thursday

The house and place and habit of my childhood - walking, talking, looking around, with my dad, my brother, my sister. A history (now distant and not often called to mind) in this place, of flowers, fishing, herons, mosquitos, ice skates, snowstorms, the summers and winters on this brook and in these fields. Today: vines, turkey tracks, silence, heirloom apples in the snow.

la vida reciente, en cuatro mini-capítulos

1. In which a man explains to Mary about marriage, and women drivers.
After a workshop in England some weeks ago, I was picked up from the airport by a school driver I hadn't met before. I learn his name, though, after I introduce myself and drop myself in the front seat of the 30-passenger van the two of us are in. I tend to like to talk to strangers, and don't get as many chances here as other places. So in a probably unladylike, un-Russian way I sat in front with him and proceeded to ask questions and chat. After some discussion about the weather, the traffic, and the school, comes the Eventual Question:

'Excuse me, Mary - you married?'
'No. Nope.'
Silence.
'Excuse me Mary - Why not?'
'Well... I'm... busy?' I reply, laughing.
Silence.

'Excuse me Mary - you not married? But you very nice girl.'

There you have it, people. I am a very nice girl, and I am not married. Meanwhile, I am in Russia, over-friendly, and in typical 9 p.m. traffic, 6 lanes going 60 (or 80) miles per hour. As vehicles whiz past us on all sides, the car in front of us is going too slowly and can't seem to change lanes.

'Ugh,' I say, 'This car.'
'Woman,' he says.
'WHAT?' I reply, 'You think that's a woman just because they're a bad driver?'
'No,' he says, 'I know.'
'It's not true that women are bad drivers,' I say.
'Yes, true,' he says, almost gleefully.
I look at the car in front of us and say, 'Maybe it's a man with big hair.'

We pass the car and my driver slows down and gesturing for me to look at the driver, who is, in fact, a woman. Next, a black car with all its windows tinted black is weaving crazily in and out of lanes, scooting between cars at a terrifying speed and squirming into spaces that don't seem big enough...

'Man,' he says. 'Good driver. Is man.'


2. In which a man rescues Mary from imminent escalator death

Moscow is okay. Really. I mean, it's the only place I've lived where I don't really feel a sense of community or security (which I think is mostly because I can't communicate well here). For example, walking through the park by school, which is full of feral dogs, I have frequently had the thought that if I got attacked by one of these dogs and was being torn limb from limb on the ground in the middle of the trail, I would fully expect nobody to help me. Young Russian mothers with old-fashioned baby carriages would stroll serenely by, annoyed that they had to navigate around an obstruction in the path. But sometimes I am surprised into thinking I am wrong about this place, that people would in fact help a flailing foreigner being eaten by a dog. I see small acts of kindness sometimes, for example: young men carry the carts of old women hobbling down steps in the tunnels to the metro - they do it quickly, without looking, scooping up the cart, depositing it at the bottom of the steps, and disappearing into the throng of people without a backward glance.

A few weeks ago I was riding the metro, and as a man across from me who had been reading the newspaper got up to leave the car, he leaned over to me, startlingly close, and though I have no idea what he actually said, he gestured and told me that my bootlace was untied. Huh. For someone (me) who tends to always be an always-semi-unprepared fly-by-seat-of-pants kind of person, the magnitude of the gesture (in a place where people don't generally interact much in public) seems totally disproportionate to the situation. Half the time I notice my boot is untied and ignore it. I feel like it's each person's responsibility to tie his or her own shoes and realize when it needs to be done. However, it does occur to me also that by alerting me to my untied bootlace, this stranger not only may have saved me from a gruesome grinding death in the escalator, but perhaps also saved thousands of other people the inconvenience of having their commute interrupted or delayed as my body was pried from the stalled machinery.

3. In which a man rescues Mary from unwittingly freezing to death while shopping

At a big outdoor market, immediately following the untied-bootlace-on-the-metro incident, I stopped at a jewelry stand with an old woman and an old man working there, and they told me (as far as I could tell) that I was crazy for having my vest unzipped. My hands were full (with the earrings I was planning to buy from them) and I figured I could placate them by zipping my jacket after I paid them. But as I continued to stand there and weigh the potential purchases I had in my hands, the man came over AND BEGAN TO ZIP MY VEST! And then I realized: it was an emergency! How could I have survived this long with only two sweaters, a scarf, a hat, and an UNZIPPED down vest?!?!?

A lot of the time here I feel like people want as little interaction as possible and see other human beings as merely obstacles on the sidewalk, but then perfect strangers are overwhelmingly concerned for me on matters I consider truly not their problem. I honestly do not understand Russians much of the time, and I imagine there is a lot of cultural history on both sides of our equation that keeps the feeling mutual. I find that often I disagree entirely with their perceptions of the scale of things, but I love it that they do in fact care about each other, even about strangers, even to the point of desperation. My vest zipped, purchases in hand, I leave the market, smiling, and sigh. I LOVE it here! Until my next unpleasant impossible tense unproductive humiliating infuriating exchange, I love it here! I will not be eaten by dogs. I will not die in an escalator. I will not freeze to death on a Saturday afternoon.

4. In which Mary is (happily) left alone

These nights in Moscow lately have been cold, crisp-- nights that have the smell of impending winter and nostalgia - for the winters of my childhood: open spaces, skiing and stars and snow. Here in Moscow it's dry sidewalks past beauty salons, construction zones, old small churches, gold-painted onion domes and skyscrapers, men in suits smoking cigars outside upscale cafes, chauffeurs waiting in parked cars idling all along the street, a BMW dealership with all the lights on. Traffic. Noise. Bright lights.
On a recent evening I am surprised walking toward a bus stop by a smiling, portly, drunk man who whistles at me as he topples off the curb across the street. I suppress a chuckle (in case he is more ferocious than he looks), turn a corner, hop on the bus, buy my ticket from the driver in the dark, and settle in the back of the bus to see my company: a frizzy-haired pink-hatted passenger surreptitiously snacks on cookies from her handbag, a student with a backpack talks on a cellphone while listening to music through headphones, and there's a distinguished-looking man whose shiny leather gloves and shoes and demeanor is at odds with the trolleybus aesthetic of old coats, old people, old plastic bags. There is no noise inside, just the clack-clack-clack of the lines we're attached to overhead, and the swishing traffic outside. I love the bus. In the old metal tube with its silent, sepia-toned, grimy interior and windows fogged to the darkness and traffic outside, the scene feels timeless, sad, somehow surreal. The knitted hats and plastic bags. You could be anywhere, it seems, on these winter night buses in Moscow. Moscow twenty years ago. Moscow twenty years from now. America. Argentina. The Polar Express.



Distinguished mystery man gets out after two stops. A dozen people join us at the river, lots of gloves and boots and bags and averted eyes. I get out next, buy water, walk past the pile of vomit that's been drying in the underground passageway since last Thursday, make my way through gates and guards and electronic codes to my building. In my apartment, I settle down in the windowsill to drink some tea and watch the building across the street. From my window I can see the interiors of these apartments, strangers folding laundry, cooking dinner, pacing back and forth, watering plants, closing the curtains, looking out their windows at the apartment building that I am in. In the midst of this life here that I find largely and literally incomprehensible, this scene is always beautiful and comforting.

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, 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, it was on a 'gypsy cab' (a system of negotiating a fare with any driver who stops for you) 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








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, a lot of history and cultural relevance, and a lot of violence too, obviously. I am not completely 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.