on having a russian soul, but not passing it on to my child

i have a russian soul. i know it sounds bad these days, with all of the homophobia and intrigues and hired clappers at the bolshoi and odin knows what else going on in russia, but it's still there. the same burning fascination that drove me to collect several degrees and a large bookshelf full of russian literature still smoulders within. i'm reading andrea pritzer's the secret history of vladimir nabokov and it, together with sabin's recent trip to st. petersburg, have fanned the flames once again.

russia is just so infuriatingly complex and vast and incomprehensible. it is at once primitive and highly cultured, traditional and fresh and new, provincial and cosmopolitan, a pastiche of copies of styles from around the world, but utterly its own. just when you think, i've just read brothers karamazov and now i really understand the russian soul, you turn to master and margarita or pale fire and another entire facet opens up. layer upon layer upon layer of complexity and history and blood and violence and art and thought and religion. i never get my fill of it.

i'll admit i was a little sad that it didn't speak to sabin in the same way. she said she was glad she went, but that she wouldn't want us to plan a family vacation to go back. maybe at 12, wandering the streets of modern st. petersburg, sipping a starbucks, and taking snapshots with her iPhone, it's perhaps understandable that she didn't feel the soul and the pulse of history running through the veins of nevsky prospect. but i had hoped that russia would open itself to her the way it did to me.

times are, of course, different. my initial interest in russia was a reaction to an instinctive and idealistic loathing of ronald reagan (i still think he's where the slippery slope began). it also arose in following the story of dissident andrei sakharov in the early 80s and in reading that baggy monster war & peace at too tender an age. the cold war was in full swing and we practiced nuclear fallout drills in the basement of our school. that's all very remote for sabin, if she has any awareness of it at all. the foundation just isn't there.

her danish sensibilities were a bit overwhelmed by the excessive ornate decoration of everything. gold trim and entire rooms of amber or malachite do make you understand why they needed a revolution. she found she didn't like not being able to read signs or understand what people were saying (being so multi-lingual, those are strange experiences for her). i guess i will have to accept that she will find her own forms of rebellion and passions and infatuations and that they don't have to mirror mine. i'm actually pretty ok with that, but i do wish that russia had made her heart go just a little bit pitter patter. but it wasn't a wasted trip. anytime you travel the world, you grow.

in vino veritas: thoughts of st. petersburg

with sabin in st. petersburg, my thoughts turn to russian poetry. i've said it before, i'm a prose person, not a poetry person, but this one by alexander blok is one of the few i like.

The Stranger

The restaurants on hot spring evenings

Lie under a dense and savage air.

Foul drafts and hoots from dunken revelers

Contaminate the thoroughfare.

Above the dusty lanes of suburbia

Above the tedium of bungalows

A pretzel sign begilds a bakery

And children screech fortissimo.

And every evening beyond the barriers

Gentlemen of practiced wit and charm

Go strolling beside the drainage ditches --

A tilted derby and a lady at the arm.

The squeak of oarlocks comes over the lake water

A woman's shriek assaults the ear

While above, in the sky, inured to everything,

The moon looks on with a mindless leer.

And every evening my one companion

Sits here, reflected in my glass.

Like me, he has drunk of bitter mysteries.

Like me, he is broken, dulled, downcast.

The sleepy lackeys stand beside tables

Waiting for the night to pass

And tipplers with the eyes of rabbits

Cry out: "In vino veritas!"

And every evening (or am I imagining?)

Exactly at the appointed time

A girl's slim figure, silk raimented,

Glides past the window's mist and grime.

And slowly passing throught the revelers,

Unaccompanied, always alone,

Exuding mists and secret fragrances,

She sits at the table that is her own.

Something ancient, something legendary

Surrounds her presence in the room,

Her narrow hand, her silk, her bracelets,

Her hat, the rings, the ostrich plume.

Entranced by her presence, near and enigmatic,

I gaze through the dark of her lowered veil

And I behold an enchanted shoreline

And enchanted distances, far and pale.

I am made a guardian of the higher mysteries,

Someone's sun is entrusted to my control.

Tart wine has pierced the last convolution

of my labyrinthine soul.

And now the drooping plumes of ostriches

Asway in my brain droop slowly lower

And two eyes, limpid, blue, and fathomless

Are blooming on a distant shore.

Inside my soul a treasure is buried.

The key is mine and only mine.

How right you are, you drunken monster!

I know: the truth is in the wine.

Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Blok

is i maven my ass

i'm not religious, not in a conventional sense, but i have a fatalistic streak, undoubtedly from having been raised presbyterian (which in our little town was more of a social distinction than a religious one). and i keep wondering if all of these big red flashing lights that have gone off in front of me about sabin's trip to russia are really and truly signs. and if they were and i didn't listen to them, how will i ever live with it? but what if they're not and my expectations to the professionalism of a flock of amateur clowns who normally spend their days playing pool after school with a bunch of quasi-teenagers are simply too high? how do you decide? and how do you live with your decisions afterwards? arrgh!

a friend told me to have is i maven - ice(cream?) in my stomach, if i literally translate. but i don't think it has anything to do with courage, it's more a question of trust. do i trust these people to take care of my 12-year-old daughter in st. petersburg when they can't actually communicate properly or provide me with a simple flight itinerary?  i really don't know what to do about this. are they just a bunch of amateurs who venture no further than a german bunker on a danish beach during their own vacations, so they have no idea what information they should provide? will it all be ok once they get there, because after all, they are used to spending time with young people and even accustomed to traveling with them (to places like berlin, copenhagen, paris and norway)? or will they be as condescending and arrogant with my child as they are towards me? i really feel i don't have the answers to those questions and they certainly aren't forthcoming with the details i've been asking for either. is it the biggest sign of all that they can't even spell st. petersburg in what little correspondence they have had? when is a sign a sign?