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.