Until two nights ago, which is when the incident I am about to describe took place, I had settled on a more positive view of this place, its people, and myself. I even was ready to concede that maybe Russians as a whole were superior to the expats who come here for a (hopefully) consequence-free rollercoaster ride of booze, whores, and easy money. I reasoned that Russians' dysfunction was at least explainable, a function of the bad times they had gone through, whereas the misbehavior of expats was just that.
I stand corrected, ashamed, and disgusted.
Two nights ago I was riding in the subway from the northwest of Moscow where I previously lived, to the southeast of Moscow, where I will be living for the next several months.
I entered the train at station Oktiabrskoe Pole, which is about four stations from the last stop. There were several free seats, and I took one, as is my habit, on the edge of the long bench, in order to not have to sit between people. There were no particularly interesting people in the train, apart from a fellow standing in the doorway next to me. He was thin and slightly jaundiced but strong, in his early twenties, and clothed in a long, narrow black leather jacket that hung in a shallow triangle down to his below his knees, a dark brown leather vest laced close to his body in the front and accompanied by a cobalt tie, and a pre-Revolution style leather cap with a short bill and embroidered leather band.
I took little note of him, although his clothing definitely separated him from the crowd. There was also a girl sitting either drugged or passed out, in any case nearly incapacitated, on the end of the another bench. She was wearing a very short, fuzzy hot pink skirt and blouse, and black nylons. Her hair had been died a not overly garish orange and her head was lolling about a bit.
At the next station, several young drunks entered. I was unsure what association they had with one another, but one of them, a heavyset fellow with old, deep, but not long razor knicks that could not logically have been self-inflicted, and wearing a puffy black plastic jacket and smurf-style black knit cap, greeted everyone in the wagon with a proud "Heil Hitler!". I felt an immediate disgust, which triggered the interest of the jaundiced fellow, who it turned out, was of the type who takes a keen interest in absolutely everything.
The Nazi, who bore more than a passing resemblance to a tyrannical music teacher whose lessons I suffered through in middle school, soon began serially hitting on every woman in sight. In Russia, one mark of sleaze is to approach a woman by saying, "slysh", which is the informal command form of "hear". It's about as low as snapping your fingers to get a woman's attention, then pointing proudly at your erection. The final result of his attempts was a bench devoid of women, apart from the incapacitated one in pink. He soon approached her, and sensing her incapacity to leave, got nice and close to her and began groping her. She pushed him away, but only half-heartedly. Understanding this as permission, he continued to chat her up.
He finally put his hands under her armpits and tested to see if she could stand on her own two feet. It turned out that she could, and soon enough he was edging her into the corner, leaning in close, kissing her cheeks, and leaning in very close to whisper God knows what in her ear.
Still incapable of reacting with a decisive no, and possibly hoping to appease the Nazi, she returned his hugs and laughed vapidly, but refused to be kissed on the lips. At one point the train stopped so that I could hear their conversation, and he was demanding that she go out drinking with them. She said she was getting out in one station, and seemed to have come to her senses somewhat.
By this time we had gone past my station, the Nazi was leaning in close, hips slowly rocking against her. I wondered if there was anything I could do, and stood up. The attentive jaundiced fellow, who turned out to have a type of bad breath I have never encountered, asked me in an official-sounding tone what had happened, and I explained as best I could.
He told me nothing could be done. "The police don't care, and we have no connection to them. We have no weapons, and cannot fight him." We both begain keenly observing as the tears streamed down her meticulously-made up face. On his face was painted arousal so tainted by malice that the latter stood in the foreground, shocking absolutely no one but me. We rode one more station. She tried to get away and he shook her hard, leaned in and whispered something in her ear. At the next station he took her arm and pulled her out. I went with them.
The jaundiced fellow followed and warned me not to intervene, saying that there "was no conflict". I interpreted his words, I think correctly, in a (faulty) legal sense: no one had been attacked. I reflected on the sum of cash in my pocket- I had to take my savings, which I had removed from the bank on word of a run-to-be, to my new place, and the cops are known for stealing. As we stood facing each other on the platform with our backs to the tracks, we looked at the two of them walking arm in arm towards the escalators, and he asked me what I was feeling at the moment. Struggling, I said that I was surrounded by shit. He agreed, saying he had grown up here, and that he from time to time associates with such people, to understand their ways. I said that when you touch such people, you begin to become like them. He did not disagree, and commented that "our society is constructed this way, and nothing can be done." By now, the Nazi and his prey were 100 meters away, and when the jaundiced fellow looked at me I could feel that he was prepared to do anything. He was an observer, and ready to participate to go along with whatever action I took. He was staring intently at my face, and I felt an absolute powerlessness and revulsion. I commented that I felt like vomiting, which he answered with a stare containing a practiced, highly exaggerated sense of detached curiosity.
Had we run ahead and summoned the police, we may have convinced them. Not all of them are bad, not by a long shot. We might have unexpectedly knocked him down the sharp-edged escalators, hopefully causing serious injury.
I did not, so we did not. The next train arrived. It was not my business. I got in, and the jaundiced fellow, for whom I felt a species of respect, continued staring at me. I nodded to him, and he, ever with the same expression, nodded back. Soon his face was obscured by a sign at head level, but I felt he was still looking at me.
Afterwards, I felt an incredible nausea about myself, the Nazi, the inaction of everyone around which I got caught up in. I like to think of myself as an individualist who thinks and does as he wishes and gets caught up neither in groupthink nor groupsloth. It turns out I was wrong.
I thought about capital punishment, pulling the trigger with pride. The guillotine. Cruel smile, fire ants and honey. Blunt club, too light to do the job right. Firing squad. Looking into his eyes as I end his life with not a quark of compunction. Feeling disgust for the fact that I felt no disgust at my own barbarity. All these thoughts of revenge are always in inverse proportion to one's perceived power to act, and come after one has wasted the opportunity to yank the spiral straight.
To repeat the jaundiced fellow's question, what am I feeling in this moment? That my best words describe the worst moments, and wondering what that means.
понедельник, 17 ноября 2008 г.
Claptrap
I haven't written in over a month. That's in large part due to my now ex-roommate whom I will refer to as Claptrap, thereby continuing my tradition of protecting the guilty with pseudonyms, and at the same time naming his twin predilections for endless drunken rambling, and V.D.
I first met Claptrap many months ago at a school function. I noted that as soon as the official portion of the meeting was over and we were free to drink, Claptrap took a can before anyone else, and stopped after everyone else. That was in April, tax season for Americans, and he graciously offered the use of his computerized tax program, inviting me to his residence, shared by his now ex-girlfriend. In order to compensate Claptrap for his help, I compensated him with a few bottles of medovuha. I don't think the behavior of drunks is really worth reporting on, but let me summarize by saying that I had the distinct feeling that Claptrap had homosexual tendencies which fortunately he never tried to act on, perhaps because he is a born-again Christian.
Afterwards, I did not associate with Claptrap because he just talks too much, even when sober. He occasionally would call me on the telephone, though, letting me know the cost of oral sex (from a woman), or complaining that the women in his Russian smut mags were all down with V.D., or to let me know how to avoid paying taxes.
Many months later, after returning from a trip in France, I was living alone in a two-room flat, and needed a second person to pay the rent. Because the other choice was a long-term friend of a very typical expat- a runaway debtor- I chose the devil I knew.
He was soon blessing my life with 36-hour non-stop bouts of alcoholism set to the tune of Alan Jackson and Waylon Jennings; at the end of the day, he could be found passed out on the fourth-floor windowsill, with the window open. Once he got so drunk he knocked over the bathroom sink, shattering it. I even severely cut my foot on the porcelain fragments laying on the floor, resulting in a trip to the hospital. His alcoholism, round-the-clock garrulousness, deep voice and globe-spanning circle of acquaintances led him to frequently talk at all hours.
He also brought home two women he supposed were whores, one of whom was 17 years old. Prostitution is very common in Russia, and the fact that people do that doesn't bother me except on a very abstract level. Prostitution in Russia is frequently connected to other types of crime, especially robbery. The scam works like this: the woman decides she wants you to be her client, and possibly slips something in your drink, then goes home with you, possibly with an armed, muscular male following close behind. You go into your apartment with her and begin to amuse one another- until Igor or Vladimir arrives with a baseball bat, knife, or gun, ties or beats you and leaves you on the floor for dead while rifling through your belongings to find cash, passports, credit cards, or jewelry. Electronics are also fair game for theft.
So when Claptrap brought home his jewel of a woman a few weeks ago, I was prepared for the worst, and took all the sharpest knives out of the kitchen and slept with them under the pillow. When they were porking, I could have easily imagined from her voice that he was making love to a chainsmoking chicken- had I not earlier seen him with a sag-eyed hawk-nosed whore 45 before her time. Afterwards, Claptrap revealed to me that he had not even used a condom, and fully expected me to sympathise with him when he complained that he might be HIV-positive.
Anyways, I threw him out a few days ago. When he was still drunk, ashamed and depressed, I wheedled 200 dollars of compensation out of him, and used the money to pay half a month's rent at another place on the other side of town.
Who knows how long I will be able to live at the new place before that arrangement blows up, too?
I first met Claptrap many months ago at a school function. I noted that as soon as the official portion of the meeting was over and we were free to drink, Claptrap took a can before anyone else, and stopped after everyone else. That was in April, tax season for Americans, and he graciously offered the use of his computerized tax program, inviting me to his residence, shared by his now ex-girlfriend. In order to compensate Claptrap for his help, I compensated him with a few bottles of medovuha. I don't think the behavior of drunks is really worth reporting on, but let me summarize by saying that I had the distinct feeling that Claptrap had homosexual tendencies which fortunately he never tried to act on, perhaps because he is a born-again Christian.
Afterwards, I did not associate with Claptrap because he just talks too much, even when sober. He occasionally would call me on the telephone, though, letting me know the cost of oral sex (from a woman), or complaining that the women in his Russian smut mags were all down with V.D., or to let me know how to avoid paying taxes.
Many months later, after returning from a trip in France, I was living alone in a two-room flat, and needed a second person to pay the rent. Because the other choice was a long-term friend of a very typical expat- a runaway debtor- I chose the devil I knew.
He was soon blessing my life with 36-hour non-stop bouts of alcoholism set to the tune of Alan Jackson and Waylon Jennings; at the end of the day, he could be found passed out on the fourth-floor windowsill, with the window open. Once he got so drunk he knocked over the bathroom sink, shattering it. I even severely cut my foot on the porcelain fragments laying on the floor, resulting in a trip to the hospital. His alcoholism, round-the-clock garrulousness, deep voice and globe-spanning circle of acquaintances led him to frequently talk at all hours.
He also brought home two women he supposed were whores, one of whom was 17 years old. Prostitution is very common in Russia, and the fact that people do that doesn't bother me except on a very abstract level. Prostitution in Russia is frequently connected to other types of crime, especially robbery. The scam works like this: the woman decides she wants you to be her client, and possibly slips something in your drink, then goes home with you, possibly with an armed, muscular male following close behind. You go into your apartment with her and begin to amuse one another- until Igor or Vladimir arrives with a baseball bat, knife, or gun, ties or beats you and leaves you on the floor for dead while rifling through your belongings to find cash, passports, credit cards, or jewelry. Electronics are also fair game for theft.
So when Claptrap brought home his jewel of a woman a few weeks ago, I was prepared for the worst, and took all the sharpest knives out of the kitchen and slept with them under the pillow. When they were porking, I could have easily imagined from her voice that he was making love to a chainsmoking chicken- had I not earlier seen him with a sag-eyed hawk-nosed whore 45 before her time. Afterwards, Claptrap revealed to me that he had not even used a condom, and fully expected me to sympathise with him when he complained that he might be HIV-positive.
Anyways, I threw him out a few days ago. When he was still drunk, ashamed and depressed, I wheedled 200 dollars of compensation out of him, and used the money to pay half a month's rent at another place on the other side of town.
Who knows how long I will be able to live at the new place before that arrangement blows up, too?
среда, 8 октября 2008 г.
Found!
I have to add something about Charlemagne. In a previous post, I exonerated Charlemagne of breaking his promise to move into my flat while I was gone, a decision which put me in danger of returning home homeless. I excused him because I learned that the landlord and landlady had planned to put a Canadian guy in the second room without him being aware of it.
But on the weekend, I learned from one of Charlemagne´s colleagues that the Canadian story was a ruse- his real reason for ripping me off was that he didn´t like the Soviet furniture. I therefore re-impute to him the sleaze I had de-imputed, and de-impute the sleaze I had re-imputed to my landlord and landlady who, it seems, are people of unimpeachable honesty.
But on the weekend, I learned from one of Charlemagne´s colleagues that the Canadian story was a ruse- his real reason for ripping me off was that he didn´t like the Soviet furniture. I therefore re-impute to him the sleaze I had de-imputed, and de-impute the sleaze I had re-imputed to my landlord and landlady who, it seems, are people of unimpeachable honesty.
понедельник, 6 октября 2008 г.
Bike Ride
I finally did it. This Friday I decided I was going to go "behind the MKAD". ("MKAD" is the name of the multi-lane circular highway that goes all the way around the periphery of moscow, and defines its border; people consider that "Moscow is not Russia", and by that logic, the MKAD is the border between Moscow and Russia.) When I made my decision I was banking on the possibility of borrowing a bike from a friend. I had already ridden the bike a few times before, and although it was a bit small, it worked okay and I was hoping to save some cash. However, said acquaintance did not answer the phone or even repsond, so the next day I decided to just bite the bullet and get a machine that fits me.
So I woke up on Saturday around 930, and was really desperate to finally catch up on sleep, but as I had thrown away numerous possibilities in the past to do this, and understood that the weather was going to be fantastic probably for the last time this year, I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, got my pump and spare tubes together, and went to the bike market in NE Moscow, got a great deal on the bike, had some free stuff thrown in, and in addition chatted in Russian (such as I could) about vintage mountain bikes. Given that the idea of buying a 400 dollar bike new would have been a bit crazy to most people even five years ago, and that buying a 3000 dollar bike 15 years ago when the economy was still in shambles would have been impossible, it was a rather nice moment. HAving made my purchase, I got on the subway and went to the very last station, Marino, in the SE corner of Moscow. I had not brought very much to eat with me, apart from a jar of peanut butter, but was hoping to find all the necessities on the road. (Once you leave Moscow, you run immediately into colonies of dachas, and that means there must be places to buy food.)
Traffic was light and soon I was on my way out of the city. It was about 230 by the time I finally got going. I had been on this part of the road at least twice before, but the knowledge that this time I would be going farther, and not coming back before nightfall, put me in a slightly different mood. After crossing the bridge that goes over the MKAD, I came to the first fork in the road- left: oil shipping station, right: my route into the country. A little cemetery on a low ridge, and flowers mingled with trash on the wall below, and then not far after a little church across from a stagnant-looking but clean-smelling lake with a spring next to it. I tanked up on water, bought a huge sack of miniature pears for two dollars from an old lady next to the lake, and got on my way. I knew that it would be some way before I passed into terra incognita, but resolved to keep a moderate pace as I had not been on a real bike ride in over a year. The first obstacle was a small swamp I had to cross on foot, carrying the bike over my shoulder and trying to step as gingerly as possible on the stones and random boards placed there for the crossing so as not to sink in up to knees. I ended up with shoes full of goo and oil, but soon enough was back underway.
It was starting to get dark by this point, and so I started asking people where I could find a safe place to put my tent. An older woman selling home-made jam and pickles on the side of the road commented after selling me some apples that there were dangerous people, and that even deep in the forest I would find evidence of the crude habitations of immigrant workers who were liable to cut my throat. She added that even the locals could be pretty slimy, and that my best bet for accomodation would a vacation center just off the main drag. That vacation center happened to be the outermost point in my previous trip, and so sleeping there without advancing past my previous zone of exploration was out of the question. According to her, the next towns had nothing to offer but dangerous immigrant workers and dubious locals, and so I would be best served by going no farther.
As I rode along the main highway, I looked into the woods and could see no signs of any habitation whatsoever. I had another four hours before it was absolutely dark, but given Russian driving habits, more specifically passing habits, ie, aggressive doubling, I considered it prudent to stop somewhat earlier and therefore shifted a couple gears higher and made an effort to cover some ground. At one point a friend called and invited me to the sauna, but I refused.
I went through a small town of maybe 3000 people, and saw a sign labelled "Russia Starts Here"; appropriately enough the surfacing on the road took a turn for the worse. Looking around and seeing the prosperous-looking newly constructed dachas all around, I understood that really I was in a safe place, in spite of all the nonsense my Russian students had foisted on me over the past two years: They will cut your throat. Outside of Moscow, you are in a different country, and are no longer safe. Please, don't go.... Admittedly, I was only about ten miles outside of Moscow, but the southeast part of Moscow dwindles into countryside very rapidly, maybe only three miles outside of the city. Buses took on and let off mixed groups of immigrant workers and Russians, and once, while pausing to photograph a very typical Soviet war memorial, I exchanged nods with a very Caucasian (ie, Armenian/ Georgian/ Azeri/ Chechen) -looking worker who detected my foreignness. I also caught sight of some mixed groups of kids playing together- Russians and some immigrant workers whose nationality I could not identify. Riding on, I passed a huge stone quarry and considered ensuring my safety for the night by pitching my tent there in guaranteed isolation.
Instead, I pressed on, keeping on the sandy verge of the road as night was just beginning to fall. I came upon a large, newly-built church. In Russia, the Kremlin, apart from its scale, is not a unique building- across Russia, there are many churches built within the surrounded by walls. I encountered some Uzbek immigrant workers in their mid-30's shoveling wet cement on the church premises and asked them where I could pitch my tent, and if the people in this area were dangerous. They said no, except for the Russians, who get drunk and carouse on Saturday nights. They asked where I was from and when I told them, they just couldn't believe it. Seeing that these guys couldn't really help me, though, I left, and one of the workers, who introduced himself as an Armenian, ran after me, saying that I could sleep in his place for the night if I couldn't find anyplace else.
That is exactly the kind of offer that one seeks when travelling alone: the person who doesn't aggressively invite you immediately creates trust. He complained that he and his colleagues were building the church for pennies and were treated badly by the locals. I didn't know if he was referring to immigrant construction workers in general or his group specifically, and unfortunately it did not occur to me to ask. He said that although he was Armenian, he had graduated from a Russian school in Tblisi, and lamented that life in the USSR was much better, as people lived in harmony. Continuing on this note, he said that the new generation of kids doesn't understand that there were once fifteen republics which all worked together instead of competing with one another, and that "some people"- here he slid his hand over his head to show that he was talking about skinheads- you just have to avoid, and that under Stalin, they would all just have been lined up and shot.
I pointed out to him that he must earn enough by his standards to justify staying, because otherwise he'd have already left. He agreed, but said that no Russian would do his work- digging ditches, burying the dead, putting up walls- for the money he gets, and that whoever does not understand that does not understand the issue at all. I asked him if he stayed in the winter and he said no, he goes home, which does imply a certain level of purchasing power. I asked him why Moscow, and he said because it is close, but that if it were impossible here, where he would go. He said, "wherever the work is. If not here, then Europe. If not Europe, then Australia. If not Australia then America."
I was tempted to just stay, and did not feel he was dangerous, but my normal search algorithm demands that I ask a number of people where I can put up my tent and then take the best offer, and failing that, pitch my tent, or in the worst case, move on. And so I rode back down the hill to the spring where a number of people were loading their refilled 10-liter plastic bottles into waiting cars, and asked an older man where I could pitch my tent. He said he'd drive slowly and show me to a small field where I could place my tent. He drove back past the church, got out and pointed down to a somewhat scrubby-looking field. I asked what he thought of the immigrants' offer and he replied that you should never trust "black" people (this is how Russians refer to immigrant workers)- "we have our black people, and you have yours, that is life. At the bottom of the next hill there is spring, you can drink the water."
I rode down and around the bend discovered some swingsets where two young teenage girls were playing, sat down and had some peanut butter and bread I had bought earlier. Soon their parents came by, and as a few raindrops were falling here and there, invited me to dinner- mashed potatoes and some meat I didn't have the heart to refuse, plus some home-grown cabbage. The husband was bus driver, and I asked him how he related to his passengers from other countries. He said something I didn't understand, and explained, saying they were dogs, not people, and then somewhat perplexingly asked if it was true that all Americans and Brits are left-handed. I said no and asked him what he meant by saying that they were dogs and he answered by saying that they get hungry when there is no work, and attack people. I commented that the hungry often act that way, regardless of where they are from. He then asked how much money I earn, and I low-balled it quite a bit. The wife didn't have a lot to say, but I could see these people were nice enough to invite a complete stranger into their home for dinner. Since they seemed to have lost interest in me and were not ready to invite me to sleep their, I wished them well and rode back up to the church to find the people who had invited me.
They had already left, so I asked the priest who happened to be walking to his car. He immediately, calmly and authoritatively replied that they would be fired for inviting me. I explained, not untruthfully, that when they invited the sky was cloudy. He disagreed and asked if I was the same cyclist who had stopped by a month earlier, and continued interrogating me a bit and warned me that these people need to be periodically punished, because they tend to get drunk when enforcement becomes lax.
Giving up, I went down to the playground and pitched my tent on the sandy soil which was ideal for sleeping on. I had a very cold night because my sleeping bag was too thin, and wound up putting my jacket and jeans on instead of using them as a pillow, and also used a loaf of cheap bread in a plastic bag as a pillow.
The next day I rode back by more or less the same route and along the way met the same old woman who had sold me the apples, and told her that the immigrant workers she had warned me had invited me to sleep in their home, and that they seemed like completely normal people. She agreed and said just a bit pointedly that she had not said all of them were bad, and that it just depends on who you meet.
Overall I would say the feeling of danger was completely underwhelming, and some of the places I rode past with some trepidation a year ago evoked no emotion whatsoever.
So I woke up on Saturday around 930, and was really desperate to finally catch up on sleep, but as I had thrown away numerous possibilities in the past to do this, and understood that the weather was going to be fantastic probably for the last time this year, I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, got my pump and spare tubes together, and went to the bike market in NE Moscow, got a great deal on the bike, had some free stuff thrown in, and in addition chatted in Russian (such as I could) about vintage mountain bikes. Given that the idea of buying a 400 dollar bike new would have been a bit crazy to most people even five years ago, and that buying a 3000 dollar bike 15 years ago when the economy was still in shambles would have been impossible, it was a rather nice moment. HAving made my purchase, I got on the subway and went to the very last station, Marino, in the SE corner of Moscow. I had not brought very much to eat with me, apart from a jar of peanut butter, but was hoping to find all the necessities on the road. (Once you leave Moscow, you run immediately into colonies of dachas, and that means there must be places to buy food.)
Traffic was light and soon I was on my way out of the city. It was about 230 by the time I finally got going. I had been on this part of the road at least twice before, but the knowledge that this time I would be going farther, and not coming back before nightfall, put me in a slightly different mood. After crossing the bridge that goes over the MKAD, I came to the first fork in the road- left: oil shipping station, right: my route into the country. A little cemetery on a low ridge, and flowers mingled with trash on the wall below, and then not far after a little church across from a stagnant-looking but clean-smelling lake with a spring next to it. I tanked up on water, bought a huge sack of miniature pears for two dollars from an old lady next to the lake, and got on my way. I knew that it would be some way before I passed into terra incognita, but resolved to keep a moderate pace as I had not been on a real bike ride in over a year. The first obstacle was a small swamp I had to cross on foot, carrying the bike over my shoulder and trying to step as gingerly as possible on the stones and random boards placed there for the crossing so as not to sink in up to knees. I ended up with shoes full of goo and oil, but soon enough was back underway.
It was starting to get dark by this point, and so I started asking people where I could find a safe place to put my tent. An older woman selling home-made jam and pickles on the side of the road commented after selling me some apples that there were dangerous people, and that even deep in the forest I would find evidence of the crude habitations of immigrant workers who were liable to cut my throat. She added that even the locals could be pretty slimy, and that my best bet for accomodation would a vacation center just off the main drag. That vacation center happened to be the outermost point in my previous trip, and so sleeping there without advancing past my previous zone of exploration was out of the question. According to her, the next towns had nothing to offer but dangerous immigrant workers and dubious locals, and so I would be best served by going no farther.
As I rode along the main highway, I looked into the woods and could see no signs of any habitation whatsoever. I had another four hours before it was absolutely dark, but given Russian driving habits, more specifically passing habits, ie, aggressive doubling, I considered it prudent to stop somewhat earlier and therefore shifted a couple gears higher and made an effort to cover some ground. At one point a friend called and invited me to the sauna, but I refused.
I went through a small town of maybe 3000 people, and saw a sign labelled "Russia Starts Here"; appropriately enough the surfacing on the road took a turn for the worse. Looking around and seeing the prosperous-looking newly constructed dachas all around, I understood that really I was in a safe place, in spite of all the nonsense my Russian students had foisted on me over the past two years: They will cut your throat. Outside of Moscow, you are in a different country, and are no longer safe. Please, don't go.... Admittedly, I was only about ten miles outside of Moscow, but the southeast part of Moscow dwindles into countryside very rapidly, maybe only three miles outside of the city. Buses took on and let off mixed groups of immigrant workers and Russians, and once, while pausing to photograph a very typical Soviet war memorial, I exchanged nods with a very Caucasian (ie, Armenian/ Georgian/ Azeri/ Chechen) -looking worker who detected my foreignness. I also caught sight of some mixed groups of kids playing together- Russians and some immigrant workers whose nationality I could not identify. Riding on, I passed a huge stone quarry and considered ensuring my safety for the night by pitching my tent there in guaranteed isolation.
Instead, I pressed on, keeping on the sandy verge of the road as night was just beginning to fall. I came upon a large, newly-built church. In Russia, the Kremlin, apart from its scale, is not a unique building- across Russia, there are many churches built within the surrounded by walls. I encountered some Uzbek immigrant workers in their mid-30's shoveling wet cement on the church premises and asked them where I could pitch my tent, and if the people in this area were dangerous. They said no, except for the Russians, who get drunk and carouse on Saturday nights. They asked where I was from and when I told them, they just couldn't believe it. Seeing that these guys couldn't really help me, though, I left, and one of the workers, who introduced himself as an Armenian, ran after me, saying that I could sleep in his place for the night if I couldn't find anyplace else.
That is exactly the kind of offer that one seeks when travelling alone: the person who doesn't aggressively invite you immediately creates trust. He complained that he and his colleagues were building the church for pennies and were treated badly by the locals. I didn't know if he was referring to immigrant construction workers in general or his group specifically, and unfortunately it did not occur to me to ask. He said that although he was Armenian, he had graduated from a Russian school in Tblisi, and lamented that life in the USSR was much better, as people lived in harmony. Continuing on this note, he said that the new generation of kids doesn't understand that there were once fifteen republics which all worked together instead of competing with one another, and that "some people"- here he slid his hand over his head to show that he was talking about skinheads- you just have to avoid, and that under Stalin, they would all just have been lined up and shot.
I pointed out to him that he must earn enough by his standards to justify staying, because otherwise he'd have already left. He agreed, but said that no Russian would do his work- digging ditches, burying the dead, putting up walls- for the money he gets, and that whoever does not understand that does not understand the issue at all. I asked him if he stayed in the winter and he said no, he goes home, which does imply a certain level of purchasing power. I asked him why Moscow, and he said because it is close, but that if it were impossible here, where he would go. He said, "wherever the work is. If not here, then Europe. If not Europe, then Australia. If not Australia then America."
I was tempted to just stay, and did not feel he was dangerous, but my normal search algorithm demands that I ask a number of people where I can put up my tent and then take the best offer, and failing that, pitch my tent, or in the worst case, move on. And so I rode back down the hill to the spring where a number of people were loading their refilled 10-liter plastic bottles into waiting cars, and asked an older man where I could pitch my tent. He said he'd drive slowly and show me to a small field where I could place my tent. He drove back past the church, got out and pointed down to a somewhat scrubby-looking field. I asked what he thought of the immigrants' offer and he replied that you should never trust "black" people (this is how Russians refer to immigrant workers)- "we have our black people, and you have yours, that is life. At the bottom of the next hill there is spring, you can drink the water."
I rode down and around the bend discovered some swingsets where two young teenage girls were playing, sat down and had some peanut butter and bread I had bought earlier. Soon their parents came by, and as a few raindrops were falling here and there, invited me to dinner- mashed potatoes and some meat I didn't have the heart to refuse, plus some home-grown cabbage. The husband was bus driver, and I asked him how he related to his passengers from other countries. He said something I didn't understand, and explained, saying they were dogs, not people, and then somewhat perplexingly asked if it was true that all Americans and Brits are left-handed. I said no and asked him what he meant by saying that they were dogs and he answered by saying that they get hungry when there is no work, and attack people. I commented that the hungry often act that way, regardless of where they are from. He then asked how much money I earn, and I low-balled it quite a bit. The wife didn't have a lot to say, but I could see these people were nice enough to invite a complete stranger into their home for dinner. Since they seemed to have lost interest in me and were not ready to invite me to sleep their, I wished them well and rode back up to the church to find the people who had invited me.
They had already left, so I asked the priest who happened to be walking to his car. He immediately, calmly and authoritatively replied that they would be fired for inviting me. I explained, not untruthfully, that when they invited the sky was cloudy. He disagreed and asked if I was the same cyclist who had stopped by a month earlier, and continued interrogating me a bit and warned me that these people need to be periodically punished, because they tend to get drunk when enforcement becomes lax.
Giving up, I went down to the playground and pitched my tent on the sandy soil which was ideal for sleeping on. I had a very cold night because my sleeping bag was too thin, and wound up putting my jacket and jeans on instead of using them as a pillow, and also used a loaf of cheap bread in a plastic bag as a pillow.
The next day I rode back by more or less the same route and along the way met the same old woman who had sold me the apples, and told her that the immigrant workers she had warned me had invited me to sleep in their home, and that they seemed like completely normal people. She agreed and said just a bit pointedly that she had not said all of them were bad, and that it just depends on who you meet.
Overall I would say the feeling of danger was completely underwhelming, and some of the places I rode past with some trepidation a year ago evoked no emotion whatsoever.
среда, 24 сентября 2008 г.
You Can't Tread Sleaze Forever
Right now I am asking myself what I am doing here. I am here ostensibly to learn Russian, but what do I want to do that for? I suppose partly to tread sleaze for a couple years, and partly because the languages I learned before- French and German- are if anything waning in importance, leaving me with skills that will be of virtually no use by the time I get to middle age. So in the name of prudence I have chosen Russian, which, alas is anything but a safe bet. Everything in Russia is a bit of a wild card, and the language is no exception. Will this prove to be useful? Who knows. Am I learning quickly? Yes, but not quickly enough, because at this pace I could stay for a decade and still not speak at the level I'd like to reach.
The only way to get to that level would be to live like a Russian: swap my job of English for that of entry-level sales guy in a multinational company and consequently cut my pay in half; move outside of city limits and see my commute time triple; double my work hours. I just can't sustain the level of masochism that requires for the amount of time needed.
Before, I could assuage my doubts with the thought that I was treading sleaze to find out what it was like, but now I feel relatively safe, and while I am savoring the respite, few things are as uncomfortable for me as comfort is. I want to do something dangerous, something where I wake up in the morning and sincerely wonder if I'll end up in a Russian slammer for a couple days.
Nothing puts me ill at ease more than comfort, and I am definitely comfortable now. Nothing really interesting has happened in quite awhile, hence the largely retroseptic quality of this blog. Next time I will delev back into some revolting moments I have experiences here. Some people have complained that I have got nothing good to say about this place, but please Russians, understand that that's just because I am much better at writing about ugly moments than beautiful ones. I guess that's the mark of a hack.
The only way to get to that level would be to live like a Russian: swap my job of English for that of entry-level sales guy in a multinational company and consequently cut my pay in half; move outside of city limits and see my commute time triple; double my work hours. I just can't sustain the level of masochism that requires for the amount of time needed.
Before, I could assuage my doubts with the thought that I was treading sleaze to find out what it was like, but now I feel relatively safe, and while I am savoring the respite, few things are as uncomfortable for me as comfort is. I want to do something dangerous, something where I wake up in the morning and sincerely wonder if I'll end up in a Russian slammer for a couple days.
Nothing puts me ill at ease more than comfort, and I am definitely comfortable now. Nothing really interesting has happened in quite awhile, hence the largely retroseptic quality of this blog. Next time I will delev back into some revolting moments I have experiences here. Some people have complained that I have got nothing good to say about this place, but please Russians, understand that that's just because I am much better at writing about ugly moments than beautiful ones. I guess that's the mark of a hack.
пятница, 19 сентября 2008 г.
Novaia Zemlia
I suggest that everyone see Novaia Zemlia. Even if you don't understand the dialog, which I didn't, you really should download it. It is a b-film prison drama smart enough to know that its masquerade as an earnest look into step-by-step behind bars dehumanization is just an excuse for axe fights without armor and on-screen people-eating is just that, a masquerade.
The plot is like this: a group of Russian prisoners is secretly sent by the UN to colonize an Arctic island, and when they land with hands still in shackles they are provided with just enough food, water and tools (i.e., axes) to last them three months. In addition, numbered keys matching the prisoners' handcuff numbers are left in a heap on the beach; the prisoners precipitate towards the keys, and the first ones to find their match rush back to the crates full of axes and begin slaughtering the ones still in shackles. One of the prisoners just walks off, deciding to subsist alone in the woods rather than subsist among degenerates.
He is soon joined by another prison, but after trying to live off sea slime in the dead of winter, they come crawling back to the prison colony together and wind up falling asleep in a heap of still-warm ashes. One of them is awakened by prisoners carrying a dead guy on a spit towards the fire, but the two get caught and dragged back to camp.
They discover that the prisoners, instead of creating a new society on the island, had simply continued living in prison fashion, right down to the inflatable sex dolls. The prisoners create an institution to resolve their food shortage: the rank and file live crammed together in a barracks, and during the afternoon walk, a lackey announces that the last one inside the barracks gets eaten.
The plot is like this: a group of Russian prisoners is secretly sent by the UN to colonize an Arctic island, and when they land with hands still in shackles they are provided with just enough food, water and tools (i.e., axes) to last them three months. In addition, numbered keys matching the prisoners' handcuff numbers are left in a heap on the beach; the prisoners precipitate towards the keys, and the first ones to find their match rush back to the crates full of axes and begin slaughtering the ones still in shackles. One of the prisoners just walks off, deciding to subsist alone in the woods rather than subsist among degenerates.
He is soon joined by another prison, but after trying to live off sea slime in the dead of winter, they come crawling back to the prison colony together and wind up falling asleep in a heap of still-warm ashes. One of them is awakened by prisoners carrying a dead guy on a spit towards the fire, but the two get caught and dragged back to camp.
They discover that the prisoners, instead of creating a new society on the island, had simply continued living in prison fashion, right down to the inflatable sex dolls. The prisoners create an institution to resolve their food shortage: the rank and file live crammed together in a barracks, and during the afternoon walk, a lackey announces that the last one inside the barracks gets eaten.
понедельник, 8 сентября 2008 г.
Passing on the Chalice of Slime to the Chinese
People were displeased by my last posting. That is understandable- most of the drivel I wrote about the US was so rote, so typical, so obvious and un-subtle that you'd expect it from a Frenchman. My mom for one pointed out the pollution caused by the Chinese- she noted rivers frothing with poison, maroon-colored stagnant pools, and to her list of horrors I'd like to add vast heaps of carcinogenic white powder, the byproduct of solar panel manufacturing; whole cities forced to wear face masks to be able to breathe; whole regions made desitute by earthquake-causing dam-building efforts. But let's not forget that the US and Western Europe are buying pollution-intensive goods made in China.
Russians also like to smirk at the US and its pollution, but what they often don't realize is that Russia is PAYED TO POLLUTE. Russia signed the Kyoto Protocol, and this means that they have to reduce the countries emission of greenhouse gases to 1990 levels. That's fortunate for Russia, because in 1990 Soviet heavy industry was still intact and polluted far more than current Russian industry. That means Russia has the right to INCREASE its greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels, and until the Russians manage to pull that off, they actually get a credit for being below 1990 CO2emissions.
Russians also like to talk about how the US uses so much gas, and pollutes with it, and at the same time want to be loved for providing the oil and gas that we use to pollute. In other words, they want it both ways: get rich selling us pollutants, and complain that we pollute with them.
I did promise to talk about teabag, and will get around to that, but let me say for now that I have two nice new students, 11-year old twin girls who already speak English reasonably well. They are a bit far from the center, which means I have to travel a lot to get to their place, but they are just so nice that I forget about the distance and time and talk about the swings and monkey bars with them. I am lucky to have such a job, although in the long run I am not developing any additional skills directly related to my work.
In other news, I am now taking Spanish classes. I took Spanish for four years in high school, and feel that it is such a low-hanging plum that I'd be a fool not to pluck it. And besides, the other languages I know are at best a craps shoot in terms of money-making utility. I don't feel I am making much progress in Spanish, but I guess that is typical of me: take two classes and bemoan that I haven't progressed yet.
Russians also like to smirk at the US and its pollution, but what they often don't realize is that Russia is PAYED TO POLLUTE. Russia signed the Kyoto Protocol, and this means that they have to reduce the countries emission of greenhouse gases to 1990 levels. That's fortunate for Russia, because in 1990 Soviet heavy industry was still intact and polluted far more than current Russian industry. That means Russia has the right to INCREASE its greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels, and until the Russians manage to pull that off, they actually get a credit for being below 1990 CO2emissions.
Russians also like to talk about how the US uses so much gas, and pollutes with it, and at the same time want to be loved for providing the oil and gas that we use to pollute. In other words, they want it both ways: get rich selling us pollutants, and complain that we pollute with them.
I did promise to talk about teabag, and will get around to that, but let me say for now that I have two nice new students, 11-year old twin girls who already speak English reasonably well. They are a bit far from the center, which means I have to travel a lot to get to their place, but they are just so nice that I forget about the distance and time and talk about the swings and monkey bars with them. I am lucky to have such a job, although in the long run I am not developing any additional skills directly related to my work.
In other news, I am now taking Spanish classes. I took Spanish for four years in high school, and feel that it is such a low-hanging plum that I'd be a fool not to pluck it. And besides, the other languages I know are at best a craps shoot in terms of money-making utility. I don't feel I am making much progress in Spanish, but I guess that is typical of me: take two classes and bemoan that I haven't progressed yet.
четверг, 4 сентября 2008 г.
Caveats
In my last post, I promised to introduce you to Teabag, but for now I feel obliged to go back on my word. Some Russians reading the blog feel I am not being objective, and indeed from the very beginning I have felt that to be true. I also know that there is a certain smugness that people feel towards Russia, and that smugness is now co-mingled with fear and even hate now that Russia is doing better. If that describes you, and you are American, I have a bucket of slime to pour on your head towards the end of this entry. If you read everything except the bucket of slime, then you are a coward. Sorry, those are the facts.
Here are some more facts: since I came to Russia two years ago, I have managed to pay a good portion of my debts, more than I would have been able to pay in the US; by the time I leave I will likely have good command of two more foreign languages, namely Russian and Spanish; I will have experienced more in two or three years than I would likely experience in two decades in the US; while I have been thrown out of my flat numerous times, I have lived in Russian friends' houses free of charge equally as often.
Americans' and West Europeans' stereotype of Russia is as follows: slovenly drunk males staggering down the street, or maybe laying down on it; radiant, desperate women dying to leave the country, hopefully with a sober man; laws which are not laws; contracts which are not contracts; vast, derelict factories; cops who take bribes and are aligned with organized crime.
Although I don't know about the cops, the rest is true. My experience here has not undone my stereotypes, but rather embellished them. But it is far from the whole story.
Russians' stereotype of Americans is as follows: ignorant, slovenly, overweight women inexplicably paired with good-looking men; people who believe that America singlehandendly won the Second World War; terrible food; corrupt corporations that push the US into wars simply to enrich shareholders; Jews who run the whole damn thing.
I am with them on all but the last point. But really, in the future, every time you read this and smirk at The Drunk Russian Bullies, don't forget that we come from a country that routinely goes to war for no reason, don't forget that the US is arguably the world's biggest polluter, don't forget that a good portion of US voters don't know the furst thing about geogaphy or history; don't forget about those great tubs waddling down the streets; don't forget that we consume more of the world's natural resources than any other country and give almost nothing back. We are a country which has turned into a pig.
Here are some more facts: since I came to Russia two years ago, I have managed to pay a good portion of my debts, more than I would have been able to pay in the US; by the time I leave I will likely have good command of two more foreign languages, namely Russian and Spanish; I will have experienced more in two or three years than I would likely experience in two decades in the US; while I have been thrown out of my flat numerous times, I have lived in Russian friends' houses free of charge equally as often.
Americans' and West Europeans' stereotype of Russia is as follows: slovenly drunk males staggering down the street, or maybe laying down on it; radiant, desperate women dying to leave the country, hopefully with a sober man; laws which are not laws; contracts which are not contracts; vast, derelict factories; cops who take bribes and are aligned with organized crime.
Although I don't know about the cops, the rest is true. My experience here has not undone my stereotypes, but rather embellished them. But it is far from the whole story.
Russians' stereotype of Americans is as follows: ignorant, slovenly, overweight women inexplicably paired with good-looking men; people who believe that America singlehandendly won the Second World War; terrible food; corrupt corporations that push the US into wars simply to enrich shareholders; Jews who run the whole damn thing.
I am with them on all but the last point. But really, in the future, every time you read this and smirk at The Drunk Russian Bullies, don't forget that we come from a country that routinely goes to war for no reason, don't forget that the US is arguably the world's biggest polluter, don't forget that a good portion of US voters don't know the furst thing about geogaphy or history; don't forget about those great tubs waddling down the streets; don't forget that we consume more of the world's natural resources than any other country and give almost nothing back. We are a country which has turned into a pig.
понедельник, 1 сентября 2008 г.
Introducing Teabag
The last post was more of an effort to keep friends and family up to date, and less intended as a source of entertainment.
My next post will introduce you to Teabag, an Epgyptian whom I have named in honor of the eponymous sexual act. For now, though, I must lunch.
My next post will introduce you to Teabag, an Epgyptian whom I have named in honor of the eponymous sexual act. For now, though, I must lunch.
Still Searching for People of Unimpeachable Honesty
A few posts ago I mentioned that my landlord and landlady were people of unimpeachable honesty. I retract those words, and also retract some of the scorn I reserved for Charlemagne, who had agreed to live in my flat for two months during my vacation and then pulled out of the deal unannounced, which could have resulted in me being left homeless without notice.
What happened instead is that my 2-room apartment was completely vacant when I returned. How did it turn out that way? Charlemagne was planning on living in that flat alone, which would have been fair considering I paid half the rent, and he agreed to pay the other half. Instead, the landlord and landlady decided to try to get more cash out of the situation by inviting a second person to live in the flat, i.e., they wanted to collect money from three people instead of two.
They invited a Canadian to live there, who may or not have been the omni-sexual whoremonger who had been interested in my spare several months before. Charlemagne, upon learning that he was going to be living with a stranger, decided not to move in. And then the Canadian evaporated a well, leaving the landlord and landlady with almost no money for that month.
They never told me that. And because they lost the extra money, they want me to pay my rent tomorrow instead of on the 11th, their way of getting 8 days rent back. I could fight them over this, but I am tired of fighting people over shit like this.
Why do I have this obsession with finding people of unimpeachable honesty? Because they are so rare. I want to find one and then be able to say, -I had mostly bad experiences every time money or living arrangements were involved, but you know, I met this one person, and he shattered all the myths. He never lied to me once. And so I can say that it's not all bad over there-. But so far it just isn't so. Because it just doesn't pay to be honest here.
In any case I have a new roommate moving in, and now that I think about who I have taken I am more than a bit worried. The guy is a bit of a motormouth, but what I am really worried about is that he loves listening to blaring country music, especially on Sunday afternoons. Yesterday was Sunday, and I really just treasured the silence and the fact that for once I could sleep all day and do exactly NOTHING in complete silence. If that kind of day disappears from my life, things will get really unpleasant for me very soon. When I am here in Moscow, I often complain about Russian pop music, which generally is pretty toxic, but then I return home and find myself waiting in line at Wal-Mart or the post office, and listening to country. In those moments I think to myself: give me my Russian pop back.
What happened instead is that my 2-room apartment was completely vacant when I returned. How did it turn out that way? Charlemagne was planning on living in that flat alone, which would have been fair considering I paid half the rent, and he agreed to pay the other half. Instead, the landlord and landlady decided to try to get more cash out of the situation by inviting a second person to live in the flat, i.e., they wanted to collect money from three people instead of two.
They invited a Canadian to live there, who may or not have been the omni-sexual whoremonger who had been interested in my spare several months before. Charlemagne, upon learning that he was going to be living with a stranger, decided not to move in. And then the Canadian evaporated a well, leaving the landlord and landlady with almost no money for that month.
They never told me that. And because they lost the extra money, they want me to pay my rent tomorrow instead of on the 11th, their way of getting 8 days rent back. I could fight them over this, but I am tired of fighting people over shit like this.
Why do I have this obsession with finding people of unimpeachable honesty? Because they are so rare. I want to find one and then be able to say, -I had mostly bad experiences every time money or living arrangements were involved, but you know, I met this one person, and he shattered all the myths. He never lied to me once. And so I can say that it's not all bad over there-. But so far it just isn't so. Because it just doesn't pay to be honest here.
In any case I have a new roommate moving in, and now that I think about who I have taken I am more than a bit worried. The guy is a bit of a motormouth, but what I am really worried about is that he loves listening to blaring country music, especially on Sunday afternoons. Yesterday was Sunday, and I really just treasured the silence and the fact that for once I could sleep all day and do exactly NOTHING in complete silence. If that kind of day disappears from my life, things will get really unpleasant for me very soon. When I am here in Moscow, I often complain about Russian pop music, which generally is pretty toxic, but then I return home and find myself waiting in line at Wal-Mart or the post office, and listening to country. In those moments I think to myself: give me my Russian pop back.
вторник, 26 августа 2008 г.
What is a Nazi, Pt. 2
People may be a bit confused about the title of yesterday's blog. This entry will clear it all up.
I came back to Moscow from France last Wednesday, and when I landed I didn't feel like seeing anybody. So until Saturday night I just kind of hung around, reading and sleeping, apart from one well-paid class with private students. On Saturday night, though, I decided to call a few people and let them know I was back. One of them, my friend Alexei, is in Germany, so I called Dima, the warm-hearted communist mini-bus driver I spoke of in the last post.
I gave him a call around 4, and he "generously" offered to "let" me come to his place. I use quotation marks because he lives pretty far, and I often see this as being a way to get me to do all the traveling to meet up. On the other hand, in Russia it is considered a real gesture of friendship and generosity to invite someone into your home, especially if the person sleeps in your place.
I chose to accept his offer, and go all the way over to his place. I always feel a bit uncomfortable accepting such offers, because I know there is going to be hard drinking and salty food until the wee hours of the morning. I have, as I mentioned, stopped drinking both alcohol and caffeine, and Russians are often hurt when you don't drink with them. And besides, the last metro leaves at 1 am, which means you are obliged to sleep at the other person's house.
I decided to go for it anyways. I got my stuff together, walked to the metro and off I went. When I arrived at the station in the kind of ghetto-y southeast of Moscow, I gave Dima a call, and he promised he would arrive soon with bicycles and that we'd ride to his house. While waiting, I took a look around- nothing special, blaring idiotic dance beats coming from the inside of kebab shops with neon lights, gray sky, shabby-looking Soviet highrises, rows of pre-fab kiosks selling fruit and vegetables and alcohol, some open green spaces, and across the street the House of Culture, which had been a factory but was now a center for theatre performances. As soon as he arrived he gave me a big hug and asked how my trip to France had been. He explained how to use the shifters, even though I told him I knew how, then gave me the worse bike, telling me it was the better one. Whatever. It soon became apparent from his riding that he was drunk, and he began complaining that he lived in a ghetto, and that he had been fighting with his wife.
We stopped in a kiosk and he asked me what beer I wanted, and I refused explaining I wasn't going to drink a drop till Christmas. He couldn't quite grasp it, and when I explained some he just interrupted, telling me I had to drink. I was tempted, but stayed strong. Finally he went in and got me some kvas, a non-alcoholic drink made (I think) from rye, and again we were off, this time to a big artificial lake held in by rocks held back by chicken wire. Seeing a syringe on the ground, I asked him whether people shoot up here even during the daytime, and he said yes, at all hours of the day. He said such people come up and demand all your possessions, but that they're weak, and you just tell them to get out. He also said someone had drowned his friend in this very lake 20 years ago. I also mentioned I was looking for a new place to live, as the landlady is raising the rent, and he said we'd go to a friend's place, as he was offering a free room for only 10000 rubles, around half of what I am paying now.
Off we went, arriving at some low five-story flats. The whole neighborhood smelled like shit, a fact I was prepared to ignore considering the price. I asked Dima how he knew this guy, and he said it was an old school friend, a real honest guy, but an alcoholic. He added that I should never bring cash to the apartment. In typical Moscow fashion, I began calculating whether this was a good deal or not. I'd save 400us over my current flat, more after the price hike, but I'd have to go to the bank more often to deposit the cash my private students pay me, so as to avoid getting bumrushed by this guy. (I think the very fact that I considered the offer not unattractive says a lot about the Moscow real estate market: "take any offer").
It was already quite dark, and we were off again, this time crossing over some railroad tracks on foot. Lots of beer bottles, some syringes, highrises in the distance. Dima began telling me about how he had pressured four different women into getting abortions- this had happened four times- and that he could never forgive himself.
After arriving at his apartment, Dima told me how his parents had gotten divorced at age 60, how his father, who was a complete drunk, was living in the spare room and how poor he was, although the whole flat had just been renovated and even had a nice Italian coffee machine. Soon, not entirely drunk, he was launching into a tirade about Jews, telling me that Hitler was a Jew because in the Bible it says the world would end after the Jews started living together in the desert, and that Hitler on the Jews urging killed the Jews so they'd all live together in the desert. He asked if I had a girlfriend, and he called her a whore, and asked if I knew that 1 in 5 Russians has AIDS (that's not so, it's more like 1 percent), asked if I had syphilis, and whether I wanted to sleep with a French woman he knew. Not long after he was offering me a small pebble and telling me that it was a sign of friendship and happiness, and that my angel wasn't with me because I was too naive and stupid to accept Christ into my life. He demanded I put the pebble, which had a small hole in it so that you can wear it on a necklace. He speculated for quite awhile about how the hole had gotten in the necklace, and concluded that it had been made by a mollusk.
Afterwards we went to a bar and met his wife and the French woman, who turned out to be well overweight, 40, and not French.
Afterwards we returned to his home with his wife, and he began ranting again, this time about people from the Caucasus. His wife said they need to all be killed, they come to Russia and "occupy our territory", they "even own businesses, and the bosses tell Russians what to do", "we need to kick them out or kill them", "we need to break their heads in", "they aren't people", "they're like Jews", "they found a severed head in the supermarket, who knocked that head off? WHO? Who do you think?", "Russian women sell themselves, and then these dark men think they can hit on any Russian woman. The last time one did that I got some Russian men together and they beat him up", "soon there's going to be war between rich and poor, and the dark people [Georgians, Armenians, and Azerbaijainis] are going to lose", "our taxi driver [we had taken a brief taxi ride after which Dima embraced the taxi driver, who was from Tajikstan and with whom we had had a very cordial conversation], today I hug him, and when the war comes, I will be ready to kill him". All this over a giant bowl of mayonnaise-globbed vegetables, my favorite. Dima even drank the mayo-veggie runoff from the bowl, the sound of which greatly complicated my task of eating the vegetables, and when a chunk of tomato fell on the table, Dima slurped that shit right up off the table with his lips and went back to talking about how Georgians are dirty.
Hoping to hear more idiotic ravings, I asked if he thought that Africans have the same violent character as Georgians. His wife said that Africans smell. I said that wasn't so, and his wife countered that "black people squat in the 60 degrees [Centigrade] sun, doing nothing all day, how do you think they are going to smell?"
I wound up sleeping at their place, and the next day, Dima and I were watching Olympic boxing, the match was between a black French guy and a Russian. Dima said, "you remember you asked me whether Africans have the same character as Georgians. Well, look how the African is hitting the Russian guy. You see how he hits him? You see how he grabs the Russian? What do you think?" I wanted to tell him that it's fucking boxing match, people hit and grab each other, but in these moments I just maintain an air of respect and wait until it's time to leave. I may even try get this guy on film at his very worst.
American xenophobes talk about expulsion and border closure. Russian xenophobes talk about extermination and enslavement. That's probably just because Russian xenophobes on the whole have more of a grievance with the world their American counterparts do and dream of being able to relish seeing someone below them. I always think of asking such people how they are in any way different from Nazis. You see, in Russia, people are often quite comfortable with the content of Nazism, as their country was the one most responsible for defeating Nazi Germany and the one that suffered most because of the war. But I would be very afraid to tell people with such views that they are in fact Nazis.
It is a banal point to make, but Nazism and communism have a lot of similarities, or at least get their support from the same quarters. Nazis and communists alike have a hate of the rich, and especially among the Russians I have met who long for the old regime, there is a marked hate of Jews characterized by wild conspiracy theories running the gamut from "the Massad is reading my icq's" to "Hitler was a Jew and the Final Solution was all part of their big plan. In Europe, the accepted historical narrative says that the Jews were the group that suffered most in the Second World War. In Germany or France or Britain, anti-Semitism is far less acceptable than here because people saw the barbarism it resulted in. In Russia, on the other hand, communists, and by association, Russia itself, are seen as the main victims, not Jews. That view is not such a complete stretch, but this narrative means that anti-Semitism was never so completely discredited as it was in Western Europe or North America. I'll be writing more about racism in Russia, and trying to see how typical all this is.
I came back to Moscow from France last Wednesday, and when I landed I didn't feel like seeing anybody. So until Saturday night I just kind of hung around, reading and sleeping, apart from one well-paid class with private students. On Saturday night, though, I decided to call a few people and let them know I was back. One of them, my friend Alexei, is in Germany, so I called Dima, the warm-hearted communist mini-bus driver I spoke of in the last post.
I gave him a call around 4, and he "generously" offered to "let" me come to his place. I use quotation marks because he lives pretty far, and I often see this as being a way to get me to do all the traveling to meet up. On the other hand, in Russia it is considered a real gesture of friendship and generosity to invite someone into your home, especially if the person sleeps in your place.
I chose to accept his offer, and go all the way over to his place. I always feel a bit uncomfortable accepting such offers, because I know there is going to be hard drinking and salty food until the wee hours of the morning. I have, as I mentioned, stopped drinking both alcohol and caffeine, and Russians are often hurt when you don't drink with them. And besides, the last metro leaves at 1 am, which means you are obliged to sleep at the other person's house.
I decided to go for it anyways. I got my stuff together, walked to the metro and off I went. When I arrived at the station in the kind of ghetto-y southeast of Moscow, I gave Dima a call, and he promised he would arrive soon with bicycles and that we'd ride to his house. While waiting, I took a look around- nothing special, blaring idiotic dance beats coming from the inside of kebab shops with neon lights, gray sky, shabby-looking Soviet highrises, rows of pre-fab kiosks selling fruit and vegetables and alcohol, some open green spaces, and across the street the House of Culture, which had been a factory but was now a center for theatre performances. As soon as he arrived he gave me a big hug and asked how my trip to France had been. He explained how to use the shifters, even though I told him I knew how, then gave me the worse bike, telling me it was the better one. Whatever. It soon became apparent from his riding that he was drunk, and he began complaining that he lived in a ghetto, and that he had been fighting with his wife.
We stopped in a kiosk and he asked me what beer I wanted, and I refused explaining I wasn't going to drink a drop till Christmas. He couldn't quite grasp it, and when I explained some he just interrupted, telling me I had to drink. I was tempted, but stayed strong. Finally he went in and got me some kvas, a non-alcoholic drink made (I think) from rye, and again we were off, this time to a big artificial lake held in by rocks held back by chicken wire. Seeing a syringe on the ground, I asked him whether people shoot up here even during the daytime, and he said yes, at all hours of the day. He said such people come up and demand all your possessions, but that they're weak, and you just tell them to get out. He also said someone had drowned his friend in this very lake 20 years ago. I also mentioned I was looking for a new place to live, as the landlady is raising the rent, and he said we'd go to a friend's place, as he was offering a free room for only 10000 rubles, around half of what I am paying now.
Off we went, arriving at some low five-story flats. The whole neighborhood smelled like shit, a fact I was prepared to ignore considering the price. I asked Dima how he knew this guy, and he said it was an old school friend, a real honest guy, but an alcoholic. He added that I should never bring cash to the apartment. In typical Moscow fashion, I began calculating whether this was a good deal or not. I'd save 400us over my current flat, more after the price hike, but I'd have to go to the bank more often to deposit the cash my private students pay me, so as to avoid getting bumrushed by this guy. (I think the very fact that I considered the offer not unattractive says a lot about the Moscow real estate market: "take any offer").
It was already quite dark, and we were off again, this time crossing over some railroad tracks on foot. Lots of beer bottles, some syringes, highrises in the distance. Dima began telling me about how he had pressured four different women into getting abortions- this had happened four times- and that he could never forgive himself.
After arriving at his apartment, Dima told me how his parents had gotten divorced at age 60, how his father, who was a complete drunk, was living in the spare room and how poor he was, although the whole flat had just been renovated and even had a nice Italian coffee machine. Soon, not entirely drunk, he was launching into a tirade about Jews, telling me that Hitler was a Jew because in the Bible it says the world would end after the Jews started living together in the desert, and that Hitler on the Jews urging killed the Jews so they'd all live together in the desert. He asked if I had a girlfriend, and he called her a whore, and asked if I knew that 1 in 5 Russians has AIDS (that's not so, it's more like 1 percent), asked if I had syphilis, and whether I wanted to sleep with a French woman he knew. Not long after he was offering me a small pebble and telling me that it was a sign of friendship and happiness, and that my angel wasn't with me because I was too naive and stupid to accept Christ into my life. He demanded I put the pebble, which had a small hole in it so that you can wear it on a necklace. He speculated for quite awhile about how the hole had gotten in the necklace, and concluded that it had been made by a mollusk.
Afterwards we went to a bar and met his wife and the French woman, who turned out to be well overweight, 40, and not French.
Afterwards we returned to his home with his wife, and he began ranting again, this time about people from the Caucasus. His wife said they need to all be killed, they come to Russia and "occupy our territory", they "even own businesses, and the bosses tell Russians what to do", "we need to kick them out or kill them", "we need to break their heads in", "they aren't people", "they're like Jews", "they found a severed head in the supermarket, who knocked that head off? WHO? Who do you think?", "Russian women sell themselves, and then these dark men think they can hit on any Russian woman. The last time one did that I got some Russian men together and they beat him up", "soon there's going to be war between rich and poor, and the dark people [Georgians, Armenians, and Azerbaijainis] are going to lose", "our taxi driver [we had taken a brief taxi ride after which Dima embraced the taxi driver, who was from Tajikstan and with whom we had had a very cordial conversation], today I hug him, and when the war comes, I will be ready to kill him". All this over a giant bowl of mayonnaise-globbed vegetables, my favorite. Dima even drank the mayo-veggie runoff from the bowl, the sound of which greatly complicated my task of eating the vegetables, and when a chunk of tomato fell on the table, Dima slurped that shit right up off the table with his lips and went back to talking about how Georgians are dirty.
Hoping to hear more idiotic ravings, I asked if he thought that Africans have the same violent character as Georgians. His wife said that Africans smell. I said that wasn't so, and his wife countered that "black people squat in the 60 degrees [Centigrade] sun, doing nothing all day, how do you think they are going to smell?"
I wound up sleeping at their place, and the next day, Dima and I were watching Olympic boxing, the match was between a black French guy and a Russian. Dima said, "you remember you asked me whether Africans have the same character as Georgians. Well, look how the African is hitting the Russian guy. You see how he hits him? You see how he grabs the Russian? What do you think?" I wanted to tell him that it's fucking boxing match, people hit and grab each other, but in these moments I just maintain an air of respect and wait until it's time to leave. I may even try get this guy on film at his very worst.
American xenophobes talk about expulsion and border closure. Russian xenophobes talk about extermination and enslavement. That's probably just because Russian xenophobes on the whole have more of a grievance with the world their American counterparts do and dream of being able to relish seeing someone below them. I always think of asking such people how they are in any way different from Nazis. You see, in Russia, people are often quite comfortable with the content of Nazism, as their country was the one most responsible for defeating Nazi Germany and the one that suffered most because of the war. But I would be very afraid to tell people with such views that they are in fact Nazis.
It is a banal point to make, but Nazism and communism have a lot of similarities, or at least get their support from the same quarters. Nazis and communists alike have a hate of the rich, and especially among the Russians I have met who long for the old regime, there is a marked hate of Jews characterized by wild conspiracy theories running the gamut from "the Massad is reading my icq's" to "Hitler was a Jew and the Final Solution was all part of their big plan. In Europe, the accepted historical narrative says that the Jews were the group that suffered most in the Second World War. In Germany or France or Britain, anti-Semitism is far less acceptable than here because people saw the barbarism it resulted in. In Russia, on the other hand, communists, and by association, Russia itself, are seen as the main victims, not Jews. That view is not such a complete stretch, but this narrative means that anti-Semitism was never so completely discredited as it was in Western Europe or North America. I'll be writing more about racism in Russia, and trying to see how typical all this is.
понедельник, 25 августа 2008 г.
What is a Nazi? (part 1)
Recently I gave up three vices- alcohol, caffeine and the news. The first two are more important, because they are linked. In the morning I usually drink a cup of strong coffee or tea. In the case of tea, I extract its maximum potential using the following method: I put the tea leaves onto a small sieve and pour the still-boiling water directly onto the leaves, occasionally stopping and pressing with a spoon on them to squeeze out more 'juice', then I start to pour again, until the glass os full of very strong tea. Then I pour the tea into a second cup, letting the tea pass throught the nearly exhausted leaves once more. I leave the last inch or so of drink to be poured directly into the second cup, without the last bit of tea coming into contact with the tea leaves again, because the tea at the bottom of the cup is stronger and by letting it pass through the already used leaves again, you lose more caffeine than you gain. This wakes me up quite thoroughly, but by no means guarantees a cheerful mood. During the day, I drink more tea or coffee at all of the places I give classes. The result is that at the end of the day I am completely wired, and unable to sleep. Unless I drink alcohol, particularly red wine, which tends to put me right away into a sleep so deep that the next day I require caffeine.
This is the result of a schedule which is difficult without bearing any resemblance to a routine. Every day my schedule changes, and because I am a serious, on time kind of guy my only choice is to be able to wake up completely at a moment's notice and swing into feverish action. And afterwards it is impossible to turn off and go to sleep.
I can see the results of all this on my face. When I arrived in Moscow two years ago at the age of 26, people thought I was 19. People now more regularly guess my age. Some say that that is because I look more sure of myself, one positive result of my experiences here, but I think they are just being nice. There are incipient exhaustion wrinkles around my eyes, and I plan to stop them by avoiding alcohol and caffeine completely.
A few months ago, I had a student at a big accounting company far from home early in the morning, and after a long metro (tube/subway) ride, I had about a 20 minute walk, from which I was occasionally spared by the company's minibus service. On one particularly sour morning, the driver was listening to Dire Straits, and asked whether I liked the music. I said yes, and he asked whether I liked only sad music. I said not necessarily, which he didn't believe, and asked why I always look so pissed off. Afterwards we chatted a bit and got acquainted.
A few weeks later, when the weather was better, we met and he brought his 10-year old son. We first went into Moscow's most crowded shopping mall, which has a little food court, and he offered me beer and pancakes, refusing to let me pay. Afterwards we went for a little stroll near the Kremlin. He pointed out the Russian Historical Museum, which previously was the Museum of Lenin. He recalled, in 1990, reclining on Lenin's old couch and having a smoke with the cops, who by that time had ceased to care about the upkeep of the old idols. As we continued past the museum, I asked him whether he thought such a system could return, and he said yes, and even hoped so. I had noted that he was religious, and told him of my surprise. He said that food was much cheaper back then, and that everyone had a chance to do what he wanted. Unable to really counter people's thoughts when speaking Russian, I just listened. I asked him where he was going to draw the line between not enough, enough and too much property and added that I was thinking of getting a new bike. He said there was nothing wrong with that, until I added that I already had four. He looked at me in shock, pointed across the street to a fashionable 19th century flat, and asked whether I thought it was fair that one person can own such a building when so many in Moscow are homeless.
I said no, and he replied that my fifth bike was the same thing, and that that was the last he was going to say on the topic. I took this for the tactic of someone who knows his arguments are vulnerable, even untenable, but cannot leave them. He does, after all, own a dacha in the countryside. Why doesn't he let some bums live in it?
This is the result of a schedule which is difficult without bearing any resemblance to a routine. Every day my schedule changes, and because I am a serious, on time kind of guy my only choice is to be able to wake up completely at a moment's notice and swing into feverish action. And afterwards it is impossible to turn off and go to sleep.
I can see the results of all this on my face. When I arrived in Moscow two years ago at the age of 26, people thought I was 19. People now more regularly guess my age. Some say that that is because I look more sure of myself, one positive result of my experiences here, but I think they are just being nice. There are incipient exhaustion wrinkles around my eyes, and I plan to stop them by avoiding alcohol and caffeine completely.
A few months ago, I had a student at a big accounting company far from home early in the morning, and after a long metro (tube/subway) ride, I had about a 20 minute walk, from which I was occasionally spared by the company's minibus service. On one particularly sour morning, the driver was listening to Dire Straits, and asked whether I liked the music. I said yes, and he asked whether I liked only sad music. I said not necessarily, which he didn't believe, and asked why I always look so pissed off. Afterwards we chatted a bit and got acquainted.
A few weeks later, when the weather was better, we met and he brought his 10-year old son. We first went into Moscow's most crowded shopping mall, which has a little food court, and he offered me beer and pancakes, refusing to let me pay. Afterwards we went for a little stroll near the Kremlin. He pointed out the Russian Historical Museum, which previously was the Museum of Lenin. He recalled, in 1990, reclining on Lenin's old couch and having a smoke with the cops, who by that time had ceased to care about the upkeep of the old idols. As we continued past the museum, I asked him whether he thought such a system could return, and he said yes, and even hoped so. I had noted that he was religious, and told him of my surprise. He said that food was much cheaper back then, and that everyone had a chance to do what he wanted. Unable to really counter people's thoughts when speaking Russian, I just listened. I asked him where he was going to draw the line between not enough, enough and too much property and added that I was thinking of getting a new bike. He said there was nothing wrong with that, until I added that I already had four. He looked at me in shock, pointed across the street to a fashionable 19th century flat, and asked whether I thought it was fair that one person can own such a building when so many in Moscow are homeless.
I said no, and he replied that my fifth bike was the same thing, and that that was the last he was going to say on the topic. I took this for the tactic of someone who knows his arguments are vulnerable, even untenable, but cannot leave them. He does, after all, own a dacha in the countryside. Why doesn't he let some bums live in it?
People of Unimpeachable Honesty
I said in a previous posting that I have met very few people of "unimpeachable honesty". That isn't true. I have met numerous people who, for completely unselfish reasons have helped me out, particularly in the are of housing. While it is true that I have been thrown out of my flat on numerous occasions, it is also undeniable that I have been picked up in the dead of night in an emergency by a stranger, a friend of a friend, and housed for weeks by people I barely knew.
четверг, 21 августа 2008 г.
A Dog Always Crawls Back to its Vomit
Well, I am back in Frowntown, having returned from France after an extended vacation. I felt a bit queasy about coming back to Moscow, and upon getting out of the airplane the queasiness was transmuted into hate and horror. Not immediately, mind you, but kind of step by step as I on my homeward path encountered the things and people that make this place so unpleasant so frequently: sullen, sag-shouldered afrophobe cops who can't make a living without stealing from africans; girls with legs up to their necks and nothing in their heads because as a rule men think of women as soup and sex machines and not as conversation partners; sundry drunks; and the vast number of people with innocent, kindly faces which make you feel like maybe you're just wrong about these people in general.
During my vacation in France, I had left the flat to Charlemagne, who was to hold the fort until my return, paying part of the rent and making sure no one else moved in in my place. Instead, I found out, he had bailed at the last minute, leaving the flat to an unnamed Canadian. The idea of a Canadian male living in my flat worried me, because several months ago, while looking for a flatmate, I had met a Canadian who seemed like an alright guy, until he revealed that he brings back multiple prostitutes of both sexes, or sometimes only men, to the apartment. I didn't relish the idea of waking up at 3am to a quartet of male orgasms six months ago, and so I didn't let him take the room. I still don't relish the idea, so the idea that maybe the same Canadian was in my flat waiting for me to come back was rather unsettling.
Instead, upon arrival I was greeted by my landlord Leonid, one of the few people of unalloyed honesty I have met in this city. During my absence, no one was living in the flat, which means he made almost no money the entire time I was gone. He gave me the key, and we entered together, turned on the fridge and unblocked the gas, and started unpacking some of my stuff. Unfortunately though, he informed me that rent is going up as of September. The only bad thing about the flat is the rent. Leonid and his wife Ludmilla both have just plain unrealistic expectations about what people can afford to pay to stay in the flat, what they are demanding is WELL above market prices. They aren't trying to rip me off, they just have an inflated expectation of what they can earn from this flat.
Today I called a German woman who lives in Moscow and who was considering living in my other room starting from September, ie, just when I need her to come, but she found the price ridiculous. I told her that there was no parasite real estate agent to pay, and no deposit to pay either, but she was unimpressed and harangued me some about prices and then hung up. In typical Moscow fashion (I would have done the same in her position) she called back to wheedle me down to a lower price and offer unwanted advice. As we continued speaking, she made a few mistakes in her German, and her Russian accent became more apparent, which made me think she was more Russian than German. I told her I was willing to pay such a high price because I had been thrown out and ripped off too many times in the past, and was willing to pay a higher price for stability. She countered that she had never had such experiences, and that she hoped I'd understand that she was willing to pay 40 percent less than what my landlord was demanding, and that starting tomorrow she was going to start searching intensively for a room to live in, ie, I should accept her offer immediately or face paying the whole rent myself.
One thread that ran through the conversation was that Moscow is a city of liars and cheats, and that when you find someone honest, you have to hold onto them, even if it is expensive. As her Russian accent became more apparent, I felt a certain pleasure in having thus shamed this woman for her nationality before it had even become apparent to me, and a measure of shame in my pleasure. The reasons behind my shame, anger, and pleasure will become more apparent as you continue to read this blog.
During my vacation in France, I had left the flat to Charlemagne, who was to hold the fort until my return, paying part of the rent and making sure no one else moved in in my place. Instead, I found out, he had bailed at the last minute, leaving the flat to an unnamed Canadian. The idea of a Canadian male living in my flat worried me, because several months ago, while looking for a flatmate, I had met a Canadian who seemed like an alright guy, until he revealed that he brings back multiple prostitutes of both sexes, or sometimes only men, to the apartment. I didn't relish the idea of waking up at 3am to a quartet of male orgasms six months ago, and so I didn't let him take the room. I still don't relish the idea, so the idea that maybe the same Canadian was in my flat waiting for me to come back was rather unsettling.
Instead, upon arrival I was greeted by my landlord Leonid, one of the few people of unalloyed honesty I have met in this city. During my absence, no one was living in the flat, which means he made almost no money the entire time I was gone. He gave me the key, and we entered together, turned on the fridge and unblocked the gas, and started unpacking some of my stuff. Unfortunately though, he informed me that rent is going up as of September. The only bad thing about the flat is the rent. Leonid and his wife Ludmilla both have just plain unrealistic expectations about what people can afford to pay to stay in the flat, what they are demanding is WELL above market prices. They aren't trying to rip me off, they just have an inflated expectation of what they can earn from this flat.
Today I called a German woman who lives in Moscow and who was considering living in my other room starting from September, ie, just when I need her to come, but she found the price ridiculous. I told her that there was no parasite real estate agent to pay, and no deposit to pay either, but she was unimpressed and harangued me some about prices and then hung up. In typical Moscow fashion (I would have done the same in her position) she called back to wheedle me down to a lower price and offer unwanted advice. As we continued speaking, she made a few mistakes in her German, and her Russian accent became more apparent, which made me think she was more Russian than German. I told her I was willing to pay such a high price because I had been thrown out and ripped off too many times in the past, and was willing to pay a higher price for stability. She countered that she had never had such experiences, and that she hoped I'd understand that she was willing to pay 40 percent less than what my landlord was demanding, and that starting tomorrow she was going to start searching intensively for a room to live in, ie, I should accept her offer immediately or face paying the whole rent myself.
One thread that ran through the conversation was that Moscow is a city of liars and cheats, and that when you find someone honest, you have to hold onto them, even if it is expensive. As her Russian accent became more apparent, I felt a certain pleasure in having thus shamed this woman for her nationality before it had even become apparent to me, and a measure of shame in my pleasure. The reasons behind my shame, anger, and pleasure will become more apparent as you continue to read this blog.
понедельник, 11 августа 2008 г.
I am back
It has been awhile since I last posted, in fact about a month. Here's what has happened since then: I got some more hiking and camping gear in Marseille for my walk across the Pyrenees, then took the train up Hendayes where the hiking path starts. I walked for about three weeks, saw many beautiful places, but in the end got tendonitis and have had to stop walking. Right now I am in a small town called Revel, hanging out at the house of some friends I met on a more successful walk across France two years. Really great people, they really invited me right off the street to get to know their family and sleep in their house just as it was about to start raining.
Some random thoughts and impressions from my Pyrenees walk:
-I walked on a well-known hiking route known as the GR10, which goes all the way from the Atlantic ocean to the Mediterranean Sea, staying on the French side of the Pyrenees. The path is quite hard, mainly because it stays so close to towns so that you can buy food. The thing is, towns are located in valleys, whereas the most interesting hiking is in the mountains. That means a fairly predictable rhythym of a long climb in the morning, followed by a long descent in the evening.
-In the higher parts of the path, at around 2000m, the water is so clean it is almost sweet.
-Living in a big city with an air pollution problem made me forget what it is like to have a sense of smell.
-Coming from crazy Moscow to tranquil France is actually a bit boring. What I understand by the word adventure has changed a lot in the last two years, and I was kind of hoping before coming back to France for a second long walk that I would repeat the same amazing experience of the first time. Beautiful sights? Yes. Nice people? Yes. Spontaneous meetings with unexpected people? Yes, but rarely on the hiking path itself. There are just plain way too many people on the GR10 for you to be seen as anything more than a tourist by the inhabitants of the places you pass by.
-As soon as I left the hiking path, people became more welcoming towards me: I have been invited four times to people houses, whereas that doesn't happen on the beaten path.
-I jumped into a nearly ice cold spring high in the mountains. I suggest you do the same if you get a chance. It is so cold it hurts, but then for the rest of the day you feel just great.
That's all for now.
Tim
Some random thoughts and impressions from my Pyrenees walk:
-I walked on a well-known hiking route known as the GR10, which goes all the way from the Atlantic ocean to the Mediterranean Sea, staying on the French side of the Pyrenees. The path is quite hard, mainly because it stays so close to towns so that you can buy food. The thing is, towns are located in valleys, whereas the most interesting hiking is in the mountains. That means a fairly predictable rhythym of a long climb in the morning, followed by a long descent in the evening.
-In the higher parts of the path, at around 2000m, the water is so clean it is almost sweet.
-Living in a big city with an air pollution problem made me forget what it is like to have a sense of smell.
-Coming from crazy Moscow to tranquil France is actually a bit boring. What I understand by the word adventure has changed a lot in the last two years, and I was kind of hoping before coming back to France for a second long walk that I would repeat the same amazing experience of the first time. Beautiful sights? Yes. Nice people? Yes. Spontaneous meetings with unexpected people? Yes, but rarely on the hiking path itself. There are just plain way too many people on the GR10 for you to be seen as anything more than a tourist by the inhabitants of the places you pass by.
-As soon as I left the hiking path, people became more welcoming towards me: I have been invited four times to people houses, whereas that doesn't happen on the beaten path.
-I jumped into a nearly ice cold spring high in the mountains. I suggest you do the same if you get a chance. It is so cold it hurts, but then for the rest of the day you feel just great.
That's all for now.
Tim
четверг, 10 июля 2008 г.
So- I am now in Marseille, meeting old friends and picking up some boots for my walk. Presumably Charlemagne has moved into my flat by now. He will relieve me only for two months, after which time he will, I hope, leave without a fuss, having paid most of my rent in my absence, thereby saving my flat for me, which besides possessing the rare quality of being owned by honest people, is in a choice location, ten minutes from two different metro lines.
The move, or in fact flight, to my flat is a good one for Charlemagne, too. His landlord has been ripping him off for months, claiming he scratched the floor, and forcing him to pay 9000r- around 400us- and then adding that the people in the flat below had water damage, and that it was Charlemagnes fault for not turning off the leaky faucet. Price: 800us. During such situations, the corrupt landlady hangs up her phone every time Charlemagne calls. Meanwhile, late payment notices of an increasingly threatening tone which are addressed to the landlady are arriving by post at the flat; she is in debt, although by an amount she could pay in several months if she just took the 800 bux she gets every month for rent. In other words, she has a cash cow in the form of the apartment, and instead of using it to pay her debts, she uses it to subsidise them.
A few weeks ago, I asked Charle,agne if he wanted to meet at the subway and walk to my place and check it out. From the tone of his voice on the phone alone, I knew that he was going to take it, nonetheless we had to go through the formality of looking through the place and making sure it was up to standards.
We met near the subway station SOKOL, about 8 minutes from my house, at around two pm on a rainy Wednesday. The rain, which apart from being unpleasant cleanses the air of pollutants from traffic and construction, had been pouring for a few days. Charlemagne was standing outside near Leningradskii Shosse, a multi-lane monstrosity which leads all the way from downtown Moscow to St Petersburg. As is the case around the clock and in all weather, the street, which is being widened, was lined with hitch-hiking beauties. Charlemagne was oblivious to them when I first caught a glimpse of him. Although he had only been standing, he was already out of breath and asked for a brief pause. After we had walked another 50 meters, he had to stop again, this time for several minutes. He was panting unevenly, there were unhealthy spots and large, cool beads of sweat on his balding scalp, and he was complaining about his schedule, which entails waking up at 4am every day and getting home late after having worked all day.
Charlemagne is one of the few teachers to sign a full-time contract two years in a row. Basically, most teachers arrive in Moscowl working on a full-time contract, and then discover what a raw deal it is, and that it is possible to work fewer hours as a freelancer, build your own schedule and thereby eliminate all classes located too far from the metro, and best of all, get double the pay. I have told Charlemagne many times in the past of dead-easy opportunities to get new private students from an agency offering well over double the pay of a full-time employer, but he not only is a person who does not listen, he is someone who rarely ever even perceives the other person in the conversation, seeing him more than anything as a swill-funnel for his white gay supremacist, hetereophobic bleatings. Charlemagne could have solved his schedule problem months ago with my suggestions, but because he does not listen, he has continued to be used as a tool of self-enrichment for his employer. His employer sends him to opposite ends of the city at all hours, and Charlemagne, exceptionally, never whimpers the least complaint.
It took us a full forty minutes to walk to my house. Part of that was due to a heavy duffel bag full of books he was carrying, which he refused to give to me until I feigned curiosity about its weight and then didnt give it back. But it was mainly from over exertion paired with over eating and undersleeping. He was so tired when we arrived that he I had to help him up the steps, something of a magnanimous act in light of a previous spat dating back to when I lived in his spare room in November. We also had to call the landlord and landlady, who were waiting inside, several times to let them know we were still coming.
When we finally arrived, he had to drink his sweet tea, after which he immediately began victimising the landlord and landlady with his Georgia country boy-inflected, fluent 500 word Russian. When Charlemagne begins speaking he almost immediately makes himself into a burden- he says what he needs to say very quickly and then proceeds to repeat it in various ways multiple times, speaking at top speed and bearing no interruptions.
Finally I was able to take the landlord aside and explain to him that as long as he listened, Charlemagne would continue speaking, and suggested he invent an urgent meeting, which he did almost immediately.
After they left, Charlemagne said it was time for his vitamins, and instead got out and downed a heavy sack of cookies dusted with confectioners sugar; he followed up with some prescription medicine from an orange bottle.
I let him go back to the subway alone.
The move, or in fact flight, to my flat is a good one for Charlemagne, too. His landlord has been ripping him off for months, claiming he scratched the floor, and forcing him to pay 9000r- around 400us- and then adding that the people in the flat below had water damage, and that it was Charlemagnes fault for not turning off the leaky faucet. Price: 800us. During such situations, the corrupt landlady hangs up her phone every time Charlemagne calls. Meanwhile, late payment notices of an increasingly threatening tone which are addressed to the landlady are arriving by post at the flat; she is in debt, although by an amount she could pay in several months if she just took the 800 bux she gets every month for rent. In other words, she has a cash cow in the form of the apartment, and instead of using it to pay her debts, she uses it to subsidise them.
A few weeks ago, I asked Charle,agne if he wanted to meet at the subway and walk to my place and check it out. From the tone of his voice on the phone alone, I knew that he was going to take it, nonetheless we had to go through the formality of looking through the place and making sure it was up to standards.
We met near the subway station SOKOL, about 8 minutes from my house, at around two pm on a rainy Wednesday. The rain, which apart from being unpleasant cleanses the air of pollutants from traffic and construction, had been pouring for a few days. Charlemagne was standing outside near Leningradskii Shosse, a multi-lane monstrosity which leads all the way from downtown Moscow to St Petersburg. As is the case around the clock and in all weather, the street, which is being widened, was lined with hitch-hiking beauties. Charlemagne was oblivious to them when I first caught a glimpse of him. Although he had only been standing, he was already out of breath and asked for a brief pause. After we had walked another 50 meters, he had to stop again, this time for several minutes. He was panting unevenly, there were unhealthy spots and large, cool beads of sweat on his balding scalp, and he was complaining about his schedule, which entails waking up at 4am every day and getting home late after having worked all day.
Charlemagne is one of the few teachers to sign a full-time contract two years in a row. Basically, most teachers arrive in Moscowl working on a full-time contract, and then discover what a raw deal it is, and that it is possible to work fewer hours as a freelancer, build your own schedule and thereby eliminate all classes located too far from the metro, and best of all, get double the pay. I have told Charlemagne many times in the past of dead-easy opportunities to get new private students from an agency offering well over double the pay of a full-time employer, but he not only is a person who does not listen, he is someone who rarely ever even perceives the other person in the conversation, seeing him more than anything as a swill-funnel for his white gay supremacist, hetereophobic bleatings. Charlemagne could have solved his schedule problem months ago with my suggestions, but because he does not listen, he has continued to be used as a tool of self-enrichment for his employer. His employer sends him to opposite ends of the city at all hours, and Charlemagne, exceptionally, never whimpers the least complaint.
It took us a full forty minutes to walk to my house. Part of that was due to a heavy duffel bag full of books he was carrying, which he refused to give to me until I feigned curiosity about its weight and then didnt give it back. But it was mainly from over exertion paired with over eating and undersleeping. He was so tired when we arrived that he I had to help him up the steps, something of a magnanimous act in light of a previous spat dating back to when I lived in his spare room in November. We also had to call the landlord and landlady, who were waiting inside, several times to let them know we were still coming.
When we finally arrived, he had to drink his sweet tea, after which he immediately began victimising the landlord and landlady with his Georgia country boy-inflected, fluent 500 word Russian. When Charlemagne begins speaking he almost immediately makes himself into a burden- he says what he needs to say very quickly and then proceeds to repeat it in various ways multiple times, speaking at top speed and bearing no interruptions.
Finally I was able to take the landlord aside and explain to him that as long as he listened, Charlemagne would continue speaking, and suggested he invent an urgent meeting, which he did almost immediately.
After they left, Charlemagne said it was time for his vitamins, and instead got out and downed a heavy sack of cookies dusted with confectioners sugar; he followed up with some prescription medicine from an orange bottle.
I let him go back to the subway alone.
суббота, 5 июля 2008 г.
Is Charlemagne dying?
I have a wad of cash now from living badly and working a lot, and have been debating how to reward myself after a long, hard winter, and finally decided, after much waffling, to head to the Pyrenees, walk across them for two months, and then come back to Frowntown until at least Christmas.
That decision puts me in an awkward position vis-a-vis my apartment. Should I leave it, or should I continue paying rent so that I have a place to live when I come back? The question, in th context of the Moscow real estate market, is far more complicated than it sounds. Both choices entail serious risks.
Let me explain how one finds a flat upon arriving in Moscow for the first time. You call a real estate agency which has lists of all the flats up for rent inside the city, and in outlying suburbs. They send out an agent to help you find a place that fits your requirements. You pay the agent for one month's rent as commission, and you pay the first month of rent immediately; then you also of course pay one month, or sometimes two months of deposit to your new landlord. There is a very high probability -exceeding 60 percent in my circle of ex-pat acquaintances- that you are going to get ripped off. In rare cases, the agency, knowing that you speak little or no Russian (which is not true of me), have work permits of dubious value, and that the courts will do nothing to help you, will simply take the commission from and give the flat to another person, and get another month's commission from them. More commonly, you live in the flat and the landlord throws you out on a few days' notice, and steals the one month of deposit. He is also very likely to extort cash large sums from you, threatening to change the locks if you do not pay. Or he may purport damage to the premises: a broken doorknob, a burst pipe, a shelf that is crooked. In a city where most flats are many decades old, things are likely to break, and landlords use this as a way to extract money from the renters.
But the most common tactic is to simply throw the tenant out on two days' notice and steal the deposit, then try to get another foreigner to live in the flat for several months until he is confident in the honesty of the owner. That's exactly when you get thrown out again. The average living arrangement in my experience is around 4 months.
For these reasons, I have been trying to get someone I know to live in my flat during my absence, and pay part of the rent.
Enter Charlemagne. Charlemagne is a colleague of mine that housed me (at market prices) for two weeks after being thrown out of my flat and getting the deposit stolen from the landlord last November. He is a middle-aged homosexual, lonely, long-winded and overweight in equal measures. Although he daily faces a 75-minute commute in crowded buses and subway wagons, wakes up at 4am, and does not return home until 10pm, he is a highly energetic character, walking and riding all over town all day. He purports that the subway cars are jam-packed every day with fags and player-hating Soviet babushkas who envy them; according to Charlemagne, everyone wants to sleep with him, and he is a social and sexual omnivore and dynamo who takes only the choicest mates.
The truth is much more mundane.
Russia is a very homophobic country. I think there are a lot of very repressed, ashamed homosxuals who have never touched a person of their own sex, apart from themselves. Charlemagne, on the other hand, is completely uninhibited, and speaks of his multi-hour kissing parties. I suppose he is able to grab one of these repressed middle-aged men, begin making out with him and make him his own very soon afterwards. I must suppose that his companion, having for the very first time been touched by a man, becomes quite aroused; however, he soon afterwards understands that he can do what he wants with who he wants to do it with, and does not need a multi-hundred pound windbag for companionship.
As a result, Charlemagne's only reliable companion is, or was, his elderly cat, for whom he set out 21 bowls of different types of cat food. However, the cat, which apparently had been suffering from age-induced diarrhea and low blood pressure for many months, soon died, and Charlemagne, dissatisfied with Moscow's pet cemeteries, put the cat in the freezer.
In addition to these eccentricities, he also possesses an unlikely high energy level for a person of his breadth, a fact reflected in his routine of a 10 hour work day often including long walks in freezing rain.
I am unable to continue now on this note because of time constraints, but I will complete this thread in the next 36 hours.
That decision puts me in an awkward position vis-a-vis my apartment. Should I leave it, or should I continue paying rent so that I have a place to live when I come back? The question, in th context of the Moscow real estate market, is far more complicated than it sounds. Both choices entail serious risks.
Let me explain how one finds a flat upon arriving in Moscow for the first time. You call a real estate agency which has lists of all the flats up for rent inside the city, and in outlying suburbs. They send out an agent to help you find a place that fits your requirements. You pay the agent for one month's rent as commission, and you pay the first month of rent immediately; then you also of course pay one month, or sometimes two months of deposit to your new landlord. There is a very high probability -exceeding 60 percent in my circle of ex-pat acquaintances- that you are going to get ripped off. In rare cases, the agency, knowing that you speak little or no Russian (which is not true of me), have work permits of dubious value, and that the courts will do nothing to help you, will simply take the commission from and give the flat to another person, and get another month's commission from them. More commonly, you live in the flat and the landlord throws you out on a few days' notice, and steals the one month of deposit. He is also very likely to extort cash large sums from you, threatening to change the locks if you do not pay. Or he may purport damage to the premises: a broken doorknob, a burst pipe, a shelf that is crooked. In a city where most flats are many decades old, things are likely to break, and landlords use this as a way to extract money from the renters.
But the most common tactic is to simply throw the tenant out on two days' notice and steal the deposit, then try to get another foreigner to live in the flat for several months until he is confident in the honesty of the owner. That's exactly when you get thrown out again. The average living arrangement in my experience is around 4 months.
For these reasons, I have been trying to get someone I know to live in my flat during my absence, and pay part of the rent.
Enter Charlemagne. Charlemagne is a colleague of mine that housed me (at market prices) for two weeks after being thrown out of my flat and getting the deposit stolen from the landlord last November. He is a middle-aged homosexual, lonely, long-winded and overweight in equal measures. Although he daily faces a 75-minute commute in crowded buses and subway wagons, wakes up at 4am, and does not return home until 10pm, he is a highly energetic character, walking and riding all over town all day. He purports that the subway cars are jam-packed every day with fags and player-hating Soviet babushkas who envy them; according to Charlemagne, everyone wants to sleep with him, and he is a social and sexual omnivore and dynamo who takes only the choicest mates.
The truth is much more mundane.
Russia is a very homophobic country. I think there are a lot of very repressed, ashamed homosxuals who have never touched a person of their own sex, apart from themselves. Charlemagne, on the other hand, is completely uninhibited, and speaks of his multi-hour kissing parties. I suppose he is able to grab one of these repressed middle-aged men, begin making out with him and make him his own very soon afterwards. I must suppose that his companion, having for the very first time been touched by a man, becomes quite aroused; however, he soon afterwards understands that he can do what he wants with who he wants to do it with, and does not need a multi-hundred pound windbag for companionship.
As a result, Charlemagne's only reliable companion is, or was, his elderly cat, for whom he set out 21 bowls of different types of cat food. However, the cat, which apparently had been suffering from age-induced diarrhea and low blood pressure for many months, soon died, and Charlemagne, dissatisfied with Moscow's pet cemeteries, put the cat in the freezer.
In addition to these eccentricities, he also possesses an unlikely high energy level for a person of his breadth, a fact reflected in his routine of a 10 hour work day often including long walks in freezing rain.
I am unable to continue now on this note because of time constraints, but I will complete this thread in the next 36 hours.
четверг, 19 июня 2008 г.
In Your Eye Cont'd
A couple days back I had an interesting episode. I was walking towards my friend Anya's apartment, just one station south of where I live. This area of Moscow, in the northwest, a couple stations outside of the center, is dominated by Leningradskii Shosse, an enormous multi-lane highway that leads right up to the center of Moscow in one direction, and all the way up to St. Petersburg in the other direction. Nonetheless, this neighborhood is quite green once you get away from the main road, and most of the buildings are older 5-floor apartment buildings in tan brick, a big difference from the newer highrises in the outermost areas of Moscow.
On the way to Anya's house you pass by The Square of Ernst Thalmann, dedicated to a pre-war German Communist who in the fight againstthe Nazisdisastrously decided not to cooperate with the more moderate socialists, labeling his own potential allies the real fascists. There is a big statue of him in cast iron, and next door is a new 2-story shopping center. As you get farther from Leningradskii Shosse, the noise of traffic dies down and you feel you are in a quiet neighborhood.
I was walking down a narrow street boarded on the left by an 8ft cast concrete wall, and on the right by a low apartment building. When I was a child I used to sometimes leaf through National Geographic, and would sometimes encounter pictures of Soviet citizens. My image from that time of a resident of the USSR was that of an old man, quite small but not unhealthy, very thick horn-rimmed glasses, gold teeth, and simple, slightly dirty clothes. I spotted just such an old man standing on the other side of the road. He looked very Soviet, and I must have seemed very interesting to him because he stared at me as I walked past, in a completely unthreatening, curious way. As I continued walking, I turned my head to look at him longer, and was about to regret his disappearance from my field of vision when he unexpectedly called out in Russian "English language, yes?" in a friendly way.
Baffled as to how he knew, and glad to have been presented with an excuse to talk to him, I crossed the street and we began to talk. He asked if I was studying English, and I said no, I am an English teacher. He pointed around him and said that "here there is no civilization". This is a statement I have heard in the past from a few self-loathing Russians of various generations. A 21 year old student working in a big international oil firm once told me, "There is no civilization here. People like to call this civilization, but it isn't." On another occasion, while marvelling at what I mistakenly thought was My First Dead Bum Laying On The Street, I stopped some passersby and asked them what I should make of the situation and they said that "This is not civilization. There is no civilization here."
Back to our old man, though. He continued his speech, commenting that many come from the West to give Russians their civilization, and that Westerners want to acquire civilization because they don't have any. At first I was keenly aware of the limits of my Russian and struggled to keep track of what he was saying, but when I gathered that there was nothing of value in it all, i relaxed a bit and asked how he knew I was American. He pointed at me and sharply reminded me that I had told him I was American; he then added that in America the Chinese had built our railroads, and that these days the Mexicans build our houses. His mind maybe was disintegrating, but this was well-read and informed fellow. At this point three taller scruffy young men with bleached blonde hair and wearing cheap white track suits sauntered past, each of them carrying liter cans of cheap, sweet swill. One of them called out something to the old man, who in turn suggested that he go and sober up. My worry that one of them would return was confirmed as one of them looked back and swaggered up to the much smaller old man, and, addressing him informally while looking down at him, demanded his glasses.
I knew what to do, and knew it was a bad idea. The last time I made somebody piss blood was the third grade and I wound up getting pounded by the other kids. I reflected that I probably wouldn't hit the mark, and by way of justification for my inaction considered that it wasn't my business.
In the midst of these reflections I saw the old man pull a can out of his pocket and shove the can in the street tough's face. Before I knew what was happening, the can gasped a stripe of copper onto the kid's. The old man shot several times while the kid turned and ran, his left eye completely full of mace. He collapsed in the middle of the street, and the old man began savagely kicking the kid in the back. A Soviet shitbox pulled up and the horn gave a jarringly cheery honk; this is Moscow and everyone is always hurrying, there is no time for anything and everyone is permanently in everyone else's way. The car rolled past lickety split, and then the old man sat down on the kid and shot his eyeball full of mace again.
People were yelling, "Father, that's enough!"" What's happening? Why is he doing that?" While I was explaining the situation the old man said he was gonna get out his pistol and start shooting. I have lived here almost two years, and just knew that wasn't going to happen, and it didn't- the old guy just walked down the street like Charlie Chaplain, yelling again and again about his pistol. I considered approaching him and asking him out to lunch, but was afraid he was not in a state to distinguish between friend and foe.
I had retreated some, and to get to Anya's I had to walk past the kid laying on the ground, and instead attempted a detour which resulted in me getting slightly lost. Finally I retraced my steps and about 30 minutes later walked past the kid, who was sitting on a low concrete pillar in a corner, his face completely welted and swollen and unrecognizable apart from the remains of copper ink of the mace. I wonder if he understood that he had gotten what he deserved.
On the way to Anya's house you pass by The Square of Ernst Thalmann, dedicated to a pre-war German Communist who in the fight againstthe Nazisdisastrously decided not to cooperate with the more moderate socialists, labeling his own potential allies the real fascists. There is a big statue of him in cast iron, and next door is a new 2-story shopping center. As you get farther from Leningradskii Shosse, the noise of traffic dies down and you feel you are in a quiet neighborhood.
I was walking down a narrow street boarded on the left by an 8ft cast concrete wall, and on the right by a low apartment building. When I was a child I used to sometimes leaf through National Geographic, and would sometimes encounter pictures of Soviet citizens. My image from that time of a resident of the USSR was that of an old man, quite small but not unhealthy, very thick horn-rimmed glasses, gold teeth, and simple, slightly dirty clothes. I spotted just such an old man standing on the other side of the road. He looked very Soviet, and I must have seemed very interesting to him because he stared at me as I walked past, in a completely unthreatening, curious way. As I continued walking, I turned my head to look at him longer, and was about to regret his disappearance from my field of vision when he unexpectedly called out in Russian "English language, yes?" in a friendly way.
Baffled as to how he knew, and glad to have been presented with an excuse to talk to him, I crossed the street and we began to talk. He asked if I was studying English, and I said no, I am an English teacher. He pointed around him and said that "here there is no civilization". This is a statement I have heard in the past from a few self-loathing Russians of various generations. A 21 year old student working in a big international oil firm once told me, "There is no civilization here. People like to call this civilization, but it isn't." On another occasion, while marvelling at what I mistakenly thought was My First Dead Bum Laying On The Street, I stopped some passersby and asked them what I should make of the situation and they said that "This is not civilization. There is no civilization here."
Back to our old man, though. He continued his speech, commenting that many come from the West to give Russians their civilization, and that Westerners want to acquire civilization because they don't have any. At first I was keenly aware of the limits of my Russian and struggled to keep track of what he was saying, but when I gathered that there was nothing of value in it all, i relaxed a bit and asked how he knew I was American. He pointed at me and sharply reminded me that I had told him I was American; he then added that in America the Chinese had built our railroads, and that these days the Mexicans build our houses. His mind maybe was disintegrating, but this was well-read and informed fellow. At this point three taller scruffy young men with bleached blonde hair and wearing cheap white track suits sauntered past, each of them carrying liter cans of cheap, sweet swill. One of them called out something to the old man, who in turn suggested that he go and sober up. My worry that one of them would return was confirmed as one of them looked back and swaggered up to the much smaller old man, and, addressing him informally while looking down at him, demanded his glasses.
I knew what to do, and knew it was a bad idea. The last time I made somebody piss blood was the third grade and I wound up getting pounded by the other kids. I reflected that I probably wouldn't hit the mark, and by way of justification for my inaction considered that it wasn't my business.
In the midst of these reflections I saw the old man pull a can out of his pocket and shove the can in the street tough's face. Before I knew what was happening, the can gasped a stripe of copper onto the kid's. The old man shot several times while the kid turned and ran, his left eye completely full of mace. He collapsed in the middle of the street, and the old man began savagely kicking the kid in the back. A Soviet shitbox pulled up and the horn gave a jarringly cheery honk; this is Moscow and everyone is always hurrying, there is no time for anything and everyone is permanently in everyone else's way. The car rolled past lickety split, and then the old man sat down on the kid and shot his eyeball full of mace again.
People were yelling, "Father, that's enough!"" What's happening? Why is he doing that?" While I was explaining the situation the old man said he was gonna get out his pistol and start shooting. I have lived here almost two years, and just knew that wasn't going to happen, and it didn't- the old guy just walked down the street like Charlie Chaplain, yelling again and again about his pistol. I considered approaching him and asking him out to lunch, but was afraid he was not in a state to distinguish between friend and foe.
I had retreated some, and to get to Anya's I had to walk past the kid laying on the ground, and instead attempted a detour which resulted in me getting slightly lost. Finally I retraced my steps and about 30 minutes later walked past the kid, who was sitting on a low concrete pillar in a corner, his face completely welted and swollen and unrecognizable apart from the remains of copper ink of the mace. I wonder if he understood that he had gotten what he deserved.
среда, 18 июня 2008 г.
In Your Eye
This blog is about my life in Moscow. I do what most Anglophones living in Moscow do: I teach English at various businesses around the city, zooming around in the often garlicky subway.
The blog will be partly retrospective in nature, because I have already been here for awhile, and also because I am still unsure how long I will stay here.
I have enountered many problems here, from sexually frustrated secretaries, to rapacious landlords, to repugnant ex-left-fascist-cum-businessbitch school directors to the general din and haze of Russia's (arguably) first city.
I have recently come to the conclusion that many of my problems are not due to The Russians writ large, but instead to my monkey, who lives way back in Ohio and who has been trying for almost two years now to force my return home by way of manipulating the minds and bodies of Russians and sundry middle-aged foreigners of all sexes, causing them to rip me off, insult me, come on to me, throw me out of my apartment, stagger into my room at three am asking for their left sock, and generally being a pain in the ass.
The belief that my monkey, of whom I will in nearest future post an action photo, is at the root of my problems, and not The Russians or Russia or some miasma seeping from the Russian soil, is comforting for two unrelated reasons:
1 It is easier on the mind to blame one monkey than the people of the place you yourself have chosen to live
2 It means my monkey still loves me and wants me to come home after so many years of absence
2bis There is such a thing as unconditional love
The blog will be partly retrospective in nature, because I have already been here for awhile, and also because I am still unsure how long I will stay here.
I have enountered many problems here, from sexually frustrated secretaries, to rapacious landlords, to repugnant ex-left-fascist-cum-businessbitch school directors to the general din and haze of Russia's (arguably) first city.
I have recently come to the conclusion that many of my problems are not due to The Russians writ large, but instead to my monkey, who lives way back in Ohio and who has been trying for almost two years now to force my return home by way of manipulating the minds and bodies of Russians and sundry middle-aged foreigners of all sexes, causing them to rip me off, insult me, come on to me, throw me out of my apartment, stagger into my room at three am asking for their left sock, and generally being a pain in the ass.
The belief that my monkey, of whom I will in nearest future post an action photo, is at the root of my problems, and not The Russians or Russia or some miasma seeping from the Russian soil, is comforting for two unrelated reasons:
1 It is easier on the mind to blame one monkey than the people of the place you yourself have chosen to live
2 It means my monkey still loves me and wants me to come home after so many years of absence
2bis There is such a thing as unconditional love
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