for friends and family back home
Because the sun is always holding hands with the earth
Because the clouds burst into flames when they die
Because the rivers turn in circles
Because the land forgives the river
Because
Because the stars never accept their names
Because the grass grows in the hard land
Because the desert did not devour the cities
Because the dust always returns
Because
Because endurance
Because compassion
Because
I will love you where the river snakes around the forest and eats the earth
Where the sky turns on itself and forms blackness
Where methane tears the ocean floor apart in a fury
Where ever there is wonder
Where ever there is time enough for that
Where
There
I will love you
Because.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Monday, September 19, 2011
Married to Amazement
All that exists lives. The lamp walks around. The walls of the house have voices of their own. Even the chamber-vessel has a separate land and house. The skins sleeping in the bags talk at night. The antlers lying on the tombs arise at night and walk in procession around the mounds.
-told to 19th century anthropologist by Siberian shaman
When the mountains threw rocks in the air they were fighting, and the earth shook thanks to the tunneling action of the mammoths, who expired on contact with sunlight. Mice went to sea in shells and built sleds from blades of grass. Human excrement was a ribald old man dressed in sleek brown furs, boastful but secretly afraid of being eaten by dogs. The sun was a man in glittering clothes who drove a team of copper-antlered deer, and the Milky Way a river choked with boulders. The south-west and south-east winds were an estranged couple who shouted abuse at each other as they passed; thunder the noise of heavenly infants playing on a seal-skin; the unmoving pole star the stake to which the gods tethered their horses. Even the clouds had their own homes and families, complete with vaporous tents and cooking-pots.
Anna Reid, The Shaman’s Coat: A Native History of Siberia
Lake Baikal, or, rather, the Baikal Sea, is a particularly large reason for my presence in Siberia. I simply had to see this body of water. The first time I read about this region was in Kropotkin’s Memoirs of a Revoutionist. His adventures working on a steamship travelling the treacherous Amur River and across the lake ignited the birth of my Russian flame. The next book I read that involved the region was Anne Applebaum’s incredible history of the Gulag, although the tone was quite different. Before I left the states, I frequently heard remarks about Siberia as a vast land of snow and prisons. I have to say that from what I have seen so far, Siberia is indeed vast but it is not dreary and beckons no image of men in chains begging for relief. As the name of this blog implies, Siberia really is in the process of breaking the old chains.
This weekend, I had an excursion with the program that brought me here, The School of Russian and Asian Studies. Just for clarification, there are four other American girls and one Canadian that are studying here through this program as well. One American is my roommate, Danya. The rest live with Russian families. The Canadian is my classmate, Brenda. The other three Americans are Rose, Ingrid, and Abigail.
Natalie is our tour guide whenever we have excursions. She is 29 years old and speaks beautiful English. She constantly asks us for new words to properly describe very specific things. A lot of the time, she longs for a word that is far too technical for us to even know. She has a great passion for language. She studied Japanese, German, and French as well. She claims that coming from a musical heritage gave her great ears, that she can mimic pronunciations very well.
Natalie picked us up Saturday afternoon in a mashrutka. We were heading to Listvyanka, the nearest town settlement on Lake Baikal. It takes about an hour to reach the town. She immediately began to lecture as we began to drive away. She told us everything we would do in great detail. As we drove by a large bridge, she told us that it was the Angara Dam. A little over a mile south from the dorm is the Angara hydro-electric power station and dam. The building of the dam in Irkutsk increased Baikal’s water level by one meter. This had massive consequences. Omul, an endemic fish species, breeding was disrupted, the Trans-Siberian railway had to be rerouted as a whole section was flooded, and Ust-Barguzin, a coastal town, had to be entirely relocated. A glass factory established by a Finnish priest had to be burned before the flood as well, severing the production of glass in the region.
I could not help but reminisce on the grand Columbia River in southern Washington back home. There are a number of dams that have calmed the wildness of the river, but just like the dam in Irkutsk, a vast amount of energy is produced. Now, behind the Angara Dam, the Angara River is called a sea the reservoir is so large.
Next thing I know, we were discussing the film, “The Tree of Life.” I was really impressed that the movie was widely advertised on television in Russia. Perhaps it is because of the celebrity status of the actors involved, I don’t know. Natalie enjoyed the intellectual element of the film but found the visual/musical sequence to be quite long, though very beautiful. One thing led to another and we were discussing actors. She was so impressed with Brad Pitt’s performance. It reminded her of Leonardo Dicaprio. The first movie she saw him in was “Titanic,” and she found his acting style to be very poor. After “The Beach,” she loved him. I was really impressed with how many American films she had seen. I had no idea that American films were so widely distributed.
James Cameron, the director of “Titanic”, spent his 56/57th birthday (it’s debated for some odd reason—perhaps because he was in Russia) in Listvyanka. He rode in a tiny water vessel named MIR 1 to the bottom of Lake Baikal. A good friend of his is the pilot of this vessel. He is a scientist that also dabbles in treasure hunting. This friend also greatly influenced Cameron in the conception of the film. He envisioned the grand romance after working on a project filming the Titanic sight. This same footage was used in the film. Natalie knew all this from a televised interview.
The first placed we stopped was the Taltsy Open-Air Museum of Wooden Architecture! I was really excited about this trip. I have been to Kizhi, a much more isolated museum of wooden architecture as well. Even back home, I have always been fond of such places (pioneer farms) in the United States as well. I once worked at one as a woman pulling water from a well. It was a lot of fun! I really love to see the old architecture, the tools that were used to make clothes and food, and the tools used to harvest.
The flood from the Angara hydro-electric project destroyed most of the original Taltsy village. Some of the buildings were hauled and reassembled in the 1970’s from Bratsk and Ust-Ilimsk. Most of the 40 buildings were saved from another dam project/flooding further up the Angara. There are three distinct sections to the museum: the Great Village with a fortress-front, chapel, and Cossack farmsteads; the Lesser Village, with a large settlement of houses; and finally, the Buryat Settlement with wooden yurts and one great felt yurt, representing the Buryats of the eastern shores of Baikal.
I really enjoyed learning about the production of clothing. Flax is not very common to Siberia as it is hard to grow. Instead, most clothing was made from hemp. Cannabis would be soaked and smashed into fibers, which would then be combed out and eventually spun. I can’t even imagine doing this process. It looked incredibly time-consuming. I love the old Cossack homesteads. They are so cozy. There was a banya in the back and multiple barns. Apparently, the more barns a farmer had, the greater the wealth.
Between the Lower Village and the Buryat Village, there was an exhibition of a Cossack-style house that was opened up to a few blacksmiths from across the country. They were given the freedom to create anything they wanted for the open house. Some things are quite goofy like a boot sticking out of a pot. Other things, like fish drying and slippers on the floor, are more commonplace. The art piece entertains children and adult alike. I LOVED it! It was beautiful in its humor and its history. I think my favorite part was the sunflowers beside the house.
We ate lunch by the reservoir. Soon after, we left for Listvyanka, which was only about 20 minutes away at this point. Outside the mashrutka was the taiga. Apparently, this word is not Russia. It is derived from one of the regional native populations. Taiga = “thick green forest.” There is a light taiga and a dark taiga. The light is full of deciduous trees: birch, aspen, mountain ash and cottonwoods. There are also larch and a few pine. The dark taiga is mainly pine and white spruce. The light taiga consumes the area between Irkutsk and Listvyanka. It is absolutely overwhelming at this time of year with the colors of the leaves turning multiple colors.
The larch here is the yellow larch, which turns a bright yellow in fall and drops all of its leaves. At this point, the larches are all still green. I imagine it will happen a little bit after the deciduous trees for some odd reason, extending the colorful season. Larch is a strong wood. Once it is soaked in water, the wood is like iron. Natalie told us that the Buryats make their wooden yurts out of larch because of this characteristic of losing their leaves. Before Soviet rule, they were mainly shamanistic. They believed that it was bad luck to destroy a tree with its leaves. The larch was a real gift.
Listvyanka is a sprawling coastal town with no real center. In the northern region of the town, there are many sellers and smokers of omul fish. There is a souvenir market, a number of cheap eateries, and a vast amount of beauty. Across the lake, the Khamar Daban mountain range is visible. It is covered in snow year-round.
Baikal is famous for being the oldest and deepest freshwater lake in the world. It contains 20% of the earth’s freshwater. A few favorite statistics:
• If the lake were drained, it would take all the rivers of the world a year to refill it
• It would take the Angara river, as massive as it is, 400 years to drain the lake
• If one ever bottled all the water of the lake, it would provide almost 2.5 million (!) 1.5 liter drinking water bottles to each human being living on our planet, and it would take 761 years to consume them all if each of us would manage to use 6 of those bottles a day
Baikal’s incredible array of facts and figures make North America’s Great Lakes look like shallow ponds, Lake Victoria a youthful puddle and Loch Ness a bathtub with a worm at the bottom.
Marc Di Duca, Bradt Guide to Lake Baikal
Of course, the first stop in Listvyanka was an area directly facing the famous Shaman’s Rock that is at the confluence of the lake and the Angara River. There is a legend that Baikal was a great man with over 300 sons and one daughter, Angara. His 300 sons represent the 300+ tributaries that feed the lake. Baikal refused to allow his daughter to join in marriage with the Yenisei River. She was kept in a castle under the sea but broke free and madly joined her true love, the Yenisei. In anger, the great Baikal threw a great rock to try to stop his daughter.
The rock refers to a geological plate that extends across the area where the river pours out of the lake. A tiny peg can be seen above the water. Before the Angara hydro-electric power project flood, the rock was much larger. This rock used to be an area where those accused of crimes (men and women) were left overnight. If they survived, then they were considered innocent. It is said that it is common to have a supernatural experience on the rock because of the flow of the water. One begins to question whether it is the water moving or the rock itself. Natalie thought that if one survived, one would have spent the night thinking hard on living correctly from that moment on.
Listvyanka’s oldest building is the Church of St. Nicholas. Ksenofont Sibiryakov, a local merchant, claimed to have been saved by St. Nicholas in a storm that sunk his ship. After this event, he began construction of the church in nearby Nikola and finished in 1846. It was a simple wooden church with yellow and pink walls and two tiny cupolas (onion domes). Of course, when the Angara Dam raised the water level, the church was moved. It now is much bigger but remains quaint and cozy. We walked in and watched the middle of a mass. There were babushkas adorned with floral scarves standing checkerboard-style so that all could see the priests, who were busy and singing. There was a group of women out of sight singing as well with incredible harmonies that stirred me up inside. I love Orthodox churches with the iconostasis and gold-framed icons all over the walls.
We walked a little ways past the church down a grassy alley to the Retro Park. This is a must-see in Listvyanka.
At first, it resembles a junkyard, but upon closer inspection, one notices that the piles of junk have eyes and ears and tails. Using old pieces of cars, bikes, and whatever else is around, sculptures of men, women, children, dogs, insects, and more were crafted and remain on exhibit in this park. There are also a number of old soviet cars and motorbikes.
We spent a little bit of time on the shores of Baikal as the sun set. It is said that Baikal’s waters make you live longer. I wonder if there are always bodies of water that people trust in for an extension of life. I remember in my hometown of Austin, Texas, there is Barton Springs. In the Middle East, there is the Dead Sea. Where else? I want to go!
We stayed at a large house that looked like a hostel. Danya and I shared a cozy, warm room with a view of the lake that was stunning. Our host, Alyona, cooked meals for all the guests. Because we were arriving so late, we ate alone in the dining room. Plates of exquisitely displayed cucumbers, tomatoes, apples, and oranges filled the table as well as plates of cookies and salted fish. Then, we were served a hot plate of a baked omul fish and buttered potatoes. We ate a lot! And we talked late into the night.
Natalie and Rose had started talking about religion just after visiting the Church of St. Nicholas. Once Natalie became a tour guide and studied more about Orthodoxy for visiting churches, she became a lot more spiritual and interested in the religion. She was not raised with religion at all. Her great grandfather was a high official of some sort during Soviet rule, but he was sent to many concentration camps---as she called them. Once released, he was reinstated into the Communist Party and his family was given many kinds of benefits that are still provided. I was not sure exactly what these benefits were. She described financial assistance and provided vacations to the Black Sea for the women.
Natalie was very curious about Rose, who is a devout Catholic. Rose explained the whole history of Catholicism in an amazing nutshell that amused Natalie, who seemed to really want to compare their religions. The conversation turned towards the communion and Rose gave the most incredible lecture on how she really believes that when she eats bread and drinks wine, she is really eating the flesh of Jesus Christ and drinking his blood. She would comically say in different ways, “Yes, I like to get up in there and eat me some Jesus Christ.” She has quite a wonderful sense of humor. I have to say that most Catholics I have met often do.
She described how a thought inside the mind is an abstract concept and once a person speaks, that person transforms this abstraction into something concrete. The same is true for God transforming from an abstract concept to concrete objects on earth. As bread and wine are historically basic necessities for human beings, God humbles himself by becoming these objects and entering our bodies. Rose believes that Jesus Christ is God and that God is love. Thus, eating the concrete transformation of God is an act of accepting love into ones being. It is very intimate. There is no way that I can do her lecture any justice but it was a really beautiful interpretation that I have not heard. Natalie agreed that God is love and everywhere and was pleased with the lecture as well, but pushed that there were distinct differences between them. For the rest of the weekend, I notice that Rose would say, “Thank God,” when she really loved something.
Brenda was then urged to explain her life story as she is 42 years old, has studied forensic psychology and law, was a lawyer for 11 years, worked at a maximum security male-prison for a bit, and lived in Paris for three years. She really is quite a woman. I love that she is in my class. We take the bus together and have a good chat every school day. One day, she told me how it is not a good idea to smile at male strangers in Paris or else they will think it is code for “Let’s sleep together.” He will come up to you and ask if you want to get a drink. If you say yes, he will then ask, “Your place or mine?” If you say, “Your place,” he may bring up his wife and urge the meeting to be at your place. Hilarious!
Soon after, it was time for bed!
The next day, we enjoyed blinis and fresh jam with hot tea and sugar cubes. We walked along the water to the Baikal Museum. This museum is also called the “Limnoogical Institute.” Limnology is the study of lakes. It was coined in the region. The museum is quaint and strictly factual. In the halls, photography of Baikal lined the walls with epic portraits. There is a room discussing the MIR water vessels and the progression of diving suits over time. Another room had stuffed birds, rocks, a model of the lake, and the many stages of assorted fish species. Downstairs is the most popular part of the museum with assorted aquariums of local and foreign fish species as well as two nerpa seals: Mooska and Malooska. They are not trained to do anything at all, though sometimes they play with a hula-hoop and a ball. They were rescued after their mother was killed by hunters. They were quite adorable. In the water, they appear like tiny, fat, gray torpedoes. When they poked up their heads for air, their neck extended and I could see that they do, indeed, have heads.
Afterwards, we walked up a long hill to a chair lift that took us up a mountain to an INCREDIBLE overlook. In the distance, the mountains hovered above a stream of mist that made them appear in flight above the glistening water of Baikal. The shades of yellows, oranges, and reds from the deciduous trees mixed with pine colored the borders of this immaculate view. For a moment, I thought of the Canadian singer, Amelia Curran. She sings, “All the colors you can see cover the borders of a masterpiece.”
This was my first time on a chair lift. I am quite the fan now. It was so relaxing and pleasant. On the way down, assorted Russian men asked us how we were and if we would join them at the top for drinks! One guy asked us if we were Russian. Danya told him we were American and he said, “Us too!” They were really entertaining.
We had a pleasant piroshky lunch at a café with seemingly American southwest motif before the drive back home.
For some odd reason, I keep hearing Gogol in my head, yelling out, “Rus! Rus! From my wondrous, beautiful distance, I see you!” I think I will always see the Baikal from this day for as long as I live. I will carry it in my pocket and pull it out along every footpath, from every distance, through every wandering road.
-told to 19th century anthropologist by Siberian shaman
When the mountains threw rocks in the air they were fighting, and the earth shook thanks to the tunneling action of the mammoths, who expired on contact with sunlight. Mice went to sea in shells and built sleds from blades of grass. Human excrement was a ribald old man dressed in sleek brown furs, boastful but secretly afraid of being eaten by dogs. The sun was a man in glittering clothes who drove a team of copper-antlered deer, and the Milky Way a river choked with boulders. The south-west and south-east winds were an estranged couple who shouted abuse at each other as they passed; thunder the noise of heavenly infants playing on a seal-skin; the unmoving pole star the stake to which the gods tethered their horses. Even the clouds had their own homes and families, complete with vaporous tents and cooking-pots.
Anna Reid, The Shaman’s Coat: A Native History of Siberia
Lake Baikal, or, rather, the Baikal Sea, is a particularly large reason for my presence in Siberia. I simply had to see this body of water. The first time I read about this region was in Kropotkin’s Memoirs of a Revoutionist. His adventures working on a steamship travelling the treacherous Amur River and across the lake ignited the birth of my Russian flame. The next book I read that involved the region was Anne Applebaum’s incredible history of the Gulag, although the tone was quite different. Before I left the states, I frequently heard remarks about Siberia as a vast land of snow and prisons. I have to say that from what I have seen so far, Siberia is indeed vast but it is not dreary and beckons no image of men in chains begging for relief. As the name of this blog implies, Siberia really is in the process of breaking the old chains.
This weekend, I had an excursion with the program that brought me here, The School of Russian and Asian Studies. Just for clarification, there are four other American girls and one Canadian that are studying here through this program as well. One American is my roommate, Danya. The rest live with Russian families. The Canadian is my classmate, Brenda. The other three Americans are Rose, Ingrid, and Abigail.
Natalie is our tour guide whenever we have excursions. She is 29 years old and speaks beautiful English. She constantly asks us for new words to properly describe very specific things. A lot of the time, she longs for a word that is far too technical for us to even know. She has a great passion for language. She studied Japanese, German, and French as well. She claims that coming from a musical heritage gave her great ears, that she can mimic pronunciations very well.
Natalie picked us up Saturday afternoon in a mashrutka. We were heading to Listvyanka, the nearest town settlement on Lake Baikal. It takes about an hour to reach the town. She immediately began to lecture as we began to drive away. She told us everything we would do in great detail. As we drove by a large bridge, she told us that it was the Angara Dam. A little over a mile south from the dorm is the Angara hydro-electric power station and dam. The building of the dam in Irkutsk increased Baikal’s water level by one meter. This had massive consequences. Omul, an endemic fish species, breeding was disrupted, the Trans-Siberian railway had to be rerouted as a whole section was flooded, and Ust-Barguzin, a coastal town, had to be entirely relocated. A glass factory established by a Finnish priest had to be burned before the flood as well, severing the production of glass in the region.
I could not help but reminisce on the grand Columbia River in southern Washington back home. There are a number of dams that have calmed the wildness of the river, but just like the dam in Irkutsk, a vast amount of energy is produced. Now, behind the Angara Dam, the Angara River is called a sea the reservoir is so large.
Next thing I know, we were discussing the film, “The Tree of Life.” I was really impressed that the movie was widely advertised on television in Russia. Perhaps it is because of the celebrity status of the actors involved, I don’t know. Natalie enjoyed the intellectual element of the film but found the visual/musical sequence to be quite long, though very beautiful. One thing led to another and we were discussing actors. She was so impressed with Brad Pitt’s performance. It reminded her of Leonardo Dicaprio. The first movie she saw him in was “Titanic,” and she found his acting style to be very poor. After “The Beach,” she loved him. I was really impressed with how many American films she had seen. I had no idea that American films were so widely distributed.
James Cameron, the director of “Titanic”, spent his 56/57th birthday (it’s debated for some odd reason—perhaps because he was in Russia) in Listvyanka. He rode in a tiny water vessel named MIR 1 to the bottom of Lake Baikal. A good friend of his is the pilot of this vessel. He is a scientist that also dabbles in treasure hunting. This friend also greatly influenced Cameron in the conception of the film. He envisioned the grand romance after working on a project filming the Titanic sight. This same footage was used in the film. Natalie knew all this from a televised interview.
The first placed we stopped was the Taltsy Open-Air Museum of Wooden Architecture! I was really excited about this trip. I have been to Kizhi, a much more isolated museum of wooden architecture as well. Even back home, I have always been fond of such places (pioneer farms) in the United States as well. I once worked at one as a woman pulling water from a well. It was a lot of fun! I really love to see the old architecture, the tools that were used to make clothes and food, and the tools used to harvest.
The flood from the Angara hydro-electric project destroyed most of the original Taltsy village. Some of the buildings were hauled and reassembled in the 1970’s from Bratsk and Ust-Ilimsk. Most of the 40 buildings were saved from another dam project/flooding further up the Angara. There are three distinct sections to the museum: the Great Village with a fortress-front, chapel, and Cossack farmsteads; the Lesser Village, with a large settlement of houses; and finally, the Buryat Settlement with wooden yurts and one great felt yurt, representing the Buryats of the eastern shores of Baikal.
I really enjoyed learning about the production of clothing. Flax is not very common to Siberia as it is hard to grow. Instead, most clothing was made from hemp. Cannabis would be soaked and smashed into fibers, which would then be combed out and eventually spun. I can’t even imagine doing this process. It looked incredibly time-consuming. I love the old Cossack homesteads. They are so cozy. There was a banya in the back and multiple barns. Apparently, the more barns a farmer had, the greater the wealth.
Between the Lower Village and the Buryat Village, there was an exhibition of a Cossack-style house that was opened up to a few blacksmiths from across the country. They were given the freedom to create anything they wanted for the open house. Some things are quite goofy like a boot sticking out of a pot. Other things, like fish drying and slippers on the floor, are more commonplace. The art piece entertains children and adult alike. I LOVED it! It was beautiful in its humor and its history. I think my favorite part was the sunflowers beside the house.
We ate lunch by the reservoir. Soon after, we left for Listvyanka, which was only about 20 minutes away at this point. Outside the mashrutka was the taiga. Apparently, this word is not Russia. It is derived from one of the regional native populations. Taiga = “thick green forest.” There is a light taiga and a dark taiga. The light is full of deciduous trees: birch, aspen, mountain ash and cottonwoods. There are also larch and a few pine. The dark taiga is mainly pine and white spruce. The light taiga consumes the area between Irkutsk and Listvyanka. It is absolutely overwhelming at this time of year with the colors of the leaves turning multiple colors.
The larch here is the yellow larch, which turns a bright yellow in fall and drops all of its leaves. At this point, the larches are all still green. I imagine it will happen a little bit after the deciduous trees for some odd reason, extending the colorful season. Larch is a strong wood. Once it is soaked in water, the wood is like iron. Natalie told us that the Buryats make their wooden yurts out of larch because of this characteristic of losing their leaves. Before Soviet rule, they were mainly shamanistic. They believed that it was bad luck to destroy a tree with its leaves. The larch was a real gift.
Listvyanka is a sprawling coastal town with no real center. In the northern region of the town, there are many sellers and smokers of omul fish. There is a souvenir market, a number of cheap eateries, and a vast amount of beauty. Across the lake, the Khamar Daban mountain range is visible. It is covered in snow year-round.
Baikal is famous for being the oldest and deepest freshwater lake in the world. It contains 20% of the earth’s freshwater. A few favorite statistics:
• If the lake were drained, it would take all the rivers of the world a year to refill it
• It would take the Angara river, as massive as it is, 400 years to drain the lake
• If one ever bottled all the water of the lake, it would provide almost 2.5 million (!) 1.5 liter drinking water bottles to each human being living on our planet, and it would take 761 years to consume them all if each of us would manage to use 6 of those bottles a day
Baikal’s incredible array of facts and figures make North America’s Great Lakes look like shallow ponds, Lake Victoria a youthful puddle and Loch Ness a bathtub with a worm at the bottom.
Marc Di Duca, Bradt Guide to Lake Baikal
Of course, the first stop in Listvyanka was an area directly facing the famous Shaman’s Rock that is at the confluence of the lake and the Angara River. There is a legend that Baikal was a great man with over 300 sons and one daughter, Angara. His 300 sons represent the 300+ tributaries that feed the lake. Baikal refused to allow his daughter to join in marriage with the Yenisei River. She was kept in a castle under the sea but broke free and madly joined her true love, the Yenisei. In anger, the great Baikal threw a great rock to try to stop his daughter.
The rock refers to a geological plate that extends across the area where the river pours out of the lake. A tiny peg can be seen above the water. Before the Angara hydro-electric power project flood, the rock was much larger. This rock used to be an area where those accused of crimes (men and women) were left overnight. If they survived, then they were considered innocent. It is said that it is common to have a supernatural experience on the rock because of the flow of the water. One begins to question whether it is the water moving or the rock itself. Natalie thought that if one survived, one would have spent the night thinking hard on living correctly from that moment on.
Listvyanka’s oldest building is the Church of St. Nicholas. Ksenofont Sibiryakov, a local merchant, claimed to have been saved by St. Nicholas in a storm that sunk his ship. After this event, he began construction of the church in nearby Nikola and finished in 1846. It was a simple wooden church with yellow and pink walls and two tiny cupolas (onion domes). Of course, when the Angara Dam raised the water level, the church was moved. It now is much bigger but remains quaint and cozy. We walked in and watched the middle of a mass. There were babushkas adorned with floral scarves standing checkerboard-style so that all could see the priests, who were busy and singing. There was a group of women out of sight singing as well with incredible harmonies that stirred me up inside. I love Orthodox churches with the iconostasis and gold-framed icons all over the walls.
We walked a little ways past the church down a grassy alley to the Retro Park. This is a must-see in Listvyanka.
At first, it resembles a junkyard, but upon closer inspection, one notices that the piles of junk have eyes and ears and tails. Using old pieces of cars, bikes, and whatever else is around, sculptures of men, women, children, dogs, insects, and more were crafted and remain on exhibit in this park. There are also a number of old soviet cars and motorbikes.
We spent a little bit of time on the shores of Baikal as the sun set. It is said that Baikal’s waters make you live longer. I wonder if there are always bodies of water that people trust in for an extension of life. I remember in my hometown of Austin, Texas, there is Barton Springs. In the Middle East, there is the Dead Sea. Where else? I want to go!
We stayed at a large house that looked like a hostel. Danya and I shared a cozy, warm room with a view of the lake that was stunning. Our host, Alyona, cooked meals for all the guests. Because we were arriving so late, we ate alone in the dining room. Plates of exquisitely displayed cucumbers, tomatoes, apples, and oranges filled the table as well as plates of cookies and salted fish. Then, we were served a hot plate of a baked omul fish and buttered potatoes. We ate a lot! And we talked late into the night.
Natalie and Rose had started talking about religion just after visiting the Church of St. Nicholas. Once Natalie became a tour guide and studied more about Orthodoxy for visiting churches, she became a lot more spiritual and interested in the religion. She was not raised with religion at all. Her great grandfather was a high official of some sort during Soviet rule, but he was sent to many concentration camps---as she called them. Once released, he was reinstated into the Communist Party and his family was given many kinds of benefits that are still provided. I was not sure exactly what these benefits were. She described financial assistance and provided vacations to the Black Sea for the women.
Natalie was very curious about Rose, who is a devout Catholic. Rose explained the whole history of Catholicism in an amazing nutshell that amused Natalie, who seemed to really want to compare their religions. The conversation turned towards the communion and Rose gave the most incredible lecture on how she really believes that when she eats bread and drinks wine, she is really eating the flesh of Jesus Christ and drinking his blood. She would comically say in different ways, “Yes, I like to get up in there and eat me some Jesus Christ.” She has quite a wonderful sense of humor. I have to say that most Catholics I have met often do.
She described how a thought inside the mind is an abstract concept and once a person speaks, that person transforms this abstraction into something concrete. The same is true for God transforming from an abstract concept to concrete objects on earth. As bread and wine are historically basic necessities for human beings, God humbles himself by becoming these objects and entering our bodies. Rose believes that Jesus Christ is God and that God is love. Thus, eating the concrete transformation of God is an act of accepting love into ones being. It is very intimate. There is no way that I can do her lecture any justice but it was a really beautiful interpretation that I have not heard. Natalie agreed that God is love and everywhere and was pleased with the lecture as well, but pushed that there were distinct differences between them. For the rest of the weekend, I notice that Rose would say, “Thank God,” when she really loved something.
Brenda was then urged to explain her life story as she is 42 years old, has studied forensic psychology and law, was a lawyer for 11 years, worked at a maximum security male-prison for a bit, and lived in Paris for three years. She really is quite a woman. I love that she is in my class. We take the bus together and have a good chat every school day. One day, she told me how it is not a good idea to smile at male strangers in Paris or else they will think it is code for “Let’s sleep together.” He will come up to you and ask if you want to get a drink. If you say yes, he will then ask, “Your place or mine?” If you say, “Your place,” he may bring up his wife and urge the meeting to be at your place. Hilarious!
Soon after, it was time for bed!
The next day, we enjoyed blinis and fresh jam with hot tea and sugar cubes. We walked along the water to the Baikal Museum. This museum is also called the “Limnoogical Institute.” Limnology is the study of lakes. It was coined in the region. The museum is quaint and strictly factual. In the halls, photography of Baikal lined the walls with epic portraits. There is a room discussing the MIR water vessels and the progression of diving suits over time. Another room had stuffed birds, rocks, a model of the lake, and the many stages of assorted fish species. Downstairs is the most popular part of the museum with assorted aquariums of local and foreign fish species as well as two nerpa seals: Mooska and Malooska. They are not trained to do anything at all, though sometimes they play with a hula-hoop and a ball. They were rescued after their mother was killed by hunters. They were quite adorable. In the water, they appear like tiny, fat, gray torpedoes. When they poked up their heads for air, their neck extended and I could see that they do, indeed, have heads.
Afterwards, we walked up a long hill to a chair lift that took us up a mountain to an INCREDIBLE overlook. In the distance, the mountains hovered above a stream of mist that made them appear in flight above the glistening water of Baikal. The shades of yellows, oranges, and reds from the deciduous trees mixed with pine colored the borders of this immaculate view. For a moment, I thought of the Canadian singer, Amelia Curran. She sings, “All the colors you can see cover the borders of a masterpiece.”
This was my first time on a chair lift. I am quite the fan now. It was so relaxing and pleasant. On the way down, assorted Russian men asked us how we were and if we would join them at the top for drinks! One guy asked us if we were Russian. Danya told him we were American and he said, “Us too!” They were really entertaining.
We had a pleasant piroshky lunch at a café with seemingly American southwest motif before the drive back home.
For some odd reason, I keep hearing Gogol in my head, yelling out, “Rus! Rus! From my wondrous, beautiful distance, I see you!” I think I will always see the Baikal from this day for as long as I live. I will carry it in my pocket and pull it out along every footpath, from every distance, through every wandering road.
Friday, September 16, 2011
The 14th of September, this last Wednesday, was the 350th Anniversary of the establishment of Irkutsk! The preparation for this event was borderline similar to the Olympics. All around town, sidewalks are being repaved with decorative bricks, parks are filled with the “350” benches, a new collection of old-fashioned log homes were built, and still, the lovely music fills the air with songs.
Danya and I were going to have a “cultural escort” to the big anniversary party in the downtown area near out school, but she never showed up. We left around 2:30pm. When we arrived to the ploshchad Kirov (Kirov Square), which has been renamed more times than is reasonable, it was overflowing with color. There were a couple trains that pulled spinning seats instead of carts (this reminded me of an old carnival ride back home) and balloon-sellers that were invisible below the mass amount of their product floating above. A large part of the crowd faced the mains stage.
The main stage was set up in front of the Regional Administration building. This was an incredible space to face all the day and night. In 1875, work began on the Kazanskii Cathedral, the main temple of worship for the city. The cathedral was completed in 1895. It was one of the largest buildings in all of Russia. It could seat 5000 people. The highest point was 60 meters. In 1932, under orders of Stalin, the cathedral was blown up. Others simply became museums, dormitories, or storage facilities, but this particular cathedral was destroyed. It was a massive loss for the country. Bricks from the building were used to repave the Tikhvinskaia square and raised the area by a meter. Near this square is the eternal flame in memorial of those that died in the Great Patriotic War.
The main stage was displaying an interesting play when we arrived. It looked like it was the story of the establishment of Irkutsk, and the meeting of the Cossacks and the Buryats, native to the region. Cossacks bellowed out thick Russian, sang songs, and danced. Buryats sang as well. I think there was a love story as well, but it was hard to tell. In the end, the Russian and Buryat women sang and danced in a tight circle. Then, they came out into the crowd and joined hands with a number of people until we were all in a HUGE circle. Then, there were many large circles and spinning and intertwining. It was really marvelous. All the while, the same song was chanted over and over again. This went on for quite a long time.
Afterwards, we decided to get some tea at the Angara Hotel, but ended up meeting a group of Russian girls and joined them on a long journey to lunch. Sitting together appeared to be very important so we walked to a number of different places until we finally found a tight corner in the downstairs room of a pizza/blini restaurant. On the walls, there were painted Picasso-esque nude portraits. I enjoyed a super-garlic blini, finding out that if garlic is in the description, it is the main ingredient. Danya had walnut and condensed milk blinis. We shared, thank goodness! Everyone spoke in Russian for a very long time. I enjoyed what I could understand.
I spoke with Rose, one of the other Americans for a bit. She is from New Jersey and goes to school in Philadelphia, a city she loves. She lives in a house packed with her improv-acting troupe. One of the girls from the troupe left last year for Chicago and found out that it is the best place for an artist to go to find work. Rose and her troupe will move there next year. She enlightened me with the new concept of improv-acting. It is often thought of as a comedic performance but her troupe is experimenting with serious topics as well. I think it sounds wonderful and I hope to see some in the future at home.
We left the restaurant hours later and returned to the stage, where some band was really jamming. By the time we got to the stage, the music ended and there was loads of introductions, clapping, and “I was born inIrkutsk! I love Irkutsk!” The main area around the stage was blocked by orange fences and loads of police officials. There were certain points set up for entering and exiting. If you appeared drunk, you were not accepted into the area. I felt really safe because of this, though it would not matter much later.
Eventually, wonderful performances resumed. There was a ballet interpretation of the legend of Baikal, a story I save for another entry. Then, there was lots and lots of singing. Danya and I were the only ones left enjoying this portion of the day. Most people either returned to the dormitory because of the cold weather or were enjoying beer in a “Lord of the Rings”-themed-pub. The singers appeared to be contestants from a popular reality singing show. We aren’t sure. Danya and I were smooshed inside the crowd for quite a bit of time because I wanted to be in a good spot for filming the performances. It was also rather warm. Maria called us though and lured us out of the crowd. Heum, a Korean student that has studied here for 2 years so far, Christine, a new student from Puerto Rico, Galya and a few other Russians were there as well. We formed a tight bond until the end of the night.
The last band of the evening was a hip-hop/pop group that formed in 2005: BandEros. When they came on the stage, it was like a rollercoaster through the crowd. We were shoved to and fro, we tried to dance, and then, all of the sudden, a fight broke out. It was madness. Then, things settled and we really just enjoyed the fun music. Their music videos were shown on huge screens. One was about what “Columbia Pictures doesn’t show.” There were scenes from different movies and the Oscars. It looked interesting to me. I wondered what all the words were.
Then, FIREWORKS! The show poured from the Regional Administration building. There were all kinds, even some that I’ve never seen before. Afterwards, the crowd poured through the streets as if pushed by water. They filled the sidewalks, the buses, mashrutkas, and parks. The ground was littered with glass. The sound of heels clicking and glass cracking filled my ears. We all wondered if the square would really be clean by morning (it was!).
We walked a long way home but it was joyous. It was a really beautiful day in Irkutsk.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2WVjxdaKDI&feature=player_embedded
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