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12-03 - Part One, Part Two, Part Three
FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 19, 2003, 8.10 P.M.
Just left the gang at the Internet café about an hour ago. We had indulged yet another night in desert, I having my usual cream puff. I still feel bloated after a forty-minute walk alone along the Nevsky to Catherine Square. Great excitement much of the time of an impromptu parade of cars of some sports fans tooting horns, waving huge blue and white flags as they sat on window sills or out of sun roofs. Presumably some great triumph in soccer or something. Of course I had my usual revulsion against competition with the accompanying notions of it being born of aggressiveness and that it is better they get it out of their systems this way than in war. But I could not stop a tear and throat swelling at the triumph, if for no other reason than the poor Russian people have been so benighted in so many ways after their great nation status of the past.
V found a grand old babushka to draw today. She was so delightful as with her huge expressive powers as she spoke of her past and bemoaned her present. Unlike some of the others, she was delighted with her drawing calling me “golden hands”. Because she could not sit still, the drawing has a long way to go before I feel good about it but she does seem to be conversing rather than just sitting, her mouth agape with a half dozen silver teeth on her lower jaw. Otherwise she was toothless. She was dirty and smelly but what a charmer.
SATURDAY 9.50 A.M.
I await the others. They are surprisingly all up. It is a surprise because they were all out at clubs last night. Smelled horribly of smoke reinforcing one of the reasons that love this country though I do, there are always things that make me nuts.
We had the most remarkable experience today with an old military guy covered in medals. Apart from the drawing, which is one of the best I have done, we did a long interview during which we learned that he was 77 and served in the tank corps defending Budapest. His tank was hit. He was saved by his commander. His two comrades were burned to death. We taped the interview with me requesting translation and leading the questions. I would be pathetic if I tried to do that professionally since I kept breaking out weeping and strangling on my questions. I am such a sentimental old idiot. It was intense and deeply touching made even better by the friend and social worker who accompanied him and who turned out to be the mother of the first cadet of this trip named. She works for an institution taking care of crippled people and the many kids on the streets who are runaways and drug addicted. Cannot help but wish people who have resources would be better focused on working in institutions like this. Such random things happen and there is so much uncertainty and a seeming endless chain of people who are cutting into the efforts one may make to take a fraction here or there of what a person might to donate. We then went to lunch. I loved listening to Vova and Sasha talking and laughing together as we walked. It was good to set the pace. After our lunch we went to the Dostoyevsky Museum, which is the last of many apartments he occupied here. It was astounding and for once made more so because I was not cheap and rented a headset. Excellent commentary and again I was brought to tears. Big baby. The lady watching the last room seemed both amused and perhaps impressed by the fact that I was so touched.
I wrote a long letter to dear Jill in England and lost it before I could zap it. I wrote about the elusiveness of the Russian people for outsiders. I seem to have experiences that vary from black to white with little in between. I feel Russian in a way, so profoundly compelled by the history and agony and yet can only touch the surface because they reveal so little of the grey. Perhaps it is part of the need to be secretive? I think of a moment such as when Sasha, (the man who will immigrate to Germany with is wife soon) who speaks so little English, came into my room to ask me something. I was lying down reading, he knelt at the bed side and with those huge dark eyes with their amazing lashes peered into my eyes, asked me something as he patted my chest, almost familial. A minute later he was on his feet and off. He has been around a lot, a favorite of J and excellent at finding models, but since his English is minimal and he was off with his wife (whom he informs me is now home with her parents in the Urals two days away by train) I have seen him as a third player to V and Alex.
But I lose my way… I have this sense of connection and then it is gone. I delight in the laughter and chatter between Sasha and V after our excellent afternoon’s work as we walk to lunch, and then flinch at the spittle and litter on the sidewalks. I love the sense of being part of a gathering of friends feeling so happy and full of life, and then walking alone am horrified at three black sedans with tinted windows racing down Marata at least 50 miles and hour as I try to cross the street. Mafia, I am pretty sure. Guess there is really an element of the wild, Wild West I mention above. Where is the grey wherein I believe most of us live? It is like mist here among people I know. Maybe it is the same for them. I know I have written over and over about this but I cannot let it go because it is central to the way I live…. Grey is the fluidity that allows the discovery and evolution of one’s soul. The clarity of the black and white parts is easy, often knowingly and a façade but clear. Must read Dostoyevsky, especially after the museum today.
MONDAY, 10.20 A.M.
The troops barely stir. Having been out to V’s yesterday and internalized the sheer drudgery his life must be usually with 12 hours to 24, at times 7 days a week at a plastics factory, I am happy to see him having a break. Wonder if they will take him back. He is full of bravado and cheek but who can tell. I must confess I despair at the magnitude of the problems here. The tiny microcosm his little family represents makes Putin’s job impossible… and it is only a matter of degree because I realize that I live at home within five minutes of people with not much more hope or opportunity. But there is a transparency in the west…
4.30 Irena the cook works in the kitchen. I have so loved her daily infusion of a center at the table each day. She and I have such a connection across the cultural divide. I just photographed my last military guy, Sasha. Has done a superior job helping find models. I will do a drawing now. I have real enthusiasm for this one but am also tired of the sheer pace I have kept, yesterday being my only real day off since my arrival.
7.20 Went at the drawing aggressively and feel good about it. I am really getting into the swing of this pastel now that it is over. Feeling melancholy as we ate our second to last meal together with Irena cooking her chicken breast in cream sauce special. I like this woman so much and once again wish a woman were more part of my life. Getting ready to meet Bella with her boy friend and a couple of others. Will meet a couple more tomorrow because there is a feud between some. I love the way they use the word “scandal” to describe some to me petty dispute. I am so weary. I cannot get over my mercurial feelings about this dear Russia. Up one minute down the next. Guess Steve is right, I am just way too sensitive with needs that are disproportionate to reality. That is why I embraced the idealism of the church and why I keep on struggling to make the world I yearn for happen, speaking half seriously of taking little old ladies out to tea in the Cotswolds in England. Fighting off a little infection and don’t feel too sharp.
TUESDAY, 11.15 P.M.
I am alone finally acknowledging my age while the rest of the gang is off to the Internet café again. The new cadet Vova pitched up for dinner and is eager to have me email him, no doubt to practice his English. My Vova takes very much a big brother role in this. He is the main reason I am sad to be leaving. Though I must say, I surely wish I had used this city more carefully as my visit to the Hermitage today showed me what I have been missing. Stunning building, stunning collection. Showed around by others which rather robbed me of my usual pleasure but it was still incredible. They brought their roommate. He has the most amazing animal presence, almost to the point of being a mutant of some kind as each time I saw him at the museum, he seemed more like a prowling exotic creature, rather than a young Russian.
We transferred all the work I have done here onto a disc and I am furious with myself once again for carelessness. TRIPOD, freak! Tripod. A simple albeit somewhat cumbersome object to transfer and voila, all my effort would be three times the quality. Make myself so mad. Forget so much. And this really will be it I think as far as the project is concerned though I would not mind a series of fanciful landscapes. Tomorrow Steve and I leave. This note about the city makes me sad because I have not had enough of it. But then knowing people this intimately gives one much more of a sense of place than anything. And I have been able to drink in the streets, the rivers and canals as we wondered about. And again I think place is better felt this way than museums though they are such a sound foundation in history. This made itself even more apparent when we briefly visited museums of war and the 999 day blockade of World War II. I walked these beloved streets with a more sober almost sacred step as I thought of the blood shed on them and the horror of history. We poor pathetic humans. But then we make art, music and literature and look within… Does this compensate for the horror we perpetrate on each other? No, but at least we ask questions and perhaps the children of my grandchildren will live with less blind hope and respond to threats less wildly.
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