Wednesday: The Departure.
So, on Wednesday, we had no class, and -- unexpectedly -- I had not gone to a club the previous night with my tutor (she was too tired), so I got to wake up somewhat early and very bright to pack and do errands before getting on the train for the boat to the Solovki Islands in the White Sea.
Here's my list from that morning, slightly edited to take out really personal stuff.
And I had to change money via a traveler's check and do Internet stuff. (That was when I finished my Moscow travelogue, by the way.) I was able to leave my stuff at the university while doing most of the errands. I did not get to buy a hat or anything else I'd wanted in the way of traveling supplies, or find Gulag Archipelago at any bookstores. I only tried Dom Knigi ("house of books") on Nyevskii Prospekt, the big, well-located bookstore across from the Kazan Cathedral by the university. They're surprisingly low on English translations of Russian authors. All they had was August 1914 and a few Tolstoys, that I could see. I bought really cheap editions of The Great Gatsby (to reread) and a collection of Guy de Maupassant short stories to read for the first time.
While on the Internet and whilst packing, I found out that I'll be arriving in San Francisco, CA around 10:45 pm on August 7, via San Francisco International Airport, on SunCountry Flight #27 from Minneapolis/St. Paul. As a bit of a side note, if you'll be in the area, it would be great if I could arrange some sort of welcoming party at the gate. [On the actual date, my mom and dad and sister and Steve and Leonard met me at the gate. Camille also intended to, except that there was some mixup about the date.]
When I came back to the university to pick up my stuff and head to the train station, I heard a discussion in progress among three of the four men in our twenty-person group of ACTR participants. It would seem that all of the men had to be in coupes with three unknown Russians each. The consensus (in male-banter manner) was that Gregg would be stuck with three large, hairy, male homosexual Russians, and Gregg declared, in typical profane Gregg manner, "As long as they don't have AIDS, I don't give a shit." (Gregg is John's roommate; they're the only two of twenty not in homestays with Russian families.)
People grabbed their stuff and left for the metro. Poor John had a really hard time with the crowds, cranky turnstiles, the heat, and a HUGE suitcase. We got to the train. Katie and I were in a coupe with a cute little boy of around maybe two years, his mother, and her mother. (The consensus, among those who would know -- namely John and me -- was that this kid was cute, but not nearly as cute as the girl playing with the bronze ducks in Moscow.)
The eighteen hours of train loomed in front of us as a void of pain. It was very, very, very hot and humid, and many of the windows opened little or not at all. It was rather difficult in that atmosphere to concentrate on the admittedly sultry narrative of D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover. As well, no one had a coupe composed of only Americans. Ergo, when we discovered that two of our happy band had only one coupe-mate, and he was away for most of the evening, that coupe became "the party coupe."
The "party coupe" was not just a nice place to socialize, in English, free of guilt at excluding Russians, although it was that. You see, during the Moscow trip, when other passengers in our group had discovered a lamentable lack of vodka with which to socialize, a number of them had vowed to correct the fault during the trip to Solovki. And so there was a great deal of sloshability, of booze, of drink, of alcohol, available to anyone who wished to partake, in the "party coupe." And in Russia the law says that the drinking age is 18 years old, and even that is not so much a limit, as drinking is so a part of the national culture that families teach their young'uns to drink, all together.
I wish that I'd written that long, rather impassioned entry before I left for Solovki, the one in which I described the various pressures I was feeling to change my beliefs, ideas, and behaviors regarding alcohol. But I didn't, so I'll just try to discuss it now.
I was in D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) back in elementary school, and fell for it hook, line, and sinker. (Hey, I won the class essay contest on "Why I Will Never Use Drugs" and I loved it, okay?) I even signed the little pledge to never use illegal drugs -- including alcohol, if I recall corerctly! And my parents don't drink and never have, and since I didn't have many friends of my own before college, in my younger days I didn't see many non-negative portrayals of alcohol use in real life. Only in the last few years have I come to see alcohol drinking, possibly, as a not-necessarily-evil thing. And even that wavers sometimes!
I mean, I don't come up against many huge ethical dilemmas in my life, I think. But the question of substance use makes me wax philosophical, at least privately. If Alice is tipsy, or even flat-out drunk, and she says or does something that she would not do if she were sober, then did Alice really do it? Generally, I believe that if people choose to ingest psychoactive substances, then they should be responsible for what they do under the influences of those substances. But what about opinions? And behaviors? If I ask Alice whether she loves Bob, or feels guilty about using Windows, and when sober whe says yes and when drunk she says no, or vice versa, then what does that really tell me?
I want to be in charge of myself. And I already second-guess myself all the time. I really didn't want to ever do anything that I would not choose to do if sober. So what, then, could be the appeal of alcohol? Differences in perception? But I wouldn't be able to explore those differences without taking some risks and behaving somewhat differently than I would if sober. What a mess.
I generally don't like to mess with my body. It's doing a fine job, on its own, taking care of my business. I generally stay away from caffeine, and don't smoke, and don't do any of the illegal drugs (e.g., cocaine, marijuana, MDMA), and try to eat and drink in a way that will keep my body slenderish and working well. And most of these precautions and preferences don't set me apart from my peers. Except drinking. Almost everyone my age drinks in the United States, I think, even if it's just one or two drinks a month. And, in Russia, not drinking alcohol sets one apart even more. I, the only vegetarian, the only nonwhite, the only one from UC Berkeley, the only one with less than two years of Russian classes under my belt, in these twenty ACTR St. Petersburg students, was also -- I'm pretty sure -- the only teetotaler when I arrived in Washington, D.C., six weeks ago for orientation.
But I was curious, and it's legal here, and I am with a bunch of people whom I trust not to take advantage of me when I'm vulnerable, and it was a safe environment, and Mom, Dad, I know you won't like this, but I tried drinking alcohol. And I didn't do it to rebel against you, to make you mad or to dash your hopes or anything. I did it to ... well, I'm trying to figure out why I did it, just as I was trying to figure out whether to do it.
Note that all of my previous tiny excursions into trying alcohol were Russian-related and had absolutely no effect on my state of mind.
John, who is not opposed to drinking, has had many conversations with me on the subject. He and I have noted a problem somewhat related to my last experience there. I'm already honest (read: uninhibited), extroverted (read: loud), and not completely graceful (read: clumsy). He imagined that I would not change that much, under a mild tipsiness.
Well, I decided to try to find out. I grabbed a plastic cup, and over a few hours, I drank about four servings of vodka, some with pineapple juice and some without, in the convivial atmosphere of a crowded train compartment.
Quotes from the evening include:
"It has been requested that you walk like an Egyptian."
"This is an epistemological problem." "If you can still say 'epistemological'..."
Here are my notes from the expedition into haziness. Actually, it wasn't that hazy. It just felt -- in retrospect, it just felt like a slight exaggeration of my normal clumsiness when tired and trying to maneuver in close quarters whilst on board a rocking (not rockin') Russian train.
It should be noted that, after my last drink, I attempted to get down from the upper bunk in the coupe whilst carrying under my left arm a closed box of apple juice. Somehow I sprayed Carolyn with some of this juice. I really feel as though this could/would have happened even if I had not been drinking at all.
But, in any case, here are my notes:
So I'm drinking for the first time. Vodka, usually with pineapple juice. After a few drinks, my quick-vision-switching seems somewhat affected, and moving around (getting up, walking) seems different. But inhibitions seem intact, as does fine motor control (I reached into my $ [shorthand for "money"] belt to get this pen & notebook), and hand-eye coordination. Kyem [circled]. Our stop. [Jon Stone, our Resident Director, told us that the town of Kyem -- the name of which which I wrote in Russian -- was the stop where we would have to exit the train the next morning, to catch the boat to Solovki.]
Thursday: We Arrive.
The next morning, I had no hangover that I could tell -- although the previous night, after about a drink and a half, I had experienced some small headache. Here are my notebook notes, slightly expanded, covering that morning's reflections on the previous night and its effects:
Thurs. Morning. Still on the train, konyeshna [of course]. "This is an epistemological problem." "If you can still say 'epistemological'..." [you're fine.] Last night, I couldn't remember, I think, the word 'experience' and the title Lord of the Flies. Question of fault: since I chose to drink, aren't I wholly responsible for all my behavior under the influence, including spilling apple juice on Carolyn? And now, the handwriting comparison!...Yes, there seems to be a difference. But the train was moving...but that probably can't account for the whole difference. The alcohol affected the form of my writing -- but the content? How do I know whether it affected the way I think? I'm already, when sober, rather loud, clumsy, uninhibited, and rambling, right? Solutions: recording observations of the moment, and asking others' opinions (during and after), and video/audio recording.
I also compared sober-and-train-moving handwriting with Wednesday-night-train-moving handwriting. Very tough to figure out where the independent variables were.
Wednesday night/Thursday morning, I had some sort of dream in which I saw the Race For the Cure or some such marathon raising money to fight breast cancer, and I looked for Eve from InPassing.org.
For the first time in my life, I think, I peeled an orange completely without assistance from any other person. Yes, I used my Swiss Army knife (possibly for the first time ever) to make a preliminary cut, but from there on out, it was all me. I ate almost the whole thing. I was quite proud. (The little Russian kid in our coupe ate quite a bit. He was quite an eater. His mom, and his nation, should be proud.)
I read some more D.H. Lawrence. Lady Chatterley's Lover is a very interesting book -- didactic, erotic, very character-centered.
It was still very, very, very hot and humid on the train.
Me: We've got about an hour left.
John: Yeah, only an hour left of this crap.
Me: C'mon, we're bonding.
John: We're bonding because we're sticky!
That, of course, reminds me that John's journal of those days, July 18-22, might be of interest to those who wish a different perspective. As well, he has pictures.
Another note from the Wednesday night-Thursday morning train:
"So, what percentage of the $6,000 [the fee, paid in advance, for the summer program] do you think goes to bribes?"
"None; that's the problem."
We arrived at some coastal town, and took a bus to the dock, where, it turned out, the lateness of our train meant that we would have to wait a number of hours for The Boat. (The number of hours that we'd have to wait sort of lengthened as time passed. I think we eventually ended up spending something like six hours on that rather rotty-looking pier.)
We conversed with an Ukraninan girl who spoke English with a British accent, and I discovered that I Can't Stop Using American Idioms. It seemed as though ever sentence I spoke in front of this poor non-native speaker contained some saying like "throw me into the deep end" or something. I felt pretty bad, especially since most of the Russian speakers who have had conversations with me have seemed successful in remaining idiom-free. I know I usually try to keep my speech colorful and vivid, but I felt bad that I couldn't speak clearly and simply when I wanted/needed to. OK, Mom, you're right. I should try and speak simply sometimes.
Oh, and Katy's long hair made her look a little like Venus in Botticeli's painting. And there was a moment when Rasa very kindly and very gently and diplomatically asked me to shut up. (pout) Yes, yes, I talk a lot. It's not as bad as it used to be, okay?
The four-hour boat ride was a relief, post-train. I read more D.H. Lawrence and slept a bit.
We got to the main island on Thursday evening. Immediately we spotted a bus -- hard to miss its plumage. I dubbed it The Beatles Bus. Its colorful paint scheme, in addition to the quickly-apparent engine problems, led me to analogize it with THE GRACE OF GOD from Cryptonomicon.
We drove through the island to the tourist complex. The islands have been a monastery and a Stalinist gulag. But that didn't seem to make much difference to the kids playing soccer under a gorgeous sky, to the forests and lakes and rivers, to the small-town denizens who sat on stoops under street name signs that are faded and unreadable and have been redone with different names at least twice. No one much cares -- they know where everything is. Do they care about the things the tourists come to see? Why did we come here?
My philosophizing didn't stop at dinner. After choosing roomies -- John got stuck with Jon Stone, our Fearless Leader (Resident Director) and putting stuff in our cottages (where Katy and I laughed and laughed and laughed at the pitcher that said "MILK" on one side and had a picture of a cow's teats spraying, presumably, lines of milk on the other), we ate dinner in The Restaurant in the Tourist Complex. The two vegetarians sat together -- that is, me and Anatolik, the helper for our guide (excursavod), Sergei. Not only was dinner surprisingly good, but Anatolik and I conversed -- almost all in Russian! He's been to India, it turns out, and Gets It regarding the spiritual atmosphere that completely suffuses some parts of it.
And then, that night, I discovered a chance and took it, as did many other people in our group. The tourist complex had an authentic, functioning banya, or Russian bathhouse. We went that night. I made a crack about Dyada Banya, punning Chekhov's title Dyada Vanya (Uncle Vanya), but, as usual, most ignored me.
The banya was really quite fun. I prefer for people not to be uptight and Victorian about nudity and so on. (I wonder sometimes, in that respect and others, about the real, fundamental differences between Russia and the US, or "Tennessee v. Solovki.") I now have very vivid memories of the following:
That night I used the Swiss Army knife to open a mosquito-repellent fumigator packet. Have I mentioned the mosquitoes? They're everywhere. It's The Birds in miniature -- a koshmar komarov (nightmare of mosquitoes). At some point during the weekend, I joked with John that the mosquitoes would steal his OFF! and reverse-engineer it. To his discredit, he did not make a DMCA joke. Of course, at that point we hadn't known about Dmitri Sklyarov (Free Sklyarov! Osovobodim Dmitriya!), so it might not have seemed as urgent.
I arrived back home and saw Cara, Susanne, and Erin sitting on "my" bed and being companionable with Katy, who had her foot elevated. Also that night, I remember looking through the first aid kit with Katy, trying to figure out what was what. ("Is this morphine? No, probably not.") Very little English there, so we had to look a lot of stuff up. Katy wished she had brought her more weighty dictionary, and said of the one that she had brought, "This dictionary is completely useless for Russian pharmaceuticals!" There was something called "brilliance of green" that came in a bluish bottle. There was something with belladonna and bicarbonate. I imagined it might try to combine the emetic powers of belladonna with the stomach-settling characteristics of bicarbonate of soda. But...why not just an antacid? In a nice, English-labeled package? And where was the sterile gauze?
But my most vivid memory of that night was the storm. It began while we were banya-ing. I decided to cut my experience short, since I didn't want to risk being in the lake whilst lightning was going on. (The ladder was metal.) As I dressed and ran home, the lightning and thunder got closer, and the rain began. I was already wet from the banya -- I hadn't dried off too thoroughly there. The sky is usually light around half-past midnight at this time of year, near the Arctic Circle, but it was darker because of the storm. I hadn't brought my glasses with me to the banya. Flashes of lightning, twilight, and a little ambient light from the tourist complex lit the dirt road that rose up through the drizzle. The lake was on my left, and beyond that the dark green forest.
And then I got home, and Katy asked me if I would go back and retrieve the soap and shampoo that she had left there when she had so unexpectedly left. And I ran there and back, as the sprinkle turned into rain and then into a summer storm. I got drenched! In three days, I had been drenched three times -- once at St. Isaac's Cathedral back in St. Petersburg, once in the banya, and once in this storm, which I later heard was the worst in three years. It continued until after we fell asleep.
Friday: The Monastery
I woke up and, insanely, wished that I had Pinkerdy with me. Pinkerdy is my primary stuffed animal and the only one who still lives with me in Berkeley.
Straight from the notebook:
Friday morning. 20 iulia 2001 g. [20 July 2001], I guess. Damn, a lot of mosquitoes out here by the lake! Not too near, but goodness! Aside from that, a cool, brisk, wonderful morning to walk in natural beauty.
It turned out that the cheesecloth and duct tape that many of us had brought were much more useful for bandaging Katie's foot than for keeping out mosquitoes.
We had an excursion to the monastery on the island. Women were supposed to wear skirts and cover their heads. My colorful head-scarf and flowery skirt led Anatolik to say that I looked like a "Typical Russian woman." Perhaps even a gypsy! But Anatolik was mostly kidding, he said.
I wonder why the Russian Orthodox Church rules that women must cover their heads and wear skirts for church?
I sort of listened to the droning guide. But my attention was more captivated by the man chopping wood in the grassy courtyard. He had a tremendous pile of uncut wood next to him. It looked like a backbreaking task, a penance for some unbelievable, Hawthornian sin.
The most moving moment was in a grand hall with vaulted arches for ceilings. I felt an intense sensation of holiness that reminded me of Hindu temples. My heart seemed to beat faster in this house of the Lord. Anatolik had the same look on his face as I did. It seemed like such a holy place, and the smell of oil lamps and candles seemed so familiar.
For some reason I remembered some morning I'd spent with Dan, early in May, I think. It had been before our finals had begun, or at least towards the end of the semester. He made pancakes, and microwaved some jelly to make syrup. We ate breakfast and watched some sort of home improvement show on TV and talked about what features an ideal house might have. Maybe it was all the renovation at This Old Monastery that reminded me of "The New Yankee Workshop" and "Home Again" and all those shows, and that Saturday morning in early summer on Parker Street. And I remembered the last few times I'd seen anyone cry.
The holy place reminded me of my father. I suddenly wanted to call Dad and check on his health. But making an international phone call from the Solovki Islands is not a trivial matter.
"This Old Monastery" also reminded me of The Blair Witch Project for some reason. Don't ask me.
(Did von Clausewitz say that "War is politics by other means," or vice versa?)
Whilst walking around the monastery:
Me: "What is that music?"
Casey: "That's discotheque, honey."
"Oh, God."
"You just said God's name in vain in a monastery."
"They're playing disco! That's worse!"
From the bell tower, one saw ten or twelve extremely alluring views of the countryside. Rural/Ural. These were the kinds of dizzily romantic, picture-perfect views that make someone want to throw away all the advantages of civilization to live The Simple Life. Much of the trip was, I now retrospectively realize, just a decompression from the hectic pace of St. Petersburg life. It just doesn't do to take the metro every day for a month without a break among "forests, trees, and rivers," to quote Yevgeny Yevtuschenko (from a completely different context, his poem "When First Your Face Came Rising").
In the monastery museum, I saw a photo of the monastery surrounded by snow. In the lower right quadrant of the picture lay a shadow -- that of the photographer.
I was late to the tourist complex and walked with the Russians instead of taking the bus along with the group. We Russians, er, we Russians and an American, were late because we bought souvenirs. I bought a cassette of choral music. The walk back was quite picturesque and pleasant, if I recall correctly, but it's been so long now that I don't trust myself to recall correctly. There were dips in the dirt road that we skirted because the previous night's rain had turned them into puddles. And the grass is always greener on the other side of the Iron Curtain.
Anatolik complimented me on my appearance, and then denied that it was a compliment, claiming that it was only a description. Quite slick.
In the bus after lunch, we went rather quickly through a dip in the road -- the driver made up for each twenty-minute stall by going seventy miles an hour the rest of the time -- and Susanne hit her head rather hard. From what I could tell, she was lucky not to get a concussion. John was lucky, as were the rest of the people in the back bench seat. John just flew into Anatolik.
The bus took us to ... boats. About five people piled into each rowboat. I discovered that, though I stink to high heaven at actually rowing boats, I can steer! (The verb for "to steer" is rulit'.) In fact, the others in the boat actually complimented my steering ability. (Later, when I got back to the US and continued my automobile-driving lessons, I found that I'm much better at steering a rowboat rudder.)
By the way, various people were surprised that I can't swim. There was a different and partly overlapping set of people that was surprised that I can't ride a bike. But almost no one, I think, was shocked that I can't whistle. No one offered, in any case, to teach me to whistle, whereas I had offers galore to learn to bicycle and to swim.
In retrospect, it wasn't just a pleasant ride around canals and rivers and lakes. We actually arrived at some landing stage and then unexpectedly hiked for miles on this wooden path through the forest. (As in, one two-by-four after another, the skinny way.) The mosquitoes loved the fresh meat. They were, on his behalf, sucking out all the blood that Shylock wouldn't have been able to touch.
Our guide was the same person we'd had guide us through the monastery. (So there seemed to be one bus per island, and one guide per island. This paradigm also led me to joke during the trip, upon seeing some rather flirtatiously dressed woman, that she was the island's only whore, and that she was also the only cop, leading her to have to bribe or arrest herself -- doubly, since she was, in addition, the only pimp.) The Guide spoke English, we found out, especially when he led us through an impromptu course in Russian swearing. This began when one of our band exclaimed, regarding the mosquitoes, "Shit!" and our guide thoughtfully remarked, "Shit. Da." (A Russian curse word for "feces," he taught us, is blin. The mild and relatively inoffensive nature of this word was confirmed for me when I saw a birthday card, which I subsequently bought and gave to Casey on her birthday: Oi, blin! Opyat ya zabuil tvoi dyen rozhdenya! "Oh, crap! Again, I forgot your birthday!")
Katie's foot didn't much like the hike, and many of us grumbled on her behalf. In fact, I found myself developing a sympathy limp, to which John commented, "You'd better hope she never has a kid."
We saw many pretty views, and I smashed a bloodsucking insect and left a stain on my notebook page, and I'm sure we saw sites of historical and political importance, but at the end of the day -- literally -- it wasn't that fantastic a hike. What I really gained was an appreciation for the more annoying side of nature. As I wrote at the time, "What I'd give for DDT!"
We rowed back, of course. Sergei helped us somewhat, and discussion ensued, and and there was some disagreement over the number of relationships I can claim to be juggling. 3, or 2, or 1, perhaps. Well, it's even more complicated post-Russia, but that's the nature of things, no?
My boat only viewed this from afar -- mostly -- but there was a bit of a fight between two of the boats. Sure, my boat had participated in water fights with other boats -- that's how we lost one oar -- but we'd never graduated or stooped to the level of throwing moss. Carolyn, for one, scored two direct hits on Jon Stone. I saw one of them and it was a doozy. That high school shotput and discus really develops a girl's arms. When we all landed, Jon Stone charged over to the attacking boat and declared, "This is the Bad Boat! You don't get to talk to each other for the rest of the trip!" But he was laughing and everything turned out all camaraderie-like.
Before heading back to the bus, some of us took opportunities to buy foodstuffs at a kiosk -- a rarity on the Island of Three Stores (each of which is labelled something like Grocery # 2). I had no small bills, so I bought a lot to avoid being a troublemaker regarding change. I donated some water, juice, and chocolate to the kollektif.
On the bus, whilst stalled (of course):
Jon Stone: "They're fixing it."
Carolyn, laughing: "You said that with a straight face. Almost."
We had taken to calling the bus many things. The Beatles Bus, The Monkees Bus, the Partridge Family Bus, the Bus of Death, This F***ing Bus (latter two favored by John). I think the consensus view would later emerge that it was the Love Bus.
On the bus, whilst stalled again:
Jon Stone: "Tomorrow's bus excursion is to the highest point on the island." [followed by a bus full of prolonged, high laughter]
After dinner, I read from Lady Chatterley's Lover, though a lot of other people -- almost everyone, even Katie -- went to the banya. I did have a nice conversation with Joe, Gregg, Cara, and Erin. We discussed Jon Stone's merits and what it's legitimate to expect of an RD.
Me: "I don't want to buy into some false cult of authenticity that says, 'if you know what's happening next, it's not really Russia.'"
And:
Me, to Joe and Gregg, regarding friends' names: "Bernadine?! And you make fun of Leonard?!"
Erin: "I love Sumana."
I went to sleep.
Saturday: Goat and gnat.
I showered and ate a breakfast of blini (pancakes), tea, and porridge, those last two with extra sugar.
For the morning excursion, we didn't use the Love Bus; we used, as someone put it, "the caravan left over from the Afghan War."
We visited a beach with some stone labyrinths (picture). The superstition goes that walking in the set path cleans your soul. If I recall correctly, I was feeling pretty darn holy. I thought, "Sometimes God gives you a path, sometimes you have to choose." and, "Does it really cleanse your soul to give up choices to God for a little bit?" I think John was making a bit of light of the process, and moody Sumana cut him off in a way I now regret.
We saw a puddle. "Ax, chistaya voda. [Ah, clean water.]"
I visited Negotiation Rock with some other sightseers in my group. The British and the monastery signed some peace deal back when and carved it into a huge stone on the beach. Barely readable now. Negotiation Rock? Like Schoolhouse Rock?
We walked back, I think just some Russians and I. We discussed stuffed animals, wordplay, and other matters. I learned that -- unsurprisingly -- various terms for menstruation in Russian include words that have the same root as the word for "month," or mesyats. Example: mesachne = "period." My right thigh hurt as we walked through this summer wonderland of dirt roads and plants all around.
As we passed through town, I bought a two-liter Mountain Dew to give John in apology, I think.
Today, my notes have it, we visited the [lowest] highest point on the island, on the Afghan-War bus. During the ride, various of us made crass remarks on the tendency of breasts to bounce around in no-suspension transport over dirt wars, and agreed that the character of Gabrielle on the series Xena: Warrior Princess was much hotter than the title character of the same show.
I think the highest point on the island was near a church and upon a hill down which "traitors to the USSR" were rolled after being hung or shot. But all I really remember is a goat, and lots of picture-taking, and being told that this was probably also the northernmost point I would ever reach on this globe.
During lunch, we heard techno music. Also, Anna told us a funny story about a web start-up. Anna's mother had said to Anna that eBay is "too complicated" and that she could start up an auction service easier than eBay. Anna said, "eBay is easy! Everybody and his mother uses eBay!" And at some subsequent point some friend of Anna's mother started up everybodyandhismother.com and I suppse it was still in business at the time of Anna's tale. She devised a domain name in scorn, and yet it became real!
Casey told us some story that started with the good old prefix "One time, in Iowa..."
We had dinner next to some group of famous Russian actors and their friends. Or so we were told.
Olya for some reason wrote me a really sweet "always be happy!" note in my notebook. This was probably during dinner or after it and before some rowboating by Katie, John, and me. (I stayed behind a wee bit and talked to some nice Finns who were banya-ing.)
The group of actors, I think, took over the cabins that night, so we went into tents in the field near the cabins and slept there. The gnats got horrible near and after sundown. John and Katie and I talked quite a bit, and gossiped, and we drank Mountain Dew and ate cookies and had some Mendeleevskaya vodka (if I recall correctly) from the plastic cup I'd brought. We fell asleep.
Later, John swore he'd heard a screaming woman that night, but I thought it was bird calls.
Sunday: Leaving the Islands.
During breakfast, I think, I finally learned the word for chicken. Kuritsa. I, being a vegetarian in Russia, had to ask whether things had meat or fish or chicken in them. I'd remembered the other words (myasa and ryba, respectively), but had resorted to flapping my arms as though they were wings for "chicken."
Casey and Krista and I walked to town and back to get sundries for the boat and train ride back. We saw cows and dogs and sheep, and said "Good morning" when we meant "good day" (in Russian), and had a very pleasant walk and conversation talking about female-specific problems. It was a nice sharing.
After lunch, we found that the Bus of Death...worked! We rode to the dock, where we waited for the boat. I walked to the town one last time and bought some chocolate. I think John and Katya took pictures of cats and funny signs and walked with me.
We waited for our ship to come in....literally!
We didn't want to miss the boat....literally!
I had a really horrific boat ride. The stormy weather and high waves -- I guess that's what you call "turbulence" on the high seas -- actually created danger of falling-over-into-the-water for some. And I cried, for the first time in Russia, bonding over the miserable ride with others, and yet spilling tears into the White Sea and the foam and wishing I was it instead of me. I felt so muddled. I felt like a high schooler again. I didn't feel as though I had any friends -- people weren't choosing to come hang out with me -- I was worried that my friends only wanted to hang out with each other and not with me. Was I an outcast who only hung out with other outcasts? Or with people who had something broken inside them, some sense of struggle?
I thought about specific people in my group, and how surprised I was that people were caring, and that certain people voluntarily spent time with me. And that gladdened me.
But I wrote, probably standing at the rail over the blue-gray sea, that I felt a little like crying, just as I had when I'd come back from science camp in sixth grade. We came back on a bus, and unloaded our luggage and sleeping bags, and then we waited for our parents to pick us up from the school parking lot, and I waited and waited and mine didn't come. It started to sprinkle, just a dash of gray rain. I lived only a few blocks from school, so I started going home by myself. The duffel and the sleeping bag were too big and too heavy for me to carry at the same time, so I put them both on the ground and alternated rolling the sleeping bag along and moving the duffel bag half a foot. My parents' car came by before I was halfway home, but the damage had already been done. By the time they got me the water on my shirt was tears, not rain.
On the boat, it was raining a little, too, and my body wasn't treating me well. But I sang Moxy Früvous songs to pass the time and get my mind off my seasickness. And I experienced unexpected kindness from some of my shipmates, especially Carolyn and Mariah and Molly. I got better.
I stayed belowdecks a bit and ate choklit and read more of The Great Gatsby. It reminded me of Mr. Hatch. Oh, how little I understood back then! How lucky I was not to have experienced being Gatsby!
The hotel/restaurant was unexpectedly nice. We got terrific food -- the best potatoes I've ever eated, served with mushrooms -- and we got to shower/sauna inside a little attachment to the hotel -- fantastic! I got surprised and a bit tipsy on a glass of sweet red dessert wine, but even so, I simply know that the slingshot from the dirt into the Finn-run cleanliness and the wonderful clean shower were nice on their own.
Now, the bus from the hotel to the ralroad station. Bus of Death II: Mini-Me. Overheard: "If I'm gonna die, it's not gonna be in Kyem'!" Understand that we saw a plastic cover next to the driver, in the sort of passenger-seat space, covering...the engine, as we later saw! Further, we saw two cigarette lighters and a knife resting on that cover. Why? "The knife is for the ignition." - John. And it was so. Oh, and Sergei needed pliers to open the window between the passenger cabin and the driver.
No actual lane markings as such -- just a crack and/or discoloration down the middle of the road. And the driver went much too fast for the hulk he was driving. But I'm still alive!
Small towns like Kyem' and the Solovki towns are tiny, simple ecosystems that we like because we can predict how their games will develop and what state the place will be in using one or two factors. The people are few and reliable. Solovki has road signs of street names that are faded, redone with different names, sometimes unreadable, and no one cares. How alluring the prospect of routine can be! The illusion that change is not inevitable!
We bonded some more at the Kem' train station. ("Foreigners!" and awe, I think we experienced.) We ate coconut chews and drank water and hugged Erin to help keep her warm.
This was The Dream Train! It was so warm and friendly and not turbulent and better than the boat. So on the way to the islands and on the way back, the second part of the voyage was better. Hmmm.
I lost my pen from my pocket while coupé-hopping. I had felt loved and liked in the American Car of the train, where people were singing to pass the time, and I helped in the singing of "The Drinking Song" by Moxy Früvous (while not drinking) with Ross. Also "The Entropy Song," I think. I also gave Erin a back massage; she called me "Goddess!". And I finished Gatsby (inspiring, moving, his use of language incredible, oh, how differently I see things now than I did five years ago!), and commenced reading de Maupassant. Of the short stories I read, I remember "The Minuet" as very touching.
"I am kind of full of shit, come to think of it." -- Gregg. Later, to Gregg's face, I told him that he used profanity as though it were his Stradivarius. His response: "Dammit, Sumana, will you stop it with the f***ing hit parade words!" He's studying for the LSAT.
Monday: Back to Piter.
Woke up to "Lady in Red" on the train radio.
"I spilled apple juice on Carolyn." "And you're still alive?" -- Me and Jon, respectively.
A bunch of us piled into one coupe and talked and laughed and ate. Sergei, I think, forced me to eat a breakfast of bread and cheese and cookie. We laughed at the blurb on the back of my copy of Gatsby; maybe I'll know why when I find that book again.
For some reason the fact that Katie and John and I are friends and form a triangle reminds me of bathroom signs here. "Women's" is an equilateral triangle withe point facing up; "Men's" has the point facing down.
And we got back to Piter and I went home, I think. I have no notes about the Solovki excursion after that, save that John considered getting some data (probably pictures from his digital camera) archived onto CD-ROM, and reported one shop's prices in a line I thought resonant:
"Fifty for the burning, a hundred for the CD."
