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!
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1 comment:
awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww he's so cute.
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