Today and Tomorrow are becoming rarer words, filled with bigger meanings as each moment expands to fill the whole scope of time, and plans are executed on a scale of hours instead of days, and every second becomes important. Tomorrow isn't just Friday, it isn't just Christmas, it's the last day that I will wake up and go to sleep in Russia. It's my last full day on this continent, in this country, and this beautiful city, and although I've had it in my sights for months my eyes still don't quite know how to focus on it.
With an open suitcase looming in my 17th floor den--a pile of things to sort into "с собой" or "не", trash bags bulging with already stricken homework assignments and ticket stubs and receipts--I'm taking the obvious course of action and avoiding it, sitting instead in a corner at the Republic of Coffee, where the waitresses don't come out from behind the counter so as long as I don't approach them, I don't have to worry about being asked to order something. Reading about the "Massive Christmas winter storm" and the "landmark healthcare reform bill" that comprise big news in the USA, trying to brush up on Western Hemisphere current events before I find myself plunked down in the middle again.
Everything from my past few weeks is mingling together, the slow panic of essay writing, the appearance, then disappearance of the sun, the triumph or exams and the savage slicing winds scraping the windows of the Primorskaya high-rises, the snow like dirty flour piling up, piling up, the mess in my room piling up, piling up as I sped out the door to dinner, to the Hermitage, to Nevsky Prospekt, to my photography exam ("if you continue studying photography, you won't turn out half bad!" said Professor Igor Lebedev, who never in his life has given out an A--"Such people just don't exist."). Mornings dark and afternoons dim, evenings dark again but filled with sparkling lights. Ice on the Neva, broken and frozen-over again in crinkled sugar-crystal formations. Cross-country skiing at Krestovsky Island with people dear to me (guys!), throwing bottles onto the ice at the bay of Finland, and the frustration when they skittered away hollowly and refused to break.
It's one big slideshow and it's tragic, leaving it all behind. I'm going to miss the six-story metro escalators, the tiny grocery stores on every corner, the absurdities of daily apparel. The tall, elegant Uzbek man with the squinty-eyed smile who sold me bread at the market, the clunk of my shoes on the splintery floor in the entryway of Yuri's studio. The "Осторожно--двери закрываются" we all memorized after a week of riding the metro. My people! The faces I've grown accustomed to, the people I adore (and you're probably reading this!). One last hurrah on Christmas day.
St. Petersburg! Our Piter! When will I see you all again?
Yet I feel a soft and slow relief when I imagine the warmth and comfort waiting for me in my homeland, in a little snow-shouldered house in Ithaca, NY. Even in the face of the nightmare of navigating New York City public transportation with my suitcase, hiking pack, violin, and guitar in hand (and on back, and rolling beside me). Even though I am, as of yet, not sure where I'm spending my first night back, or my second. I understand now the loyalty my father described, when he packed his life into a suitcase and set off with the intention of leaving this country behind--his head went dizzy and his knees weakened, and he lay on his front lawn waiting for his eyes to clear, fully aware he just couldn't leave his home. The relief I feel at coming home isn't just about clean tap water I can bathe in or Greek yogurt or being able to explain what I'm looking for to a librarian or cashier or policeman. It's about coming HOME.
So tonight, Christmas Eve, I'm going to a drag show at a funky bar on Sennaya Ploschad with my friend Cait and toasting my triumphant return as a wiser, freer, more determined person, awake to the opportunities life may present me and ready to work to realize them.
Cheers!
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Автопортреты ван Гога и Гогена--Я вас сделала!
Even though my back aches from sitting for hours, even though the staff at Книги/Кофе is starting to recognize me as that girl who comes in at 4 and leaves at 9, orders a pot of tea and chicken-pecks at the keyboard (still can't get the hang of the Cyrillic keys), and even though I think I might be going blind from staring at my computer screen incessantly since the 14th of December, it might be worth it just to be able to say that I've got an 8-page critical analysis paper in my second language to pin under my name. Take THAT, Russian Language! Take your participles and shove it!
Six days left and counting down! I'm taking a brief exhale before I delve back into studying for my final tomorrow. After Tuesday I'm done with all my schoolwork and have the remainder of the week to figure out--well, everything.
Six days left and counting down! I'm taking a brief exhale before I delve back into studying for my final tomorrow. After Tuesday I'm done with all my schoolwork and have the remainder of the week to figure out--well, everything.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Written on the bus to Russia, 14.12
YES, HELSINKI! Whatever you ask me. It's yours. Just give me in return what I ask of you--your shy creamy sunlight lighting up tidy low buildings and a sky as fresh and pale as an after-dinner mint. Your playful sprinkling of cotton-candy snow, the kind that swirls around you ticklishly, persuading you to fall in love even with the sharp wind that bites and stings. Give me your quiet, narrow streets, your sweetly enticing window displays, your idiosyncratic mélange of blocky art deco, sleek modern design, and charming, Scandinavian traditionality. Give me your smooth ski resort serenity, please, and in return I'll pay 5€ for a cup of coffee, rent an apartment by the week for what I'd pay monthly in the States. Just keep me sated on cobblestones and mulled wine, because your chic mellowed-outness is worth the trouble and the price. Kiitos, Helsinki. Ты--настоящий друг.
There's a ubiquitous aroma of nutmeg and cinnamon on the air here, not just outside restaurants but in elevators and museums and clothing stores, as though behind every closed door is a jolly blonde woman pulling a sheet tray of those omnipresent star-shaped spice cookies, so delicate and wafer-thin, out of a hot brick oven. The flurry of snow that descended starting early Sunday morning settled inoffensively on the trees and sidewalks like sugary icing on a gingerbread city. By the next morning it had turned into brittle ice like a layer of sparkling hard candy. The footprints I pressed into the fairy-tale snow each presented a thrill of a certain pride at being where I was. I felt privileged to be there, leaving my mark on the cement and stones, a guest of such elegant, ethereal people in such an enchanting town. This city is magical.
Now, with the long afternoon sun transfering a distorted rectangular shadow from the bus onto the blurry, snow-speckled highway speeding past, I'm reluctantly racing the daylight back to St. Petersburg. As the sun sinks I'm feeling a little despondent in the face of the destination awaiting me. St. Pete looms chaotic, dirty, and dark on the other side of these remaining 5 hours, seeming even more garish and overblown after the polished subtlety of Helsinki. The intoxicating luxury behind me I'm exchanging for an almost ascetic sparseness and the pile of temporarily set-aside assignments, obligations, responsibilites. The wide, noisy streets don't strike me as welcoming, and I'll bet I can count on these fading beams being my last taste of sunlight until December 26th, when my flight breaks through the palpable grey shroud above and around St. Petersburg into dazzling daylight, too lazy to penetrate the clouds.
Helsinki! Come with me!
There's a ubiquitous aroma of nutmeg and cinnamon on the air here, not just outside restaurants but in elevators and museums and clothing stores, as though behind every closed door is a jolly blonde woman pulling a sheet tray of those omnipresent star-shaped spice cookies, so delicate and wafer-thin, out of a hot brick oven. The flurry of snow that descended starting early Sunday morning settled inoffensively on the trees and sidewalks like sugary icing on a gingerbread city. By the next morning it had turned into brittle ice like a layer of sparkling hard candy. The footprints I pressed into the fairy-tale snow each presented a thrill of a certain pride at being where I was. I felt privileged to be there, leaving my mark on the cement and stones, a guest of such elegant, ethereal people in such an enchanting town. This city is magical.
Now, with the long afternoon sun transfering a distorted rectangular shadow from the bus onto the blurry, snow-speckled highway speeding past, I'm reluctantly racing the daylight back to St. Petersburg. As the sun sinks I'm feeling a little despondent in the face of the destination awaiting me. St. Pete looms chaotic, dirty, and dark on the other side of these remaining 5 hours, seeming even more garish and overblown after the polished subtlety of Helsinki. The intoxicating luxury behind me I'm exchanging for an almost ascetic sparseness and the pile of temporarily set-aside assignments, obligations, responsibilites. The wide, noisy streets don't strike me as welcoming, and I'll bet I can count on these fading beams being my last taste of sunlight until December 26th, when my flight breaks through the palpable grey shroud above and around St. Petersburg into dazzling daylight, too lazy to penetrate the clouds.
Helsinki! Come with me!
Saturday, December 12, 2009
The Architecture in Helsinki
8:54 AM in Helsinki, fresh off the bus from St. Petersburg, and fresh indeed: maybe it's my imagination, but the air feels fresher and crisper here. My first impression, footsteps echoing through empty streets (a city that sleeps in until 9 AM?), is CLEAN. And, glancing in the upscale store windows, luxurious. That, and the architecture really is worth naming a band after.
As the sky started lightening at about 8:30, I realized that this city reminds me strikingly of a ski resort. There's a similar sort of quiet charm and tidiness, only on a grander scale and with less pretension. Maybe it's all the people wearing Scandinavian hats. Or the fact that nothing's open yet.
Now I'm going to get cozy with Venedikt Erofeev's Moscow to the End of the Line, just started last night and the antithesis of all thigns clean, sober, and Finnish, and wait for my friend Gordon to meet me. I can't guarantee a live feed, but updates are promised and forthcoming.
As the sky started lightening at about 8:30, I realized that this city reminds me strikingly of a ski resort. There's a similar sort of quiet charm and tidiness, only on a grander scale and with less pretension. Maybe it's all the people wearing Scandinavian hats. Or the fact that nothing's open yet.
Now I'm going to get cozy with Venedikt Erofeev's Moscow to the End of the Line, just started last night and the antithesis of all thigns clean, sober, and Finnish, and wait for my friend Gordon to meet me. I can't guarantee a live feed, but updates are promised and forthcoming.
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