the market in narration

many apologies for the shortcomings of posts. that they come so short and so few, et cetera. the homework here has teeth, and also my two arms vised within. and so, without much rambling, a short post.

i went to the market. it was a market something like a haymarket. it was once used for the purposes of selling hay, so that horses could be fed as the fable once said. it wasn't a fable was it? where am i? i am in a market. a tall building, with struts strutting along the ceiling. it isn't open air, that is out back, but here, there is a market also. small, miniscule cucumbers deserving of all the diminutive suffixes that can be given them. and ruddy tomatoes also.

i like to see the fish lined up behind glass, all at attention, even if they aren't breathing water anymore. they are comatose in their cold-aired containers. look! they look with the same eyes at me, and their ode de fish still swims in the air as it ever did in the gulf. one of the fish glistened with sweat along his cheek, and i thought maybe he was a foreigner, but maybe it was cold and he just had a cold chill, like the kind you had a year ago when you thought maybe someone you love might die, and what would you do or feel then?

there is a candy store here also.

and outside, out back, that is, behind the big building of which we previously spoke, more stalls! more vegetables! more fruits to horde and fill cheeks!

here the ground in peppered with bits of paper and some sprigs and some lettuce. people are talking quickly, the pace has increased. the space has decreased, especially when carts go by with wooden crates so recently holding fresh within their little cavities. it is nice. they foretell my intentions and the intentions of other shoppers.

i buy some tomatoes. here, they are called pomidori, but i still think of them as tomatoes sometimes. they are red and in the middle. not too big, maam! what is the proper form of address? the plural you is all. or tell me! show me! this language is said to be direct and i forward that to you by way of writing. here is one reason more for the love of it.

--how much are the tomatoes for half a kilogram?
--thirty.
--i will take them.
--for you, thirty dollars.

and now, my accent has given me away. she knows that i am american and i know that she is russian, and we joke about it, because she has a friend that lives in america and she knows thirty dollars is a lot of money for half a kilo, and thirty rubles is fair, because although she knows by my twitches of voice i am american, she also really cherishes people that try to learn her language. it is a complement she takes to heart, and moulders when she returns home.

she gives her cat a white bowl with white cream, pets it twice, and thinks about the confused american trying to buy pomidori, even though he thinks they are called tomatoes.

also, i bought apricots. the man invited me to taste one to test the quality, but i thought maybe i should, but i didn't. the story turned out well in the end, because he also was payed for his solid and upright merchandise.

sometime before going to the market, i bought a coffee at macdonald's. it is the only place that has coffee that has slipped through a filter. unless you think about espresso. espresso goes through a filter, too, but then is added to water, and that is still not like coffee at home, not like coffee at home at all.

life and language

Russian language and life is a wisp, a zephyr. Something emitting a faint glow as one looks east from the States. We know it is there, that it thrives, that it grows and alters over there. But it is wholly elusive until one comes over here. After some number of years of study in the States, one learns some phonetics, vocabulary, the right syntax for “to have”. And then that aggregate of knowledge burns away in the presence of the real thing overshadowing what previously seemed substantial. Russian is no longer about the proper use of который, but about a polite way to ask for the счёт, to get directions to дом 40, to refuse that final блин so that one's stomach doesn't joyfully rupture.

One of our first duties was to find the university campus. A friend from the program approached a woman on the street to ask directions. Even this, one of the most basic interactions, found him stumbling over soft signs and forgetting words in the mist of the rain. What is at stake during an oral examination in Russian? A few percentage points. In Russia, at the least, it is your dignity. And that, for the joy of being here, is easily surrendered.

During orientation, my residence director recounted his first visit to Petersburg. As the plane descended, he had every expectation that the Petersburg weather would be wet. The buildings would be enveloped in shade. The only light would be the diffusion of sunlight through clouds persisting throughout the day and the night. Fifty meters, fourty, twenty, ten meters above the ground, all was fog. And for my residence director, it was the same on the ground. And for me it was the same. The weather was the same the next day and the next.

Though it is a rather simple and obvious analysis, life in Russia is like its weather. Precisely as you've read about it, and not at all as you've read. Though that simple rain persisted for days, I found myself eager for it, calmly learning it like the intricacies of the metro. I was glad to feel the dampness of my socks as I passed Kazanskii Sobor, moving with the flocks of tourists down Nevskii. Something quickened in me when from unsmiling lips came mingling streams of breath and smoke. Or the first time a бабушка yelled at me because my large backpack was taking too much space on the bus. Or when people would approach me on the street and ask directions, assuming that I knew where I was and were I was going.

So, this is about language and not at all about language. If language is that thing that lies in books that lie on shelves and ask nothing of us, then how is it relevant to us? If language is that thing that awaits and provokes our response, be it lying in the pages of a book or in the live circuitry of a man on the street, then how can we refuse it? How can I write the taste of the language as I fumble to talk politics with my professor? It is fresh on my palate, and I have no words for it.

I submitted this as a partial requirement for the scholarship I received. That is why words are capitalized.

A block away from the dormitories, Kazanskii Sobor.















By a canal.















Kittens.

and the last of dc

oi. already off schedule am i? am i? i have no sense of time anymore. this, i will try to explain.

we last left off on sunday two sundays ago. too long ago. there was the holocaust museum. after, we (my father and i) went to pca church plant in washington proper by the name of grace dc. though the specifics remain fuzzily in my head, i recall that the church started five years ago. my guess is that they had one hundred congregants for each year. they met in the spacious hull of a baptist church by the name of calvary. in the evening. the piano was planted firmly to the front of the guitarists, who were sitting, and the music preferred ccm, but there was a distinct presbyterian air about it (somehow i think concluding with “i’ll fly away” has a presbyterian air, thank you very much, grace). since the church has connections with redeemer presbyterian in new york, it was a little keller colored, but that’s fine in my book. the sermon was about this:



















thank you, Lord, that it was not about this:


















o! that i could remember more! it was about the fall and how much more? o! that the bland reading of genesis obscures the God that eagerly designs and maintains communions among men and Himself by determining the law against some small bits of fruit a gross and arbitrary demand by some roving and eagerly vindictive tyrant.

the point is that, as was said, that the number of capital crimes in eden was maximal. how many tiers or stages of rebellion were viable? what was a little rebellion to perfection? by grace death came late to adam and sooner than not will be undone. any break of communion divided this creator and his work, and what responsibility has a creator to a work that unperfects itself? only the demands of a gracious spirit, and praise be to God! that it is so.

the next day we went to the smithsonian museum of american history and the museum of art. they were pretty and pretty big. the most interesting exhibit of the american history museum was that grand old flag. you know the one? that inspired the national anthem? it is paper thin and thoroughly large. the lights are dimmed so as to protect it from photons. what i found interesting was that it was privately owned through most of 1800’s. the family cut up bits of it and gave it away as gifts. some people used their bits as placemats and napkins. that is a lie.

the museum of art was in good shape. it had a photo exhibit. one of the photos was a photo of a statue of casimir pulanski. if you know sufjan stevens, then you know casimir pulaski, or at least you know a song about a day in honor of him. he is riding a horse (also a statue). though you don’t need to know sufjan stevens or casimir pulaski to be okay in my book, you should really get to know one or the other. you don’t need to know them personally, though that would be thoroughly stupendous to me (and probably you).

here is coke quilting the world.



















here is me looking very shifty.



















here is a stupendous piano that i would sell my liver for, though it is slighty used.

the plan

in brief: i had orientation today. i'll be writing the next few posts regarding my stay in washington on the plane (leaving tomorrow at 5 post meridian).

since the program is immersive, like an oily stew or a pool of холодец, it is recommended that i refrain from english, and the internet, and facebook most especially, that i might partake most fully in this immersion. this is wise. so, i will rarely be online, and will do my best to update regularly wednesday and sunday.

until then, friends.

oh, and here is холодец (khaladyets):

to washington then he came

to the district of columbia then we came. anticipating some two days of orientation before russia proper, my father and i had two days and an evening wherein we bonded over microbrews, tapas, brick oven pizza, art, et cetera.

on the morning of sunday the thirtieth we went to new york avenue presbyterian church of the pcusa species. the music was traditional (oh! how i miss bach preludes!) and it preferred strong liturgy, and the people kind and predominantly septuagenaric, and how i wish the sermon had been like this:
















instead, it was more like this:
















it was an anecdote about a cancered man and the hope and comfort that may come through conversation. well...that is true enough. but when a sermon is on romans eight and its title "cross-talk", i had such a fervor in me that therein would be talk about the cross, and markedly less fervor ‘bout talk ‘cross the room. for though i surely believe that words have a quality to them, a chance and capacity to comfort, yet how sure or useful is comfort without foundation? i do not wish to dwell on nyapc, for the people were kind and as good as anyone. but i only mean to note that a confusion is subtexted. the message is hope and justice and inclusion (praise be to God for these), but the liturgy makes claims of exclusion immediately thereafter. how are these not in contradiction? can i has a conceptual analysis?

in the afternoon we walked. there was the white house (on the curb nearby there was a protest, and further down there was a game of roller hockey). walked by the washington monument (bigger than it is in film). we went to the holocaust museum.

though it is hard to conceive of that which is spectacular and sobering, the holocaust museum is these. it asks somber reflection on history as well as begs response (a portion of it is dedicated to contemporary instances of genocide and conflict between ethnic groups). here, the museum, like a good text, acts holistically, that is to say, it does not divide intellectual/emotional or historical/ethical.

three interesting moments:

first, even at the very beginning: the pictures taken by american and russian soliders of piles of bodies hurriedly burned at the end of the war. across the horizontal plane a gradient of immolation: at one end charred bones, some with seared flesh, and some entirely corpse. how could one do this to another? if one’s life or livelihood were at stake, would it be any easier? though with all rhetorical boldness i wish to say no, it is a question i hope i never need answer. the german soldiers were men like me. how thin are the walls of my belief, of my love?

second, how glad i was to read about the resistance and rescue that did take place. though the papacy and the state church of germany are often and rightfully criticized for snuggling nazism, the accounts of resistance (peaceful and not) within underground churches in germany are a good attestation to one who loves the church for all its flaws. may it ever be that Christ demonstrates his love in the love of his people, even when their institutions fail.

third, the artifacts. there is a room in the museum full of discarded shoes from men and women that went to the ovens. it is not the sight of these raggedy pieces of leather and rubber giving me pause. it is their smell. must and decay fills the room. these shoes once held flesh and dirt, they stretched and constricted some toes. and those toes are gone to the flame, but the rubber remains.