The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Friday, May 30, 2008
Moscow--Saturday
Friday
Our train pulled into Moscow station, as scheduled, at 7:20 AM.
The night was not nearly so bad as we had feared—the berths reasonably comfortable, despite dire warnings to the contrary. Even the bathrooms were serviceable, if not particularly enticing. I slept a few hours, and woke feeling ready for the day.
The downtown Aurora Marriott Hotel was not ready for us to check in so early in the morning, but did afford us the opportunity to drop off our bags and enjoy a pleasant breakfast before leaving for the day. Our bus dropped us off in the shadow of the Kremlin walls,
and we walked into the fortress for our first visit, in the Armory,
(a nice group of kids...)
where the state treasures of the tsarist times are kept—amazing objects dating from as early as the thirteenth century, including both temporal and sacred ritual artifacts, chalices, icons and bibles encrusted with gold and jewels; eleven fabulous Faberge eggs and other state and royal gifts; textiles and clothes, wedding and coronation garments and patriarchs’ robes. Another jaw-dropping display of wealth and luxury…
From there, a walk through the Kremlin grounds
to the glorious plaza of the seven churches with their golden domes and spires.
We stopped in to visit the magnificent Church of the Assumption,
the traditional site of the coronation of the tsars, and admired what our guide informed us was “the biggest bell in the world”, cracked in a fire and useless now, but awe-inspiring simply for its size; and next “the biggest canon ever made”, across the courtyard from the senate and the office buildings of the administration and the city residence of the president, now the newly inducted Medvedev.
Leaving the Kremlin, we walked on through the Alexander Gardens and past the World War II memorial, recalling with anger and sadness the twenty-six million Russians, many of them innocent civilians, who died at the hands of the Nazis in that unhappy period of the country’s history. Further on, we reached Red Square,
where Lenin still rests, it seems, in his mausoleum, though rarely now on view to the public. Ellie and I recalled the lines that stood, even in winter, on our last visit to Moscow, waiting to get in an pay respects to the first leader of the Soviet state. No lines, these days. And no honor guard. And Lenin himself, we heard, is rather the worse for wear: most of his body has decomposed, leaving only the hands and face, which need special preservation efforts in a basement laboratory below the tomb. Sic transit gloria mundi, no?
A brief architectural visit to the famous art nouveau GUM Department store with its great interior spaces lit by long skylights above,
with Ellie and I recalling, once again, those bad old days, when GUM was inaccessible except for the privileged few apparatchiks, and where there was virtually nothing to be purchased in the stores even for those few who had the money to indulge. Lunch at the Goudonov Restaurant off Red Square reminded us of the dreadful, virtually inedible food in Moscow, 1989, in the few new “private” restaurants that had only recently opened. Our lunch, preceded by a foretaste of four different chilled vodkas, was a veritable feast by comparison.
On our way back to the hotel, we made a brief descent into the famous Moscow Metro station,
with its deco spaces, its steep elevators, and its rows of social realist bronze sculptures. Then back on the bus for a mid-afternoon return to the hotel. Some were foolhardy enough to venture out again almost immediately for a visit to the Moscow Art Fair. I chose, instead, to spend a couple of quiet hours in the hotel room, and to catch up with this travelog.
Our train pulled into Moscow station, as scheduled, at 7:20 AM.
The night was not nearly so bad as we had feared—the berths reasonably comfortable, despite dire warnings to the contrary. Even the bathrooms were serviceable, if not particularly enticing. I slept a few hours, and woke feeling ready for the day.The downtown Aurora Marriott Hotel was not ready for us to check in so early in the morning, but did afford us the opportunity to drop off our bags and enjoy a pleasant breakfast before leaving for the day. Our bus dropped us off in the shadow of the Kremlin walls,
and we walked into the fortress for our first visit, in the Armory,(a nice group of kids...)
where the state treasures of the tsarist times are kept—amazing objects dating from as early as the thirteenth century, including both temporal and sacred ritual artifacts, chalices, icons and bibles encrusted with gold and jewels; eleven fabulous Faberge eggs and other state and royal gifts; textiles and clothes, wedding and coronation garments and patriarchs’ robes. Another jaw-dropping display of wealth and luxury…
From there, a walk through the Kremlin grounds
to the glorious plaza of the seven churches with their golden domes and spires.
We stopped in to visit the magnificent Church of the Assumption,
the traditional site of the coronation of the tsars, and admired what our guide informed us was “the biggest bell in the world”, cracked in a fire and useless now, but awe-inspiring simply for its size; and next “the biggest canon ever made”, across the courtyard from the senate and the office buildings of the administration and the city residence of the president, now the newly inducted Medvedev.Leaving the Kremlin, we walked on through the Alexander Gardens and past the World War II memorial, recalling with anger and sadness the twenty-six million Russians, many of them innocent civilians, who died at the hands of the Nazis in that unhappy period of the country’s history. Further on, we reached Red Square,
where Lenin still rests, it seems, in his mausoleum, though rarely now on view to the public. Ellie and I recalled the lines that stood, even in winter, on our last visit to Moscow, waiting to get in an pay respects to the first leader of the Soviet state. No lines, these days. And no honor guard. And Lenin himself, we heard, is rather the worse for wear: most of his body has decomposed, leaving only the hands and face, which need special preservation efforts in a basement laboratory below the tomb. Sic transit gloria mundi, no?A brief architectural visit to the famous art nouveau GUM Department store with its great interior spaces lit by long skylights above,
with Ellie and I recalling, once again, those bad old days, when GUM was inaccessible except for the privileged few apparatchiks, and where there was virtually nothing to be purchased in the stores even for those few who had the money to indulge. Lunch at the Goudonov Restaurant off Red Square reminded us of the dreadful, virtually inedible food in Moscow, 1989, in the few new “private” restaurants that had only recently opened. Our lunch, preceded by a foretaste of four different chilled vodkas, was a veritable feast by comparison.On our way back to the hotel, we made a brief descent into the famous Moscow Metro station,
with its deco spaces, its steep elevators, and its rows of social realist bronze sculptures. Then back on the bus for a mid-afternoon return to the hotel. Some were foolhardy enough to venture out again almost immediately for a visit to the Moscow Art Fair. I chose, instead, to spend a couple of quiet hours in the hotel room, and to catch up with this travelog.
St. Petersburg: Last Day
Late night departure for Moscow on the schedule, so we finished our packing early and enjoyed a last Astoria breakfast before our bus was loaded up with bags and we set out for the embankment, where we embarked on the hydrofoil that was to take us out across the Gulf of Finland to the Peterhof, the summer palace beloved by Peter the Great. A half hour’s smooth and speedy run over choppy seas.
Arriving at our destination, we disembarked and took a long walk up the tree-lined alley toward the distant palace.
Very lovely light, enhanced by the incredible variety of green hues of the trees and lawns.
Peter, it seemed, was an avid gardener, and the vast gardens are laid out with graceful symmetry in all directions. Rather than repeat the visit to another magnificent palace, our guides had chosen wisely to lead us instead through the bathhouse,
whose rooms were still elegant but far more intimate in scale. The baths and showers were ingeniously designed, as were such conveniences as a ceramic device for ladies to take a private pee under their skirts in public places…
An untoward event in the great, intricate bath and shower complex designed, if I remember right, for the tsar himself. The attendant in the room turned on the switch to demonstrate the action of the generously proportioned central tub, with generous streams of water from above and from the sides. Whilst other members of our party moved to the right around the tub, I chose the other direction, to the left, to a place where I was apparently concealed from the woman operating the system. Before I knew what was happening, the floor and walls opened up in further, furious jets of water, drenching me from head to toe.
Great entertainment for the rest, but a somewhat less than pleasant shock for the recipient of this unexpected shower. I did recover in short order, though, and the embarrassed attendant was profuse in her apologies. Fortunately, I had chosen a t-shirt and very light cotton pants for the day, and I fairly soon dried out in the open air. Jeans would have been a disaster. I was promptly renamed Peter the Wet.
A leisurely walk through the gardens to the giant “dragon” waterfall,
whose painted dragon, at the top, spewed forth the water that spilled down the checkerboard sections of the slope; and past spectacular fountains—designed, our Ada told us, to rival those of Versailles and operated by simple gravitational pressure as the water flowed down from the hills some forty kilometers distant.
The by now familiar gilded statues everywhere, glinting magnificently in the sun and reminding us how fortunate we have been with our St. Petersburg weather.
Our driver had brought the bus out from the city to meet us, and we drove back in through impossibly crowded streets and interminable traffic jams. Lunch awaiting us at a restaurant named Sadko—a fine, overly generous meal that started with a ratatouille layered “cake” with beetroot slices and topped off with melted goat’s cheese; in Ellie’s expert opinion, one of the best dishes we have had; then chicken kiev with a creamy mustard sauce and napoleon pastries for dessert. All served with more than the usual smiles from pleasant wait-folk.
Another frequently obstructed drive on to the Russian Museum,
where the curator, Alexey Kurbanosky was on hand with the generous gift of his time to give us the guided tour to the collections—much of the modern part of which, he told us, was out on loan to an exhibition in Moscow. He gave us, instead, a useful and interesting introduction to Russian art history, starting with the icons of the Middle Ages and leading up through the early contact with Western Europe in the times of Peter the Great,
(here he is...)
through Neo-Classicism and Romanticism to the late blooming of Impressionism and modern concepts. No contemporary art at all, but the curator’s obviously passionate explication of the paintings was an object lesson not only in art history, but in how to look at art and understand the psychological and symbolic function of its detail.
It was a short walk from the Russian Museum to the Church of the Resurrection of Christ, also known as the Church of the Spilled Blood because it was built precisely on the site of the assassination of Tsar Alexander II by a group of revolutionaries who called themselves “The Will of the People.” We stopped to gape briefly at the spot, and admired the interior of the church, which is decorated almost entirely with large-scale, intricate and brightly colored mosaics—and of course much gilt.
The expense and devotion which the royal families and their pre-revolutionary subjects lavished on their religious sites defies belief.
The bus took us to our final art stop for the day, the opening for the artist Peter Belyi at Marina Gisich Gallery. Not knowing what to expect, I was much impressed by the work, an installation entitled “La Bibilioteca di Pinocchio”—Pinocchio’s Library. It comprised a row of “library” shelves patched together out of roughly assembled construction lumber, recycled from demolition sites, each with a line of “books”—sawed off chunks of the same lumber of varied book height, whose split edges and layers did, remarkably, resemble books. It was as though the paper used to create those things we read and which contain the sum of much of human knowledge had reverted to its original state. I saw the piece as being about silence and denial, knowledge frozen into the lies that officialdom can feed us, the willful state of ignorance in which we all too often bask. As rich as it was conceptually, the installation had a powerful emotional punch, even in the context of a crowded gallery opening.
On, then, to dinner at a restaurant neighboring the Mariinsky Theater, its walls inscribed with messages from grateful ballerinas, opera singers, designers and musicians. There was even one, dated 2003 and signed by a certain Laura Bush. From there, we boarded our St. Petersburg bus for one last time and said our genuinely fond farewells to our guide, Ada, on the way to the station to catch a late train to Moscow. We piled our luggage into small berths and pulled out of the station at 11:30Pm, in time to settle down for as much sleep as we could manage.
Arriving at our destination, we disembarked and took a long walk up the tree-lined alley toward the distant palace.
Very lovely light, enhanced by the incredible variety of green hues of the trees and lawns.
Peter, it seemed, was an avid gardener, and the vast gardens are laid out with graceful symmetry in all directions. Rather than repeat the visit to another magnificent palace, our guides had chosen wisely to lead us instead through the bathhouse,
whose rooms were still elegant but far more intimate in scale. The baths and showers were ingeniously designed, as were such conveniences as a ceramic device for ladies to take a private pee under their skirts in public places…An untoward event in the great, intricate bath and shower complex designed, if I remember right, for the tsar himself. The attendant in the room turned on the switch to demonstrate the action of the generously proportioned central tub, with generous streams of water from above and from the sides. Whilst other members of our party moved to the right around the tub, I chose the other direction, to the left, to a place where I was apparently concealed from the woman operating the system. Before I knew what was happening, the floor and walls opened up in further, furious jets of water, drenching me from head to toe.
Great entertainment for the rest, but a somewhat less than pleasant shock for the recipient of this unexpected shower. I did recover in short order, though, and the embarrassed attendant was profuse in her apologies. Fortunately, I had chosen a t-shirt and very light cotton pants for the day, and I fairly soon dried out in the open air. Jeans would have been a disaster. I was promptly renamed Peter the Wet.A leisurely walk through the gardens to the giant “dragon” waterfall,
whose painted dragon, at the top, spewed forth the water that spilled down the checkerboard sections of the slope; and past spectacular fountains—designed, our Ada told us, to rival those of Versailles and operated by simple gravitational pressure as the water flowed down from the hills some forty kilometers distant.
The by now familiar gilded statues everywhere, glinting magnificently in the sun and reminding us how fortunate we have been with our St. Petersburg weather.Our driver had brought the bus out from the city to meet us, and we drove back in through impossibly crowded streets and interminable traffic jams. Lunch awaiting us at a restaurant named Sadko—a fine, overly generous meal that started with a ratatouille layered “cake” with beetroot slices and topped off with melted goat’s cheese; in Ellie’s expert opinion, one of the best dishes we have had; then chicken kiev with a creamy mustard sauce and napoleon pastries for dessert. All served with more than the usual smiles from pleasant wait-folk.
Another frequently obstructed drive on to the Russian Museum,
where the curator, Alexey Kurbanosky was on hand with the generous gift of his time to give us the guided tour to the collections—much of the modern part of which, he told us, was out on loan to an exhibition in Moscow. He gave us, instead, a useful and interesting introduction to Russian art history, starting with the icons of the Middle Ages and leading up through the early contact with Western Europe in the times of Peter the Great,
(here he is...)
through Neo-Classicism and Romanticism to the late blooming of Impressionism and modern concepts. No contemporary art at all, but the curator’s obviously passionate explication of the paintings was an object lesson not only in art history, but in how to look at art and understand the psychological and symbolic function of its detail.
It was a short walk from the Russian Museum to the Church of the Resurrection of Christ, also known as the Church of the Spilled Blood because it was built precisely on the site of the assassination of Tsar Alexander II by a group of revolutionaries who called themselves “The Will of the People.” We stopped to gape briefly at the spot, and admired the interior of the church, which is decorated almost entirely with large-scale, intricate and brightly colored mosaics—and of course much gilt.
The expense and devotion which the royal families and their pre-revolutionary subjects lavished on their religious sites defies belief.The bus took us to our final art stop for the day, the opening for the artist Peter Belyi at Marina Gisich Gallery. Not knowing what to expect, I was much impressed by the work, an installation entitled “La Bibilioteca di Pinocchio”—Pinocchio’s Library. It comprised a row of “library” shelves patched together out of roughly assembled construction lumber, recycled from demolition sites, each with a line of “books”—sawed off chunks of the same lumber of varied book height, whose split edges and layers did, remarkably, resemble books. It was as though the paper used to create those things we read and which contain the sum of much of human knowledge had reverted to its original state. I saw the piece as being about silence and denial, knowledge frozen into the lies that officialdom can feed us, the willful state of ignorance in which we all too often bask. As rich as it was conceptually, the installation had a powerful emotional punch, even in the context of a crowded gallery opening.
On, then, to dinner at a restaurant neighboring the Mariinsky Theater, its walls inscribed with messages from grateful ballerinas, opera singers, designers and musicians. There was even one, dated 2003 and signed by a certain Laura Bush. From there, we boarded our St. Petersburg bus for one last time and said our genuinely fond farewells to our guide, Ada, on the way to the station to catch a late train to Moscow. We piled our luggage into small berths and pulled out of the station at 11:30Pm, in time to settle down for as much sleep as we could manage.
Thursday
Oy, veh! Did I mention—surely I mentioned—that I went to bed last night totally exhausted and not a little inebriated from generously poured wine at dinner and shots of vodka (I didn’t count) aboard our cruise ship; and therefore all the more secure in the knowledge that I would finally be rewarded with a good night’s sleep.
Nope. Have I mentioned—surely I’ve mentioned—that I sleep with the aid of a CPAP breathing machine to help me with my apnea and protect Ellie from my dreadful snoring? Last night it broke. We got to bed at midnight and I was woken at two with a blast of air in my face and an unusually loud sound coming from the machine. A piece had snapped off the plastic nose mask and fallen to the floor. In the darkness, I couldn’t find it, and settled for trying to use my hand to perform its function—to prevent the air from escaping from the hose. You can imagine that was not very successful. Every time I began to go to sleep, my hand fell from its task and the blast resumed.
At five AM I finally staggered out of bed and felt around the neighboring area of floor until I found the missing piece. Between five and five thirty, bleary eyed and clumsy with fatigue and irritation, I tried to work out how it fit back on. At five-thirty, success! I had two hours of sleep.
Breakfast at seven thirty. Bus at a quarter to nine. This morning we drove out through often heavy traffic to the village—well, these days, that town—of Pushkin, renamed as such, we heard, during the Soviet era in honor of the great Romantic poet. Ada treated us to a potted history of the tsars—tales of drunkenness and incompetence, internal family plots and cruel assassinations—not to mention some strange sexual appetites. A pretty dissolute and greedy bunch, those Romanovs. We were left with some considerable sympathy for the serfs and the revolutionaries who eventually rose up to dispose of them.
And what extravagant opulence! Opulence, that’s the word I’ve been looking for.
The Catherine Palace, which we had driven out here to visit—along with several thousand other tourists from all parts of the world—is a summer residence in unimaginably grand in scale, in construction, in interior design and in detail. In the Great Ballroom alone, Ada told us, eight kilos of solid gold were needed to gilt the decorative columns.
It took us a while to get that far. Many of our company needed a pit stop before the tour, and the lines at the restrooms were so long that the women’s line merged into the men’s, and even so, many returned with their mission unaccomplished. There must, then, have been twenty tour groups ahead of us in line to reach the entry and the foot of the staircase to the half-mile long upper floor where the tours were staggered by the staff to move fairly smoothly, in turn, from room to room.
Opulence was the word. The great ballroom, the grand dining rooms, the rooms where the family entertained guests, the others where they entertained, presumably, themselves… and the most extravagantly rich of all, the famous Amber Room, whose walls and decorative mirror surrounds and candelabras are constructed of an intricate mosaic of tens of thousands of amber fragments of different color and hue, a glorious, glittering, way over-the-top display of wealth and questionable taste. The walls of adjacent huge gallery were assemblages of masterpiece paintings, trimmed and sized to fit the requirements of the wall’s design and separated only by thin gilt beading. Those Romanovs!
After a tour of the palace, we strolled back to our bus, already two hours late for our lunch reservations at Podvorie in Pavlovsk, a vast log cabin affair with numerous tour buses and private cars parked in its lot. Entering the restaurant, we were greeted by a (stuffed!) brown bear offering a silver tray with glasses and a bottle of cold vodka.
We imbibed. Happily. This place is known for providing its guests with unlimited supplies of vodka—literally, as much as you can drink. No extra charge. We had been instructed by Ada on the etiquette involved: Only as much in the glass as you can drink down at a gulp, so that the vodka never gets cold. Cold vodka, she assured us, is the inevitable source of a painful hangover. We poured small. We drank. We poured again.
Long tables, laden with food, several starters, including a bowl of delicious assorted pickles, pork slices, creamed beef, bread and butter… followed by a delicious borscht soup with dollops of sour cream, and followed in turn by stuffed cabbage leaves and grape leaves. I have forgotten something along the way. I have forgotten a lot of things, probably. You could begin to understand what was meant by the “groaning board.” And wine of both colors. And, er, vodka, more vodka. Merriment would be the understatement. Toward the end of the meal, we got into a singing, table banging rivalry with a French tour group across the room, who had been singing and dancing to the sounds of the Russian band who arrived to regale us with their music. They beat us by far. At our table, none of us could agree on songs we all knew. The Beach Boys? Woody Guthrie? Edith Piaf?
Anyway, the scene ended up with all the merry chaos of a country fair. Breughel, anyone?
After lunch, we piled back on board for the ride back into town, and were delayed once again by traffic jams on all the major highways and city streets. We thought the traffic was bad back at home. It’s a nightmare in St. Petersburg, with a system that is totally inadequate for the new surge in car ownership, and traffic flows are poorly organized and supervised. We arrived at our next destination, a gallery and studio complex, about three hours later than planned, and I was ready to take a little down time. I see enough contemporary art in Los Angeles, and there’s an internationalism at work now that makes for a kind of sameness no matter what continent you happen to be on. With another weary traveler, then, I chose to find transportation back to the Astoria—Ada hailed us a private car, just like the old days in Moscow, when anyone might stop for you—and our driver found a quick back street route back to the hotel.
A blessed hour’s sleep, and then another blessed—albeit expensive—hour online to get some posting done. In fact, I managed to bring everything up to date, with the exception of one single day’s photographs, which will have to wait until later. Who knows what Moscow might or might not bring by way of connectability.
Ellie returned early from the afternoon tour, too, and we spent an hour packing and watching the news—notably, the death of Sydney Pollack and Scott McClellan’s book with its scathing report on the Bush White House. Finally, someone on the inside ready to share a little of the scandalous truth. After packing for tomorrow, we hit the streets for a pleasant walk in the late sun through what seemed like a predominantly student area close to the hotel. Most of them smoking! We failed to find an inviting café or restaurant and took the easy course, returning to our hotel restaurant for two small salads, a tiny bottle of Perrier and a third of a glass of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, all for the modest price of $120. Service not included.
Nope. Have I mentioned—surely I’ve mentioned—that I sleep with the aid of a CPAP breathing machine to help me with my apnea and protect Ellie from my dreadful snoring? Last night it broke. We got to bed at midnight and I was woken at two with a blast of air in my face and an unusually loud sound coming from the machine. A piece had snapped off the plastic nose mask and fallen to the floor. In the darkness, I couldn’t find it, and settled for trying to use my hand to perform its function—to prevent the air from escaping from the hose. You can imagine that was not very successful. Every time I began to go to sleep, my hand fell from its task and the blast resumed.
At five AM I finally staggered out of bed and felt around the neighboring area of floor until I found the missing piece. Between five and five thirty, bleary eyed and clumsy with fatigue and irritation, I tried to work out how it fit back on. At five-thirty, success! I had two hours of sleep.
Breakfast at seven thirty. Bus at a quarter to nine. This morning we drove out through often heavy traffic to the village—well, these days, that town—of Pushkin, renamed as such, we heard, during the Soviet era in honor of the great Romantic poet. Ada treated us to a potted history of the tsars—tales of drunkenness and incompetence, internal family plots and cruel assassinations—not to mention some strange sexual appetites. A pretty dissolute and greedy bunch, those Romanovs. We were left with some considerable sympathy for the serfs and the revolutionaries who eventually rose up to dispose of them.
And what extravagant opulence! Opulence, that’s the word I’ve been looking for.
The Catherine Palace, which we had driven out here to visit—along with several thousand other tourists from all parts of the world—is a summer residence in unimaginably grand in scale, in construction, in interior design and in detail. In the Great Ballroom alone, Ada told us, eight kilos of solid gold were needed to gilt the decorative columns.
It took us a while to get that far. Many of our company needed a pit stop before the tour, and the lines at the restrooms were so long that the women’s line merged into the men’s, and even so, many returned with their mission unaccomplished. There must, then, have been twenty tour groups ahead of us in line to reach the entry and the foot of the staircase to the half-mile long upper floor where the tours were staggered by the staff to move fairly smoothly, in turn, from room to room.
Opulence was the word. The great ballroom, the grand dining rooms, the rooms where the family entertained guests, the others where they entertained, presumably, themselves… and the most extravagantly rich of all, the famous Amber Room, whose walls and decorative mirror surrounds and candelabras are constructed of an intricate mosaic of tens of thousands of amber fragments of different color and hue, a glorious, glittering, way over-the-top display of wealth and questionable taste. The walls of adjacent huge gallery were assemblages of masterpiece paintings, trimmed and sized to fit the requirements of the wall’s design and separated only by thin gilt beading. Those Romanovs!
After a tour of the palace, we strolled back to our bus, already two hours late for our lunch reservations at Podvorie in Pavlovsk, a vast log cabin affair with numerous tour buses and private cars parked in its lot. Entering the restaurant, we were greeted by a (stuffed!) brown bear offering a silver tray with glasses and a bottle of cold vodka.
We imbibed. Happily. This place is known for providing its guests with unlimited supplies of vodka—literally, as much as you can drink. No extra charge. We had been instructed by Ada on the etiquette involved: Only as much in the glass as you can drink down at a gulp, so that the vodka never gets cold. Cold vodka, she assured us, is the inevitable source of a painful hangover. We poured small. We drank. We poured again.Long tables, laden with food, several starters, including a bowl of delicious assorted pickles, pork slices, creamed beef, bread and butter… followed by a delicious borscht soup with dollops of sour cream, and followed in turn by stuffed cabbage leaves and grape leaves. I have forgotten something along the way. I have forgotten a lot of things, probably. You could begin to understand what was meant by the “groaning board.” And wine of both colors. And, er, vodka, more vodka. Merriment would be the understatement. Toward the end of the meal, we got into a singing, table banging rivalry with a French tour group across the room, who had been singing and dancing to the sounds of the Russian band who arrived to regale us with their music. They beat us by far. At our table, none of us could agree on songs we all knew. The Beach Boys? Woody Guthrie? Edith Piaf?
Anyway, the scene ended up with all the merry chaos of a country fair. Breughel, anyone?
After lunch, we piled back on board for the ride back into town, and were delayed once again by traffic jams on all the major highways and city streets. We thought the traffic was bad back at home. It’s a nightmare in St. Petersburg, with a system that is totally inadequate for the new surge in car ownership, and traffic flows are poorly organized and supervised. We arrived at our next destination, a gallery and studio complex, about three hours later than planned, and I was ready to take a little down time. I see enough contemporary art in Los Angeles, and there’s an internationalism at work now that makes for a kind of sameness no matter what continent you happen to be on. With another weary traveler, then, I chose to find transportation back to the Astoria—Ada hailed us a private car, just like the old days in Moscow, when anyone might stop for you—and our driver found a quick back street route back to the hotel.
A blessed hour’s sleep, and then another blessed—albeit expensive—hour online to get some posting done. In fact, I managed to bring everything up to date, with the exception of one single day’s photographs, which will have to wait until later. Who knows what Moscow might or might not bring by way of connectability.
Ellie returned early from the afternoon tour, too, and we spent an hour packing and watching the news—notably, the death of Sydney Pollack and Scott McClellan’s book with its scathing report on the Bush White House. Finally, someone on the inside ready to share a little of the scandalous truth. After packing for tomorrow, we hit the streets for a pleasant walk in the late sun through what seemed like a predominantly student area close to the hotel. Most of them smoking! We failed to find an inviting café or restaurant and took the easy course, returning to our hotel restaurant for two small salads, a tiny bottle of Perrier and a third of a glass of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, all for the modest price of $120. Service not included.
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 5/30/2008
Praise and blame, gain and loss, pleasure and sorrow come and go like the wind. To be happy, rest like a giant tree, in the midst of them all.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Burmese Monks Defy Ban on Private Relief Efforts.
Myanmar's military government, which has a relief hub just 10 miles north in the town of Bogalay, has not delivered aid to scores of remote villages like this across some of the most devastated areas of the Irrawaddy River delta. For now, the villagers' only hope is goods that arrive from time to time in an underground supply chain operated by Buddhist monks in Bogalay, who are defying the ban on private relief operations in the delta.James: The Burmese Sangha has shown such courage and compassion toward the people from the protests last year to helping victims of the recent cyclone. They clearly understand the importance of compassion to the point of risking their own lives and safety to help as many people as they can. All despite many monasteries being destroyed and severely damaged.
Their efforts are even more noble when you consider that the monks themselves don't have a lot and usually rely upon the laity for their food. Yet here they are giving and helping in any and all ways they can. However, I'm not surprised being how centered in oneness that these monks know and practice. They intimately know the interconnected between all beings and that helping others is not different and no less important than helping oneself.
It is not an exaggeration to say that monks are trained to help the people. Their vows are quite centered upon working for the betterment and liberation of the people from suffering and their response to the aftermath of this disaster is a powerful expression of those values.
They are a cherished example for me in how to deal with severe suffering in my own life and in the lives of other people. The monks have suffered as much as the people and yet they are being pro-active and not wallowing in their sorrow. They are a wonderful example that helping others can help ease our own suffering. Too often when I am in deep pain and suffering I retreat from others into a place where I feel self-pity as if I am the only person suffering in the world. The monks are a beautiful reminder of why I do my best to follow the Dharma.
In the confusion of the aftermath of cyclone nargis many believe that it was the result of the "bad karma" of the victims. That, however, is somewhat short-sighted says one Burmese monk, "If the government would have warned people, they would not have died. So this disaster is not karma; it is a natural case of cause and effect by humans."
~Peace to all beings~
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 5/29/2008
Seeing into darkness is clarityKnowing how to yield is strength.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
St. Petersburg 2
(VERY hard to get online... more images to follow, as time allows, PaL)
A lavish breakfast spread at the Astoria Hotel, hot and cold. I chose the cold, conscious of the extra weight I have begun to carry around with me on this trip. Shortly after breakfast, our bus was waiting outside to navigate us through heavy morning traffic to the Hermitage, where we arrived an hour before the public opening—along with quite a number of tour groups that shared the privilege with us.
What a spectacle, though. I just used the word lavish for breakfast. It’s not adequate for the interiors of this one-time home of the tsars and their families. My pictures, if and when I manage to get them posted, will give a small idea of the outrageous magnificence of the place, the vast halls, the marble and gilt columns, the extravagant furnishings and—can one call them knick-knacks?
(Here are some...
The collection of paintings is superb, certainly of a quality to rival the Louvre, the Vatican, the British Museum… Good tourists, we dashed past walls filled with masterpieces—in the Spanish area alone, a huge stash of Velasquez, Goya, Murillo, El Greco. We paused for long enough to gape at a couple of madonnas painted by Leonardo, and were allowed a luxurious ten minutes in a long hall filled with Rembrandts. My personal favorite, a “Descent from the Cross,” with breathtaking chiaroscuro lighting.
Then on at breakneck pace—not our guide’s fault, she has done a wonderful job for us, expertly filling in the many gaps in our collective knowledge—to the top floor, an exhibition of “Hidden Treasures Revealed,” a trove of mostly impressionist and post-impressionist works brought back by the Red Army from Berlin after World War II. Originally looted from other countries and, I suspect largely, from the collections of the Jews the Nazis murdered, most of them have apparently remained unclaimed, and are shown as a group now for the first time.
From there to the Hermitage’s huge—and hugely impressive—collection of Impressionist and Modern works, walls richly hung with splendid paintings by Monet, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Gaugin… and, again a personal favorite, Kees van Dongen. And even after those spectacular galleries, my jaw dropped as I entered the first of two whole galleries devoted to Matisse, the massive, familiar image of “The Dance,” “The Red Room,” and others seen previously only in the history books.
The same with Picasso… Breathtaking… Really beyond description. We spent perhaps three hours in the museum, and could have spent another three days and still not covered everything.
Still, onward… our bus made a brief photo op stop at an island (name, anyone?) in the middle of the Neva, and thence to the Flying Dutchman restaurant in the replica of an old sailing ship. A good lunch, with crab salad, fish in a “potato shirt,” and petits fours, and a marvelous view out over the river and the fountains which, unusually and happily for us, were working on this weekday because it happens to be “City Day” in St. Petersburg.
The afternoon was devoted to a preliminary exploration of the contemporary art scene hereabouts, and the bus took us to a somewhat less posh part of town where we stopped first at the Anna Nova Gallery. Wouldn’t you know, they were installing—a group show of young painters which we saw mostly propped against the walls. Several good painters, we thought—I regret I did not, for the most part—note down their names, nor do I remember any but for one Yury Alexandrov, whose work I liked a great deal, along with others in our group. Large paintings, with charcoal—or black paint—line drawing featuring somewhat ritualistic, violent, at times erotic scenes.
Next stop was D-137, supposedly the first contemporary art gallery in St. Petersburg, a renovated cellar with low, arched brick ceilings, where we were greeted by the gallery director, Kristina, and introduced to the work being installed (again!) on the walls. Another painter, Marina Fedorova, whose figurative pictures were concerned mostly with themes of loneliness and isolation.
In a second, smaller space, a few other gallery artists were on display, but nothing, to my mind, particularly noteworthy.
Our last stop for the afternoon, though, was certainly worthwhile. Ola Tobreluts is an artist of established reputation, as witness the number of books and catalogues for group exhibitions in which she has been included—including Edward Lucie-Smith’s “Artists of the Twenty-First Century.” She works in an amazing variety of media, from painting and sculpture to digital art, photography, and performance. Clearly much concerned—and well-informed—about art history, her painting styles range from classical-realist
to frankly expressionistic, and she seems to move comfortably between them. She has not yet shown in the United States and is holding out for the prospect of a museum exhibition. Particularly, she wants to avoid being branded as a “Russian” artist. Why not, she asks rhetorically, international. Why not indeed. We enjoyed her friendly hospitality in her studio, and left much impressed by her achievements as well as by her potential for a remarkable future.
Back at the hotel, there was barely time for a shower and change before reporting for dinner at the Adamant Restaurant, across from our hotel on the bank of the smaller Moika River. A private room awaited us, along with a band of somewhat surly waiters and a (to my mind) rather so-so traditional Russian meal. As we were eating, a trio of musicians burst in upon us—accordion, balalaika, mandolin—and soon a buxom singer who flirted with each of the men in turn and ended up handing out noise-makers which we soon learned were for sale, along with CDs by the band. Their intrusion was unasked for, and the response in terms of sales clearly less than they expected. They left in something of a sulk.
An after dinner cruise was scheduled to start shortly after dinner, and we walked to our embarkation point to discover that our boat was moored on the opposite side of the river. Summoned unceremoniously by bullhorn, we flocked back to the nearest bridge and back to the tour boat, heading out for the Neva and the fountains we had seen earlier in the day. A lovely moment, with the sun setting over the western bank, reflecting on the clouds above and the golden domes and details of the buildings below.
Our boat people warmed to us after some initial general annoyance, and broke out the vodka to warm us against the evening chill. Much merriment on board as we completed our hour’s tour, and walked back from the river bank to the Astoria.
A lavish breakfast spread at the Astoria Hotel, hot and cold. I chose the cold, conscious of the extra weight I have begun to carry around with me on this trip. Shortly after breakfast, our bus was waiting outside to navigate us through heavy morning traffic to the Hermitage, where we arrived an hour before the public opening—along with quite a number of tour groups that shared the privilege with us.
What a spectacle, though. I just used the word lavish for breakfast. It’s not adequate for the interiors of this one-time home of the tsars and their families. My pictures, if and when I manage to get them posted, will give a small idea of the outrageous magnificence of the place, the vast halls, the marble and gilt columns, the extravagant furnishings and—can one call them knick-knacks?
(Here are some...
The collection of paintings is superb, certainly of a quality to rival the Louvre, the Vatican, the British Museum… Good tourists, we dashed past walls filled with masterpieces—in the Spanish area alone, a huge stash of Velasquez, Goya, Murillo, El Greco. We paused for long enough to gape at a couple of madonnas painted by Leonardo, and were allowed a luxurious ten minutes in a long hall filled with Rembrandts. My personal favorite, a “Descent from the Cross,” with breathtaking chiaroscuro lighting.
Then on at breakneck pace—not our guide’s fault, she has done a wonderful job for us, expertly filling in the many gaps in our collective knowledge—to the top floor, an exhibition of “Hidden Treasures Revealed,” a trove of mostly impressionist and post-impressionist works brought back by the Red Army from Berlin after World War II. Originally looted from other countries and, I suspect largely, from the collections of the Jews the Nazis murdered, most of them have apparently remained unclaimed, and are shown as a group now for the first time.
From there to the Hermitage’s huge—and hugely impressive—collection of Impressionist and Modern works, walls richly hung with splendid paintings by Monet, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Gaugin… and, again a personal favorite, Kees van Dongen. And even after those spectacular galleries, my jaw dropped as I entered the first of two whole galleries devoted to Matisse, the massive, familiar image of “The Dance,” “The Red Room,” and others seen previously only in the history books.
The same with Picasso… Breathtaking… Really beyond description. We spent perhaps three hours in the museum, and could have spent another three days and still not covered everything.
Still, onward… our bus made a brief photo op stop at an island (name, anyone?) in the middle of the Neva, and thence to the Flying Dutchman restaurant in the replica of an old sailing ship. A good lunch, with crab salad, fish in a “potato shirt,” and petits fours, and a marvelous view out over the river and the fountains which, unusually and happily for us, were working on this weekday because it happens to be “City Day” in St. Petersburg.
The afternoon was devoted to a preliminary exploration of the contemporary art scene hereabouts, and the bus took us to a somewhat less posh part of town where we stopped first at the Anna Nova Gallery. Wouldn’t you know, they were installing—a group show of young painters which we saw mostly propped against the walls. Several good painters, we thought—I regret I did not, for the most part—note down their names, nor do I remember any but for one Yury Alexandrov, whose work I liked a great deal, along with others in our group. Large paintings, with charcoal—or black paint—line drawing featuring somewhat ritualistic, violent, at times erotic scenes.
Next stop was D-137, supposedly the first contemporary art gallery in St. Petersburg, a renovated cellar with low, arched brick ceilings, where we were greeted by the gallery director, Kristina, and introduced to the work being installed (again!) on the walls. Another painter, Marina Fedorova, whose figurative pictures were concerned mostly with themes of loneliness and isolation.
In a second, smaller space, a few other gallery artists were on display, but nothing, to my mind, particularly noteworthy.
Our last stop for the afternoon, though, was certainly worthwhile. Ola Tobreluts is an artist of established reputation, as witness the number of books and catalogues for group exhibitions in which she has been included—including Edward Lucie-Smith’s “Artists of the Twenty-First Century.” She works in an amazing variety of media, from painting and sculpture to digital art, photography, and performance. Clearly much concerned—and well-informed—about art history, her painting styles range from classical-realist
to frankly expressionistic, and she seems to move comfortably between them. She has not yet shown in the United States and is holding out for the prospect of a museum exhibition. Particularly, she wants to avoid being branded as a “Russian” artist. Why not, she asks rhetorically, international. Why not indeed. We enjoyed her friendly hospitality in her studio, and left much impressed by her achievements as well as by her potential for a remarkable future.
Back at the hotel, there was barely time for a shower and change before reporting for dinner at the Adamant Restaurant, across from our hotel on the bank of the smaller Moika River. A private room awaited us, along with a band of somewhat surly waiters and a (to my mind) rather so-so traditional Russian meal. As we were eating, a trio of musicians burst in upon us—accordion, balalaika, mandolin—and soon a buxom singer who flirted with each of the men in turn and ended up handing out noise-makers which we soon learned were for sale, along with CDs by the band. Their intrusion was unasked for, and the response in terms of sales clearly less than they expected. They left in something of a sulk.
An after dinner cruise was scheduled to start shortly after dinner, and we walked to our embarkation point to discover that our boat was moored on the opposite side of the river. Summoned unceremoniously by bullhorn, we flocked back to the nearest bridge and back to the tour boat, heading out for the Neva and the fountains we had seen earlier in the day. A lovely moment, with the sun setting over the western bank, reflecting on the clouds above and the golden domes and details of the buildings below.
Our boat people warmed to us after some initial general annoyance, and broke out the vodka to warm us against the evening chill. Much merriment on board as we completed our hour’s tour, and walked back from the river bank to the Astoria.
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