Moscow take two: 'R' for 'Revolution'

It all started when I arrived at the airport in Moscow this past August after spending the summer in Spain. The plane landed, the passengers clapped and immediately started unbuckling, getting out of their seats and opening the overhead compartments as the plane was still speeding down the runway, and as I watched the tarmac out of the window, then waited in the long and disorderly customs line, got my luggage and made my way through the obstacle-course of people to the train, I just had this really strange feeling of...not minding. It persisted on the half-hour train ride into the city... I gazed out the window, watched the forests and houses fly by in the evening light - I definitely was not bothered at all by being here. Clambering through the metro, dragging my suitcases and being pushed around by the crowds was to be expected, in fact was almost comforting - ahhhh, nothing has changed, transportation and public space are still reliably uncomfortable and infuriating. I was sure it would all wear off (and it still might, come November and the total darkness of all my hours outside of work) but here I am, a month after my arrival, and I continue to be happy to be here and unfazed by the craziness that drove me crazy last year. And for better or worse, this place is captivating - it offers small flashes of truth, humanity, and emotion in the midst of a massive, confusing, heartless scramble for (different kinds of) survival.

Two weeks ago, as my friend Erika and I ran down some stairs and around a corner in a throng of people headed for a metro platform in the sweltering autumn underground, there was an old woman at the bottom, standing quietly in a corner, wrapped in a winter coat, with her hands out. We passed her, and Erika stopped, turned back. The woman started crying when Erika gave her 60 rubles, the equivalent of two dollars.

We exited the metro and made our way to a party at a Russian language school, passed a semi-awkward evening with some nice people and the best intentions to start Russian lessons. I have fantasies of really speaking Russian, of living here and talking to everyone and asking questions, making documentaries, reading books in Russian. However, on a 'gypsy cab' (paid hitchiking, more or less) ride to work on a recent Saturday morning I realized just how much and how little Russian I know. Enough to tell the driver how to get to school, not enough to redirect him when he didn't follow my directions. Enough to say, "Do you have a map?" but not enough to say "I can read the map" when he said he didn't have his glasses. Enough to often understand what people say, not enough to really reply. After a year in Moscow, this is what I know: coffee, milk, water, wine. tea. ice cream. lemon, watermelon, mint. chicken, salmon. 1,2,3,4,5,8,9,10 (have gotten into some trouble with 6 and 7). 100. left, right, straight ahead. here. let's go. why? what? how much? ticket, place, new, old. yes, no. what's your name? I, you, we. map, ocean, airplane, house. to teach, to talk, to want, to look, to love, to understand. difficult. spanish, french, english, russian. train. dog, cat, girl, man, woman. attention! black (black tea). green (green tea). white (white wine). red (red square). city, day, night, year, today, friday. see you tomorrow. excellent. victory. world. books. peace. this. that. please, thank you, me too. good morning, good evening, goodbye.

A big change this year was supposed to come in the form of a car I bought last June before I left for the summer. It would (will!) transform my morning commute from one hour into 15 minutes, for one thing. I left all my documents here to have the paperwork processed over the summer, but I had my license with me traveling, so when I got back to Moscow I went to the U.S. embassy, gave them $4 and my U.S. license so they could get me a Russian driver's license. "Should take two weeks, I think, let's wait three weeks, then I call you," said one of the guys who works in that department (they are all Russian, and all great). I waited four weeks, then called yesterday to ask about it. Answer: "Ahhh, your license is ready. You just have to go to police station any Wednesday at 12:30 to sign paper and pick up license. Takes only 2-3 hours, depends on traffic." Well, that's not so much an option for me, at least until a school vacation. So I figured I should at least get my own license back, and I asked about that. Well, yes... but, he can't find it. Anywhere. I am on hold. I am spelling my last name. I am on hold. I am asking if the police have it or the embassy has it, what does he think? "Miss? I am very sorry." A second guy comes on the phone and says, "Please explain, what is it that you need." So I explain again, I applied for a license, it is ready, I can't pick it up, I just want my original license back. I am spelling my last name again. I say, "R." He says, "R?" I say yes, "R," like in.... (and I'm trying to come up with some normal helpful word that starts with R... I've never had to do this for R...) ... And he says "Revolution?" And I say, "Yes, exactly, 'R' like in 'revolution.'" The rest of our spelling is a success, the license is found, and I'm sure there's a chuckle in both our voices as we say goodbye.

an albatross around my neck... or a canon 50D?

... which, I might add, is an amazing camera that I am happy to have recently purchased and begun shooting with. I brought it with me to photograph the Camino de Santiago this summer as I walked the 700 kilometers between Pamplona and Santiago de Compostela... but then I abandoned the burden of my own expectations to make a photo project out of it, and the extra pounds of camera I started out carrying around my neck eventually got stored in my backpack for most of the trip. And so the Camino was not work, but instead was meditative, slow, with no agenda or ulterior photojournalistic motive. In fact, most of the walking on the trail wasn't captured in photos - from the moment when I decided to pack it in my bag and forget it - a brutal hike uphill in the blazing sun at 2 p.m. in vineyards on red dirt tracks, to the fields of oats and wheat and sunflowers, to most of Galicia: the green, cool, heavily forested and misty northwesternmost region of Spain (though it could be Ireland, you think, walking through it), where the Camino often crosses paths with rivers and brooks, ancient moss-covered stone walls, cattle, and slugs of an amazing size.

And nowhere in photos are the people we met - the aggressively flirtatious and charming Italian guy, the awesome older Italian guy with whom we could barely communicate, the 'German ladies,' the 'Slovak boys,' the Spanish lady who gave me band-aids, the adorable Canadian runner from Toronto (my imaginary boyfriend) whose name I don't even know, hilarious David from New Orleans, Manuel from Valencia with whom we passed a comfortable afternoon of conversation in the shade, the Japanese anthropologist doing her doctoral project on the Camino, the bartenders and grocery-store-owners who answered my questions and gave directions and laughed at us and wished us well. Old people in the tiny towns, with the time to chat, to tell us about their childhoods, about their health care, about how Spain has changed, and to ask about how things are going with Obama. They would stop us in the middle of a street or a field and strike up a conversation - why wouldn't an 80-year old Spaniard and two 20-something Americans have something to talk about?

People in ones, twos, friends, couples, groups of six or seven, strangers who had fallen into walking together, parents and kids of all ages were doing the Camino. One German woman quit her job to do the Camino. A guy from Madrid was on the Camino after 25 years of wanting to do it. Some people had done the Camino five times already. Some were doing it because they had read Paolo Coelho's book, some because they had read Shirley MacLaine's. Michael Douglas has done the Camino and been knighted? Martin Sheen is making a movie about the Camino? Whaaaat??? All this information was shared with us by Spaniards, connecting, with a certain kind of elation, their culture with ours. One old man in a tiny mountaintop town in Galicia (where they speak Gallego first, Spanish second - and, by the way, play the bagpipes) lamented that more people can't speak each others' languages and proposed that we all just speak the same language - why not? he asked, with the utmost sincerity (and quite a bit of pride in his great idea).

The Camino de Santiago is a pilgrimage, and while you can do it for cultural or religious reasons, and while by and large people give you whatever kind of space and acceptance you want, there's a decidedly religious vibe to a lot of the Camino, which is understandable, valid, in fact completely to be expected, but also a little uncomfortable (holding hands and praying over dinner, leaving it up to God's will where you'll sleep that night) if you're not... really... religious. But I guess you realize too that it doesn't really cost you much to participate in these other worlds - you're just holding hands and wishing each other well, and people's motivations are only as public as they make them - nobody's asking you to state your position, join a crusade or swear on a Bible (or drive the moors out of Spain...)

Sant Iago = Saint James = saint Jacob, and the Camino de Santiago is also called the Way of Saint James and the Ruta Jacobea/Xacobea, the Jacobean Route. The Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela is the destination, the end of this pilgrimage, and the place where St. James is said to be buried. Fascinating, certainly, but not a destination that held the most closure for me and my friend Liz; we had in our minds that it would be great to arrive at the OCEAN after walking across the whole country, and we set our sights on Finisterre, the mythical, medieval 'end of the earth.' It turns out, though, that the route out to the coast past Santiago de Compostela is not so well-developed for walkers. There are fewer towns, fewer places to stay, and longer distances between the options... we set out walking but after two days were left in the rain by a highway with nowhere to stay-- all accommodation full from here to the end of the earth... so we went back to Santiago de Compostela and stayed there for a couple days before going to Barcelona and then home.

We never made it to the edge of the continent. But we walked some more in Santiago and Barcelona, and slowly re-entered a normal life, with Portuguese-Swedish fusion folk music, the first rain we'd seen in a month, and advice about where to eat octopus. The sound of strangers' snoring that had been our nocturnal company in bunkrooms across Iberia was replaced by the sound of the all-night party that is urban Spain, and it was startling how easy the transition was made from simple days of walking and reading and going to bed at 8 p.m. to city life, email, shopping, watching movies and thinking about work again. But being back in Moscow now is good, it's cooler than Spain and calmer than I remember and there are good people here. The hilarious and fascinating conversations I had this summer with Spaniards of all stripes reminds me, as it should, that it is worthwhile to learn others' languages... it reminds me too what I must be missing here in Moscow. I really need to do something to appreciate Russia more. It seems, from logic and experience, that if I can talk to Russians, that will be something. Besides, I always like a huge crazy project I don't really have time for. However, that's (going to be) another story. here are some of the scenes that were captured in photos from the trip:




this is what it's like to arrive at the festival of San Fermín, the Running of the Bulls, in Pamplona... it's 6 a.m. you've spent the night on the bus, and the night before on a plane. you're not feeling amazing, have a big backpack to carry, the ground seems... sticky? and everywhere you look you see... garbage. people. red and white...



a band plays while people dance in the stands, 7 a.m., the running starts at 8 a.m. and ends in the stadium (pictured here)

yes, it's totally crazy.


at the top of the first big climb west of pamplona



an old Roman road. It's 5:30 a.m. We always left early, to avoid the crowds in the morning and the heat later on








these kids had just invented this game the day before 'you know, to have something to do' they said, planting water balloons and lying in wait for traffic in their small town of Azofra.


la plaza, Viana


the cathedral in Burgos


una plaza en León




Yorkshire Terrier puppies, anyone? This is probably not that funny, but I've always gotten a kick out of the word 'cachorros.' puppies. Especially when followed by something unexpected and in English, like... 'Yorkshire Terrier.'...because you know it will all be pronounced like it's Spanish...



La Plaza de Toros Monumental, in Barcelona



La corrida de toros


people wave handkerchiefs to show that the bullfighter has done well and ask that he be awarded the bull's ear as a trophy

there is a lot to be said about bullfighting, la lidia....there is a lot of beauty in it, and a lot of violence too, obviously. I am not opposed to bullfighting, but I do find this scene difficult, at the end, though it is probably the essence and symbolism of the whole event, in a moment.

escenas de verano en nueva york

in what my parents call their 'icelandic garden...'




in the evenings, we drink (wine, water, coffee) and play scrabble. in the foreground, my not-so-winning hand of letters...

Yelena

Yelena is Russian, teaches Russian, speaks impeccable English, and is working on Spanish because she's leaving Moscow to get married and move to Spain! She has lived in Moscow for ten years (having grown up near Vladimir, several hundred kilometers to the east of Moscow) and has seen it change a great deal. "You feel more wealth here now ... before, it was horrible, it was disgusting, the poverty, the shabby buildings... although there are still now people--especially people from the Asian republics--who come to work here and live in horrible conditions." She says, like most people, that the advantage of living in Moscow is the cultural life, the fact that everything is so accessible, the cinema, theater, ballet, the parks and cafes. But what is beautiful about Russia that people might not realize? "The people themselves are beautiful. On the outside, they look very reserved and unfriendly, but when you get to know them better they are very warm, very hospitable, very generous." So true. Gracias, Yelena, y que te vaya bien -

fin de semana 13-14 junio

a morning out photographing: a bridge where newlyweds follow a tradition of putting locks on metal trees (and where it is evident that kids the world over feel the same about getting group pictures taken at tourist spots), also a church that was empty, quiet, and cool.

on holidays, 'art,' and being a bad blogger

...yeah, a bad blogger. it's a combination of not really taking many pictures anymore and being suspicious of technology...mass email...blogging...facebook... texting and twitter... didn't we used to be fine without these things... this cult of the self... and then i remember i have this blog, and i'm like, 'why do i have this blog? this is nonsense.' and i ignore it.

BUT THEN, I realize that of course i really like reading blogs, especially a former Spanish professor's blog and my friend Becca’s blog about her recent move to Costa Rica to be a peace corps volunteer. she posts pictures, she talks about people and language and food and work – and it is fascinating, and i can learn some things. like that pineapples grow in the ground. so as becca would say, CLEARLY i need to just chill out about the existential implications of blogging and share what has been interesting about the life that i am in now. there are 3 recent chapters:

1: the all-russia exhibition center, where soviet stuff meets spongebob

what first needs to be understood is that Moscow is not an easy place to just do stuff. not speaking Russian is, as would be expected --and even more than i had expected-- a serious barrier to normal life. so in semi-desperation, a friend and i have this spring taken to looking up random events and stuff to do (usually movies in Spanish with Russian subtitles) and a couple weekends ago, went to see an exhibition called ‘Faces and Laces,’ which we read about and assumed to be a celebration of street art and culture. it was at the All-Russia Exhibition Centre a park with many 'pavilions' for different events, which are huge stately buildings from another era. among all these imposing buildings, on the walkways, there is an outrageous number of rollerbladers, cyclists, skateboarders, people selling shiny colorful balloons, and cartoon characters sitting in plastic deck chairs inviting you to go get your picture taken with them.




we walked for 40 minutes through the park until we got to the exhibit we were looking for – which turned out to be a celebration and sale of streetWEAR, skateboarding shoes, major brand names, etc. there were lots of seemingly disaffected teenagers in this kind of attire milling around, sitting around, skateboarding around, inside a huge domed building... there were many interesting things about the scene – the very capitalist nature of the anti-establishment event, the celebration of a modern global counterculture in a soviet building from the 1930s...



...a round photograph of somebody (?) draped in a cloth...


...the colorful booths and products, the noise, the music, the bar, the haircuts, the fact that a man (a 40-year-old man) stuck out his tongue at me and shooed me out of his booth when i peeked through the (i might note: open) door. there was nothing in his booth besides 1 oriental carpet. but whatever, getting publicly ridiculed here for being different is not exactly news. there may be a small irony in the fact that whatever the theme of this booth was, it was called something like ‘American is the best’ – hahahahahaaaaa... we didn’t stay long at Faces and Laces anyway, called it a day and an expedition, as many are here, which turned out not at all how we expected.

2: Victory Day, May 9


above: the view out one of my front windows, of the apartment building across the street, and the blissfully blue skies we are seeing a lot of these days. the tassel hanging into the top of the window belongs to the huge red banner just outside my window - the banners are put up in the middle of the night, on the buildings all down the street, ahead of major holidays.



on this, victory day, one of the biggest holidays here, to celebrate peace at the end (almost) of World War II, i have not so much to say except that as hard as you try, i wonder if it is ever possible to really understand another culture – or even your own. the history, the collective emotional investment, the ceremony and ritual and the idea of the nation... the celebration here was, for me at least, overwhelming, in the size and quantity of military machinery on display, the sheer number of people in the metro and in Victory Park, and was all just kindof massive and military and abstract except for the park, where people were giving flowers to veterans, enjoying the sunshine and listening to an orchestra...
























3: moscow museum night

... when all moscow’s museums are free and open until the early hours of the morning. having read that 450,000 people attended last year my friend erika (to whom i really have to give all of the credit for our cultural exploration agenda) and I decided to go to some smaller photo galleries, not the big museums where we’d heard the lines were hours long. Turns out that the place we went was a conglomerate of a lot of galleries, including the one we wanted to get to, and was also the only place in the city you actually had to pay to go to that night, and though we saw the photographs we went to see – some neat portraits taken in rural russia – we also saw lunch meat cut and arranged into crosses, a man stirring red water in a bathtub while another man talked into a megaphone, and an entire gallery devoted to paintings of the milky way. viva la avant garde (i guess).