisco has its ocean and bay side which are nothing short of spectacular, and Chicago has its river which is nice too, but canals, they’re far more picturesque; they offer the very stones that you walk upon the chance to fall in love with another element. It seems like a forced meeting, or bed partner, the earth and the water, channeled, into somewhat straight lines, flowing, transporting, and giving those on both land and water a chance see life through the frame of a postcard every single day. There are houseboats that flank the canals, wonderful and small little dwellings with flowers in the windows bringing everything to life. I’d live on one of those, and probably break my neck in the winter time when the canals turn to ice and the entire city is covered in frozen dog shit. Oh yes, the Dutch are strange, they have a beautiful city, not as dirty, well by comparison as St. Petersburg with its dust and exhaust fumes, but they refuse to clean up dog shit. Dogs do their business and it stays there until some kind of street sweeper comes along to “take out the trash.” I was also informed that Dutch men have a funny habit of pissing in the streets. I didn’t see any evidence of this, but I wouldn’t put it past them with their obsession for dog shit land mines on the boulevards and avenues. The city, in the spring, smells like a giant turd. The dogs shit all winter long, the shit freezes and come the spring thaw, the odor of that shit returns with a pungent vengeance. Wait till summer, that’s all I have to say.

From there it was off to the Anne Franke house which was around the corner from my hotel. We walked through the annex that she described where she lived incarcerated from the world beyond, a prisoner for her own good until her final betrayal and capture. The entire house is tactfully preserved. The rooms where they lived are bare of any kind of furniture, only small objects in cases. The walls she pasted with pictures are still there, with faces of Greta Garbo, Jack Benny, Rita Hayworth and stars of European cinema. Finally, after passing through the attic you come to the notebooks, three volumes, in her own hand, sitting under glass. There’s something so terribly tragic about seeing those three little books that today contain the brief expanse of her life which has continued on well beyond her timely and all too young death. Is Anne unique? No. She’s as unique and anonymous as any other victim, but she left us a story, one of many, and we should respect it as representative of the many stories that were lost and the ones that we know about. I have a hard time going to Holocaust museums and memorials. I hate the one in DC, it’s like Disneyland, it’s pulls on your heart strings and glazes over things, you walk out with a days of our lives kind of spun head full of images without any kind of understand of the bureaucracy behind extermination, the methods, the how and why and shock of knowing that Jews being transported to the camps paid their own way. You’re left with a catered mythology of horror without the understanding of why it was horrible, or how a business was formed around it. It wasn’t senseless and the reasons behind it are the most frightening of all. The Franke house seemed tactful in contrast to DC, I’m curious, when I go to Israel, and see the memorials there, how I will react to them. A statue is one thing, a display; the commodification of that event though is something completely different.

From there it was definitely time eat, a nice meal, simple, with pom frits, and then off to the infamous red light district. How can I describe this? Well its kind of like a never ending spring break punctuated by scantily clad women in windows wreathed with red lights, men in dark corners that whisper “coca, ecstasy, heroine” as you walk and clubs and bars that tout live sex shows. Hard drugs are illegal in Amsterdam, so the dealers who are working the streets are exclusively dealing in hard drugs. There are smart shops, seemingly concentrated in the red light district, that sell magic mushrooms, pre ground tea bags of mushrooms to make psychedelic teas and hallucinogenic truffles, which from an account I heard are somewhat stronger than mushrooms. As with other vices for sale, there are selections and grades and your local proprietor will tell you which are the strongest and most potent.

There’s a famous alley in the red light district that is flanked by windows on both sides. The alley is the narrowest in all of Amsterdam and is so narrow at some points that two people walking opposite directions can not pass through without turning sideways. The women, the more brave, or desperate, depending on your perspective, or the look in their eyes, reach out of the doorways grabbing passerbys to try and coax them into their dens. We walked all over the alleys and after a while, I have to say, I became depressed. I watched as men emerged with a kind of satisfied, if not glorious expression on their faces. I understand the pull, and the fascination, but something in me found it all rather depressing as I kept seeing more and more of the store fronts that had women with rather dower looks in their eyes, expressions of complete disinterest if not a somewhat victimized air about them. Now and again you could spot a man that seemed to be in charge, it was all there, glossy and glowing in red neon, but it was there, the undercurrent of disgust that makes the sex industry a less than glamorous profession. I wondered about the motivations, or rather the reasons that these women were there. From the look of it, the majority weren’t Dutch, so you have to ask if there’s even a choice for them. Every fetish and every kink can be satisfied in those alleys for a price, but there’s a human toll there too and I found it somewhat depressing after a while. Good god! Have I really gotten that old??!

The next day was hectic and devoted to the travel Gods. I ran to catch my plane in Amsterdam, woke up on time, but took my time packing and getting to the train station as there was a lovely breakfast served in the hotel lobby, and for 135 Euro for the night I’d be damned if I was going to pass that up.

The airport in Amsterdam is the largest in Europe, and is very well setup. There are yellow information signs that lead you to your gate, every yellow sign is directional. There’s a meditation center, showers and new age what not in the airport. More shopping in one place than I’ve seen in my entire life. The only part I found frustrating was the very very very long run I had to my gate. I made it on time, and with a bit to spare, but missing that plane would’ve really jacked the rest of the day. The flight was painless; I slept most of the way and woke up the gloom and doom of Moscow. It was raining. I came out of the plane to a 1 hour wait at passport control where, yeah, ya’ll guessed it, I had a problem. It seems as though that when the diplomat at Pulkova issued me the corrected visa to correct the SF consulate mistake, they stamped my passport twice. When I left Moscow I received a 3rd stamp, which closed the visa. The clerk behind the desk called the superior; she came, took the passport and disappeared with it. I began to think about the 200 Euro in my wallet and if that would be enough to bribe the guy to let me through. She came back and said it could be resolved; they wound up cancelling, by hand, one of the stamps and sent me on my way. At this point I wanted a beer, but that was still a ways off.

I changed the Euros and headed through the airport to catch the shuttle. I was flocked by a sea of cab drivers who wanted to charge me 1000 rubles to get to the domestic terminal. I said I wouldn’t pay more than 300, they complained that parking was 200, but the guy at passport control said 300 was a normal price. Finally I got one, we settled on 400 and thank God I decided to take a car for the firs time. Well mostly thank god, his car was parked outside of the bloody airport and to save time, instead of waiting for him to drive in and fight through early evening traffic, I walked with him out to his car, which was a little nerve wracking, I kept thinking this is where I get jumped, but that’s just my paranoia. It was fine, I got in and he started driving, off roading in the bloody lada, on the shoulder, in the other lane, the traffic was terrible and it took seemingly forever to drive the 7 kilometers between the two airports.

I arrived, gave him a small tip for his fast driving and friendly conversation and proceeded to hop in the wrong inspection line. When I finally reached the front, after a half hour, she tells me to go to hall 1, where I spend another half hour trying to get inspected, yet again, to get to the damn ticket counter to get my seat. Finally, with maybe five minutes to spare, and them not allowing me to take my new rolly polly samsonite that I bought in Amsterdam, on board, I get loaded onto the buss and driven to the Pulkova Air airplane. This was the first time I had taken Pulkova. We arrived to a deafening sound of jet engines at full blast as we walked behind them, up a ladder, into the cargo hold, and up another ladder into the cabin. This was the worst insulated plane I had ever been on. Loading took forever, and then we were delayed on the tarmac, again, yeah, we were delayed in Amsterdam as well, but finally, we get airborne and the girls next to me are checking their cell phones, covertly, for SMS messages about how Germany beat Argentina.

My “homecoming” to St. Pete’s wasn’t terribly glorious, but it was good to see everyone, lots of hugs and “how was Brussels?” I immediately put a liter of beer into me and settled on the 3rd to conversations about what I had missed and what was coming up. The night wore on and I decided to leave Tinkov as I was incredibly hungry by this point. Sam Lipsyte and I wandered over to Lima, expecting to meet James there, but he never showed up. We sat and talked over some blintzes, chicken, tea and salad. It was already light again, the nights are getting a little darker now as we’ve passed the solstice, still nothing like what we have back home, but at this point, it was light out, and we made our careful way back to kazanskaya where I said goodbye to him at the Gherzen and I made it back to the mini and had to bang on my door for five minutes until my metal loving room mate took the fucken head phones off and heard me banging, probably waking up the entire mini hotel, drunk bastard that he was.

Today was a terrific day, almost perfect. I ate at Zoom after waking up quite late, sat with Mariya, Jeny and Tom, trying to figure out how to get Mariya out of this country. She’s stuck here, her Russian passport has expired and they are not letting her leave. We’ve tried bribes, this that and the other, no dice. Jenya is taking her passport to Helsinki on a night bus tomorrow, 9 hours, poor thing, her American passport, to try and score a visa over there, and maybe even fudge an entry stamp. This is the only way she can get out. To get a new updated passport, there’s no overnight service here, you have to wait months. She’s in it deep and we all feel terrible. We’ve even thought about having her leave using Jenya’s passport and dying her hair as they do look somewhat alike, but then there’s the problem of the ticket, so we’re hoping the problem can be solved in Finland, find out in a couple of days I guess.

From there I went to St. Isaac’s and photographed its massive dome from the inside taking my time wandering back and forth along the marbled floors and staring at the majestic icons. Behind St. Isaac’s is the bronze horseman, Peter the Great, on horseaback atop a rock. Newlyweds go there in their wedding gowns to be photographed next to the statue; there were a number of them out as the weather was awesome, cold breeze, no humidity and a bright sun shinning down upon our heads. Glorious I tell you. I walked up the river and made my way to the summer garden where more brides and grooms were walking around. I headed in through Mars field, settled near that wonderful statue of Krylov and had an espresso and an ice cream. The garden was alive with artists and I chatted with one after I asked his permission to take his photograph (soon when I get a bloody fast connection). I must’ve spent nearly an hour just wandering through the garden, looking at the Greek revival statues and enjoying the way the light penetrated the trees and fell in mirror ball like spots here there and everywhere. The gardens were once the domain of the czars and now everyone can feel like an emperor just sitting on a bench in the beautiful summer sun, shaded and cooled by a canopy of green to the sound of children playing in the grass. Mothers and grandmothers sit on the benches with baby carriages by their side, the infants are fast asleep, dreaming about Krylov’s fairy tales, or maybe writing some of their own for when they grow up.

I left the garden by way of the front entrance near the Michelevsky palace. There’s a lake there and two swans were enjoying the sun and the water. Children were craning their necks to get a peak at the majestic birds screaming “lebed lebed!” I walked the canals back and found myself behind Spilled Blood in the chach-ka bazaar of KGB shirts, cheaply made lacquer boxes, soviet watches, World War II memorabilia and every other “russified” object that could be sold or bartered. In the very back I found a stall I had never seen, hand made photographs, of the experimental type, and their creator, a crazy artist named Valentine. We spent a half hour talking, I took his picture and he posed and composed the shots using people near him as objects and props, he was truly a character and quite fascinated by the D200. I bought a few of his photographs that I’ll have framed as a triptych. They’re nice, small, pieces, glued to cardboard with Church Slavonic script framing them.

It was finally time to head back, but not until I took the picture of a waxing crescent near one of the onion domes of the church. It was a good day, and I found my way to Cyliko, the Georgian restaurant for fried pork and potatoes with onion, dill, cilantro and massive quantities of garlic, a beer and a cup of tea. I wound up at the office afterward watching the Brazil and France game, the frogs won, not every day is quite that perfect…

Shislivo!