And So.

Soundtrack – Amadou and Mariam, Dimanche A Bamako

It was the best summer of my life. When I arrived this place was like one huge slum to me. Everything was cobbled together from everything else. These people made no sense, they yelled at me for seemingly no reason, and they stumbled through stifling heat with very little concept of proper hygiene. People slept on the streets, passed out, sprawled halfway across the sidewalk. They walked around completely unaffected by their surroundings in an alarming way. I felt like stopping and taking everyone’s pulse and shaking them to make sure they were awake and I was stopped only by the fear that they would react violently in misunderstanding.

Then there came another side, something most noticeable at the heart of the city, but it quickly spread to the rest. It was the immense beauty of this place. An inexplicable, innate attractiveness. Slowly this finely tuned magnificence became almost over weighted with great desolation and eventually even the dirt seemed alive in contradiction.

It all magnified with every step in this sullen city. One by one, every spot I visited became a new beloved and puzzling speck in the world and soon it was impossible to pick a favorite.
I became obsessed with wrapping my brain around this place, but there is not even a clear line from which to start. First I was so in love, complete infatuation, enamored with every jagged little corner, every bright color, every shade of grey. Every shoddy patch job, every patched together coat, every scrapped together monthly income and impromptu kiosk – this whole place for me was patched together in the most inexplicably perfect tetris, and while there was no way to explain why or how it worked, there was a belief that it would work because, somehow, it always had, even when it hadn’t.

Then I was depressed, deeply depressed and angry with every small thing that seemed the antithesis of what I was used to. I thought this was the worst place on earth and whoever had been sentenced here by some sort of divinity was merely passing time until death let them free. I didn’t understand the language and I didn’t want to hear it anymore. Instead of beautifully masking deep emotion it was only curt and loud and jagged and never, never ceasing.

My emotions became intense and my inspiration swelled. This is the loneliest place I have ever been. I don’t know how it is possible. There are 20 million people here, and I think they all walk around completely lonely and alone. But this place is like the great mantra for life. If you are not content by yourself when you get here, and you have an intention of spending any real time here, you must enjoy your own company by the time you leave or you will certainly perish.

Maybe that is the beauty of it all. It is the way it is, and it’s not that there isn’t a way to change it; it’s just that there is no reason for the change. While none of this place seems really appreciated in the sense of the word as I am used to it, life is taken for what it is, and not what you wish it was, what you fancy it may be, or what you remember it being like many, many years ago. I’ve only been in Moscow, so I can’t say, at all, that this is true of all of Russia. But there is something magically content in the angry discontent and premature deepening of creased faces from constant scowling.

I came here to complete an internship and get enough language practice so I can hopefully pass my language proficiency exams at the end of my last year of graduate school. Well… something like that happened. Through my internship I figured out that what I thought I wanted to do is not necessarily what makes me happy. I spoke mostly English while I was here, and did learn a great deal of Russian, but I will still spend a fair amount of time over the next year studying furiously and worrying feverishly about these exams. Instead of accomplishing what I came here to do, I fell hopelessly in love with this country and this moment in time. I made the best friends I’ve made in my life and they made me value every single solitary little piece of my life for just what it is. And then, just as quickly, I lost the same friends to the transitivity this place inspires. It’s a really hard place to be. But if it were easy I’m sure I wouldn’t want anything to do with it.

I learned that it’s ok not to smile all the time. It’s ok to lounge on the grass, stare at people in the metro, and not wear makeup or even put your napkin in your lap. There is something beautiful about being able to walk around completely invisible to all those around you. I learned that all those things I thought I needed are mostly completely unnecessary. Most of all, I learned that no matter how much you appreciate the moment and the place you are in, you cannot take it with you…

And there are lots of things I don’t understand about this place, and there are lots of things that, really, just don’t make any sense at all. Why do you wash and polish the floors of every building and every metro station constantly when they just get dirty 5 seconds later? Why do you wear 5-inch spike heals to go walk on the crooked and uneven bricks at Red Square? Wouldn’t 2-inch heels suffice? Why do you give cigarettes to a 12 year old just shy of the huge anti-smoking campaign posters? Why do you give money to a drunk and then watch them run across the street and buy more booze, and then immediately give money to the next drunk as well? Why don’t you laugh once in a while?

There are a million corners in this perfectly round world, and after overcoming both elation and crocodile tears; I think this corner could, just maybe, be the one for me.
I’m sure when I return home I will have no idea what to do with myself. I don’t think now, after adjusting to all of this gravity, I will know what to do when shot back into space.



I hope you have enjoyed reading these stories as much as I have enjoyed writing them. While not able to capture even the tip of this experience, chronicling some little spots and doing my best to recreate the emotions I’ve actually felt from one adventure to another has felt like a bit of a start. I started this blog project because I knew there would be many requests to hear stories of my trip, stories of such an interesting place, and I knew I would not be able to recount them accurately again and again for each of my dear friends. 12 weeks, 11 stories. In addition to the 33 pages of unedited blog text I ended up with 52 pages of journalled raw feeling from which to draw many, many more stories. So I say to you goodbye from the first My Russian Adventure only in order to move on to the next…