Endings and Beginnings (To Know this Place for the First Time)

August 10, 2008
Littledoe Lake, Algonquin ParkT

Time present and time past

Are both present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable…
~ T. S. Eliot

I’ve imagined myself here many times before. Sitting on this rock, this small piece of the Canadian Shield; watching this water lap against this shore; raising my eyes to the far shore, a tree line of pine, spruce, birch, maple, cedar; the smells of all of the above wafting by on a gentle breeze; the sun intermittently shining between clouds of white cotton candy. No, it wasn’t this particular rock, for I’ve never seen this rock before. Yet it was this rock, this landscape, with this pen in this hand drawing meaning onto this blank page. I imagined myself here, I suppose, as this place has been the beginning, the end, and the midway point of so many journeys. A constant in a circle. While it has rained at times, this has always been a place of calm, of clarity, openness of mind, of peace—home. As I’ve imagined it, I should be sitting here in a moment of revelation, self-reflection, epiphany. This was to be a moment in which I would dispel of all my uncertainties for the upcoming year, make sense of the frustrations of the past year, finding meaning in chaos, and be ready to move forward, renewed, more assured of where I am going and why, more settled in where I have been. I have been imagining this moment, this image, this landscape and me in it, for this is something that I want, that I need, a moment where I can finally, once again, be still.

I write this way, describing an imagined scene, because when I first sat down here I was doubtful, unhopeful that this sought-for moment would be found. I was ready to describe the scene, and how however hard it was sought, it still remained slightly out of reach. I was going to write, admit, finally, my self-frustration, and in doing so perhaps beginning to move beyond the anxieties, the second-guessing, the feelings of worthlessness, pessimism, ambivalence, and in this round-about way bring myself to the same point that I had been imagining, yet had not yet found.

But as I write like this, describing a hypothetical response to an imagined scene, I write myself back to here. To this rock. To this water. To these horizons, gentle winds, and hesitantly sunny skies. To this place that never fails to remind me that the universe is alive. Living, breathing, singing. Full of joy and wonder, for those who seek her. У земля есть музыка для тех, который ее слышит. I remember, here, now, what it is to be in awe, most of all this time because I did not completely expect that I could still be moved in this way. Perhaps there is no revelation to be found, there is just to be. No epiphany, but to recognize the beauty of the present. No moment to be sought, but now. And I’m here, now. As I’ve been before, both beginning and ending, and where I will be again. Where, on one level or another, I will always be. Here. And Now.

Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
~ T. S. Eliot

Beautiful British Columbia

June 8-16, 2008

After adventures in Beijing Airport's terminal 3 and a trans-Pacific crossing, we arrived to Vancouver safely and were greeted by a dear high school friend. The last week was spent adjusting, relaxing, and soaking in the magnificent place that is British Columbia. After the countless cities, mountains, lakes and rivers we have encountered this year, I say with utmost humility that these Canadian landscapes remain among the most beautiful I have ever seen. And, although I am still thousands of kilometres from the lands of my birth, the smell of pine, cedar, spruce, maple, fresh air and running water is enough to know that I am home. BC has most definately lived up to its slogan: Beautiful British Columbia. Here are some images.

Oddities and Observations in My Home and Native Land

June 10, 2008

People around me are speaking English. Feist is playing in the coffee shop. People buy coffee (real coffee!) in travel mugs and drink it on their way to work. They smile as they walk. They say sorry when you bump into them. I am reading the Globe and Mail. Controversy of Hockey Night in Canada’s theme song is the biggest story of the day. Cars stop to let pedestrians pass—an old man pulling out of his driveway smiles and nods as he waits for me to go by.

Another man, restocking shelves, asks me without prompting if I need help, then tells me the exact placing on the shelf of a specific aisle where I can find peanut butter. I go there and find at least a dozen varieties, at normal prices. Other grocery store luxuries include: soy milk, humus, pita bread, thai sauce, donuts, fresh coffee beans, maple syrup, etc. (all in one place!). I take money out of an ATM with ease, and no conversion fees (though I find myself now converting the other way, multiplying by 23 into roubles or 7 into yuan, or 1150 into Mongolian turigs). Wilfrid Laurier, Queen Elizabeth and a pair of polar bears are back in my wallet. I pay for something that costs $20.69 with $40 and the cashier doesn’t blink, counting out my change with a smile on his face (the grocery store across the street even has an automatic change dispenser).

Black people, brown people, white people, Asian people, different people walk the streets. They all have passports like me, with blue covers and a bilingual message from the Queen. That is, if they carry passports—it is not a requirement here. I am no longer a minority, a representative by default of my native land. Though strangely I still feel like a foreigner. People seem so friendly that I find myself searching for ulterior motives, I am confused and skeptical of their politeness. I wonder if this is how new immigrants feel, overwhelmed by the cleanliness, orderliness, politeness of things. I seem to have developed an irrational case of paranoia (or at least here it seems irrational, where elsewhere it was necessary). I wonder if this is indeed where I am from, the land of my origin. It is new and strange and unpredictable. Though perhaps it is just my body, wandering the streets at 6am, thinking it is 11pm at night. Perhaps when I remember how to sleep at normal hours, I will remember how to live in this country again, to communicate in English, to not labour over counting out exact change. To trust strangers. To eat peanut butter and drink coffee and get riled up about hockey theme songs. To not be surprised when people who aren’t white speak flawless English (or French), because they’ve lived in this country longer than I have. To pay $2.50 for public transit without outrage and cross the street without fearing for my life. To be Canadian, to be at home.

Homeward Bound

June 8, 2008

I am some 33 000 feet above land. Somewhere, probably by now, over eastern Russia. There are few words, metaphors, comparisons that could be used to describe the strange feeling in my gut. It’s not quite excitement or anxiety, sadness or fear, ambivalence or uncertainty, though I think it maybe be a combination of all of the above. If I had to make a statement, however, it would be to say that I’m not sure that I’m ready to return home, wherever and whatever that may be, quite yet. I’m not yet ready to bring to a close the adventures of this past year, the highs and lows that it has entailed, the discoveries and lessons (sometimes hard) that have been found, the landscapes the have been explored, the freedom, relatively speaking, to wander as I please. I am comforted, however, in knowing that, although I can’t quite express this emotion, it is perhaps not so uncommon, as I myself, and I’m sure many a traveler, have known it before.

If you have been following this blog since it’s beginning, you may be familiar with the origins of its title. If not, briefly, it grew out of a series of correspondences with a friend about the idea of wanderlust, and the cyclical nature of the relationship between wonder and wander. One of these correspondences included the reading of one of my friend’s essays, written during her graduate student years. As timing would have it, I read this essay while nearing the end of a month leading canoe trip in Algonquin, just a few weeks before I left Canada. Among other things, in this essay she argues that wonder should be seen as both a cause and effect—the cause of curiosity, wandering, etc., yet also the effect of wandering, and muses: “Can two parts which define each other ever be separated.” The following is a letter to her, and some other wandering things, written after I head read her essay. Although these words were written from a very different place, they express an emotion I’m encountering again (especially the last part), and so I include them here.

* * * * *

Day XV, Hogan Lake

I set out tonight to have a conversation with your thoughts, or at least the thoughts of a former you, so, pen and journal in hand, I took to my canoe and paddled out toward the sun making its evening descent towards the horizon. I paddled out until I could no longer hear anything then began to read. Lost in this world of words and ideas, reading intensely and writing fervently, I sat up only to stretch an aching muscle in my back. With my head no longer in the page, I laughed to myself—at myself—for having lost myself in thoughts. And then I just sat in the silence and the stillness of the lake at sunset, awed by the simple beauty of these wild northern places. Silent save for the lonely cry of the loon. I sat for awhile, trying to think of a way to soak in the stillness of this place, to bottle it up, to be able to take it back with me, to sustain me amidst the concrete of the city—of civilization. And I return to your words, the idea of wonder, the mystery of how to make this wonder the fuel of one’s life…and the incessant challenge of turning this wonder into scholarship. And the even greater challenge of reconciling the “world” of academia with the stillness of this place. I ask myself if it is possible to inhabit both worlds…

For those of you that travel, let this be a warning. The large skies and stark beauty of these northern places can move and challenge you as gently, as insistently, as completely as the warmest and most profound of lovers. It truly becomes possible to have a love affair with the land. As for us, we all had a difficult time returning, and part of each of us probably never will. ~Jesse Ford~

Day XVI, Little Crow Lake

…And while I sat in this question of inhabiting both worlds for long enough, the distinction between the two began to fade until they were no longer separate. Until I could see the faces of every nation reflected in the subtle ripples of the lake at dusk. Until the trees and the sky melted into each other, the same way a city skyline dissolves into the heavens as the setting sun reflects off of skyscraper windows. Until the cry of the loon became the cry of a hurting species, of all those who suffer, and all those who rejoice. Until I could feel that the water that carried me ran to bigger lakes and rivers until it met the sea, where all of the water of this earth goes, and I could feel the collective journey of the water molecules beneath me to this place. And the silence and stillness of this place became not just the state of this lake at this hour but the state of my soul. And I realized that the awe, the astonishment, the wonder with which this place fills me is, as you say, both the cause and the effect of my wanderlust, and this wanderlust leads me not only to the places of rocks, lakes and trees, but to downtown Istanbul, the suburbs of Siberia, the far corners of foreign libraries, the ideas of poets, mystics, essayists, theorists and everything in between. For intrinsic to this wonder is a love of life, of discovering, questioning, connecting, creating, seeing, loving…

…and yet I’m not sure if I’m ready to leave this world, to return to lands of cars and condos and traffic lights and electricity. While I began this trip counting down the days with anticipation, I find myself now counting down with sadness, with a bit of fear and hesitation, for I feel as I’ve only just found a home here, in the rhythm of packing, paddling, portaging, and watching the sun come and go from beyond the horizon. I’m not quite sure how I will be able to return, not yet ready to face the changes this time among wild things has had on me. Not yet ready to face the many tasks of preparing to leave Waterloo, to say goodbye to a certain chapter of my life.

Beijing by Flying Pigeon

May 30-June 1

It’s Sunday night and we’re breezing by the Forbidden City on a pair of Flying Pigeons—a brand of bike iconic of the Cultural Revolution, graciously lent to us by our CouchSurfing host. We’re heading north after an evening of Chinese Acrobatics, winding our way through green tree-lined boulevards, magically lit in the hours between evening and night. We make our way rather effortlessly now, finally accustomed to bike-riding etiquette in Beijing (i.e. follow the crowds, not the traffic lights, swerve to the left around bikers going the wrong way down the street, use your bell liberally). We move to the right to let motorized vehicles pass, glide through intersections, then finally stop to consult our map.

Much of the day has consisted of the same routine: maneuvering between stopping buses and overloaded bicycles (carrying everything from dogs and birds to mattresses and half a grocery store), taking in the scenery (and surprising greenery—though we are told it remains green by diverting water from surrounding villages) of Beijing, stopping to gain our bearings, the continuing in a similar fashion.

Monday. We set out again for the Temple of Heaven. We head south, pray for the thunderclouds to roll past us, and arrive at our destination. After a few hours taking in the sites, we are ready to get back on our bikes. Our next planned destination: the pearl and silk markets. We head north, then east, along the old city wall. We stop to play at a Chinese exercise station and Mark is cajoled into a game of Chinese hackie sack (this “hackie sack” consisting of a group of colourful features weighted with rubber and washers). We cycle past the old city wall, and are carried by the road south, the opposite direction that we want to go in. We wind our way along a highway and a canal to the nearest underpass, head back north, follow a line of cars into what seems like a railway yard, carry our bikes through and underpass, stop to buy some street foot, cross a tiny foot bridge, and end up on “Alien’s Street” surrounded by Cyrillic shop names and wondering if we’ve accidentally returned to Russia (this are of Beijing is, apparently, the one area where, if visibly not Chinese, you’ll first be addressed in Russian, not English). By now too much time has passed and we abandon our market destination. Instead we wander into an unexpected park, balanced and stunning in design. We get lost in rock formations and greenery, then hop back on our bikes to head towards home.

The sun is setting as we head northeast, through the financial district. We wind around a round-about, and our attention is directed to the clanging of cymbals and the beating of drums across the street. There, in front of a gargantuan Bank of China building, a group of middle-aged and older women are dancing with fans. We join the crowd of older Chinese men that has gathered to watch. Strange, we think, that they’ve chosen this location. Perhaps they are all bank employees, Mark muses. We continue along are way, and go no more than a block and a half before we hear the same clanking and beating, and then see the familiar colourful flags dancing by. We slow down and an older man motions to Mark to get of his bike. He hands him a flag and pushes him into the line-up of dancing women. I, along with the other ageing Chinese spectators, are amused to watch this rather rhythm-less white man attempt to imitate his fellow dancers. He makes it once through the circuit and is ready to go, to the winking of Chinese women as he passes.

It is dark now, as yesterday. We approach the Forbidden City from the east this time, though the misty-lit streets begin to fade into one another. We stop and consult our map once again, then wind our way home.

Encouraged by the rain, on Tuesday we take a break from our now beloved Flying Pigeons, and race downtown to pay a visit to the beloved Chairman Mao. We reach Tiananmen Square 15 minutes before the Mausoleum closes, sprint around to the entrance, and are herded through in less than 5 minutes, catching only a quick glimpse of an eerily lit barely-human looking figure enclosed in glass. From the south-west corner of Tiananmen we see a strange looking pavilion with a large “British Colombia Canada” sign hanging above. Curious, we pay the entrance fee (which used to be free for Canadians, but is no longer), head inside and are greeted by 2 Mounties. At their sight, Mark and I start laughing, and they immediately remark that we must be Canadian. We start chatting and discover that they are, in fact, real Mounties, one from Newmarket and the other a graduate of the University of Waterloo. Small world, indeed.

Wednesday. We bike north towards the Olympic Village. The reason, in many ways, that this city is so clean and new looking, lies in this quickly approaching event, and the anticipation is tangible in the air, heavy like smog (which has, at least slightly, temporarily subsided from Beijing’s skies). We see the Bird’s Nest (as Olympic Stadium is known) and the Aqua Cube (the Aquatics Centre) from a distance, though construction is still underway and we can’t actually bike down the main strip. Instead, we circle the outside of the complex, a sprawling complex of hotels, venues, parking lots, parks. We happen upon what we later find out is the “Ethnic Minorities Park”—an amusement park like complex that is supposed to honour China’s minorities. A mosque-looking shopping centre, with mini-skirt clad waitresses, confuses more than anything else.

Thursday. We leave the bikes home once again and set out early to the Great Wall. We somehow manage to get there using a combination of public transit and bartering skills. We hike 12km from Jinshaling to Simatai, a section of the wall that hasn’t been restored. Crumbling stairways and steep climbs tire us out, though the view is breathtaking. Mark falls asleep at 7pm and sleeps until morning.

Saturday. Today we give our Flying Pigeons their biggest test, as we set out to bike to the Summer Palace, 12km outside the city. We get off to a rocky start, as our early route leads us past an exhibition centre where various highways seem to converge, and bike lanes suddenly disappear. We find ourselves in a chaotic mass of pedestrians catching buses and cars set on getting past them, and a few other bikers who’ve also found themselves suddenly without a lane. We make it through, carry our bikes over an overpass, and are happy to be cycling along a relatively quiet canal. We pass the 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th ring roads, and, after 1h15, we arrive at the Palace. Unfortunately, no bikes are allowed inside, so we continue on foot to explore this massive summer complex of Chinese emperors past. After 3 hours on foot, stunning scenery and incredible views, we are happy to be back on our bikes, heading back into the city. We detour to Jingshan Park, behind the Forbidden City, endure one last uphill climb, and take in one last view of the city.

We return our bikes for the last time, with some sadness, to their lot in the parking garage. Things bikes have been, no doubt, a key shaper of our Beijing experience. They have allowed us into streets and hutongs, unexpected corners of the city, places unreachable by public transit or on foot. They have given us a glimpse of Beijing as seen by many local commuters, as perhaps still the most popular means of transit, allowing us to appreciate the order in the chaos of Beijing traffic. They have been vehicles (both literally and figuratively) into the life of this city, a city of surprises and contradictions, a city that the world is soon to know a little bit better.

Mongolian Lamas Drive SUVs

May 28, 2008

It is a dark blue Nissan Pathfinder, I think, the colour a nice contrast to the deep red and orange of his robes. He is weaving through crowds of people and vendors, one the fringe of Ulaanbaatar’s “Black Market.” “What would Buddha drive,” Mark muses. In a country with almost no paved roads, however, the SUV is not completely ridiculous. And although such lamas were somewhat mythical creatures to me before, in this city they are just about as common as men in suits in Toronto. And, similarly, they drive home in SUVs and change into jeans and t-shirts. The everydayness of this occurrence reminds me of where I am. A country where, although brutally repressed by the communists, Buddhism is a way of life for many, and lamas driving SUVs don’t turn heads.

From Strangers’ Vans to Sand Dunes: Snapshots of Mongolia

May 17-29, 2008

We arrived in Mongolia in a stranger’s van. This was not our plan—when we reached the Russian border town of Naushki, there were not tickets left for the border-crossing leg of our journey. We luckily saw a rusty old bus out the station window, jumped on in faith of the driver who told us he was going “closer” to the border, and were then corralled from his bus into a stranger’s van, standing in line at the border gates. This van was one of many in a caravan crossing the border—carrying foreigners, cigarettes, and other such small-profit goods. After a good 2-3 hour wait, we made it out of Russia (the hard part) and into Mongolia. Here we transferred to another stranger’s car, who drove us to Sukh Baatar, where we got on the same train we’d been on earlier. After a short night’s sleep, we arrived in Ulaanbaatar.

We didn’t plan to come to Mongolia in a stranger’s van, though both the van and the unexpectedness of this border crossing were indicative of what was to come of our time in Mongolia more generally. We came to Mongolia to get to China—in order to get visas, and as the most direct route from Irkutsk to Beijing. After a morning running between ticket booths and consulates, however, we have unexpectedly found ourselves in a stranger’s van once again, on a roadtrip of sorts through the Gobi. Our van mates are also an unexpectedly mixed crew: our Mongolian guide and driver, a 31-year old American teacher from Colorado, a 36-year old tour guide/kickbox/belly-dancing instructor from New Jersey, and a 35-year old German pilot. And it is with this group of people that this unexpected travel turned into a week of wonderful memories, and the van transformed from that of a stranger’s to that of a friend.

In the few hours that remain before we board a train to Beijing, I don’t have time to even scratch the surface of the adventures of the past week. Instead, I offer a potpourri of unexpected Mongolian discoveries, images, and memories, and will let the pictures speak for themselves.

* While “Gobi” simply means “desert” in Mongolian, Mongolians differentiate between 33 types of desert. Indeed, we have never spent more than 3 hours driving before the landscape changes—from green mountains to wind blown rocks, to sand dunes, gravel fields, purple-flower spotted hills, to wide open plains, the Gobi is anything but uniform.

* A ger, the traditional transportable Mongolian dwelling, can be constructed in about an hour, and makes for quite a cozy, homey place to live

* It is possible that modern technology has reached every possible place on earth.

* For a nation that once controlled a significant portion of the planet, Mongolians today number very few—there are only 6 million Mongols worldwide, and only 2.5 million living in Mongolia. Their nomadic lifestyle, however, requires vast, seemingly uninhabited stretches of land in which to roam as herds graze and move from place to place.

* The camel is a truly practical, if quirky, means of transit, especially in a country of almost no paved roads.

* Sand dunes are simply a miracle.

* Vegetarianism is even more of a foregone impossibility in Mongolia than it is in Russia. Horse and camel are among the favourite foods of Mongols, as well as airag (fermented mare’s milk). Contrary to certain vegetarian sentiments, however, Mongols probably respect animals more than any other people I know—from cashmere and camel-hair sweaters and the felt that lines
their gers, to meat, dairy products and transportation, as herders, the livelihood of many Mongols cannot be separated from the lives of their animals

* 5 foreigners + 2 Mongolians + a couple of bottles of Chinggis vodka + a plastic bag + a night on the flour of a canteen-ger = hours of endless entertainment

* From moonrises to sunsets, ice gorges to sand dunes, strangers’ vans and back again, Mongolia is one beautiful place.

Farewell to Russia from the Circum-Baikal

May 10, 2008

The mind has more space to breathe.

I was reading over Mark’s shoulder the other day and read the above line, written by a friend of his who’s currently living in the Yukon. I suppose there are many similarities between here and there—isolation, snow, highly variable hours of daylight—but most striking perhaps of all is the elicitation of this sentiment, born of space, pace, stunning landscapes, and the clearer experience of one’s own breath.

And it is fitting to be in one of such places now, a week before leaving this country, before ending this Russian odyssey and beginning our wandering journey home. The sun disappeared behind the mountains awhile ago, though the sky has just begun to change, turning the water a soft pink with striking pockets of aqua-turquoise that follow the remaining pieces of ice on their last journey to water. A colony of nesting gulls provides the soundtrack to an otherwise still evening, silent save for the crackling of campfire burning and the soothing lapping of water on shoreline and ice. This is Lake Baikal at dusk. The pearl of Sibera. And she is even more beautiful, more humbling and comforting after a day’s labour.

We began today by taking a winding 2.5 hour electrichka ride through the mountains to Temnaya Pad. At first overwhelmed by the crowd of other campers with similar ideas on a long weekend, the pack soon thinned out and we found ourselves hiking alone, the lake on our right, cliffs to our left, and rail beneath our feet; rails that are no long really functional however, as after the Angara was flooded in the 1950s, this stretch of the trans-Siberian—the Circum-Baikal Railway—was unconnected from Irkutsk and the main line. How did we end up here? After plotting for some time about how to take a train through the route—85km from Bort Baikal to Kultuk—we finally ended up deciding it would be cheaper, not to mention more interesting, to rent a tent and walk this stretch of architectural marvel. And so we are here, one day, 20km departed, soaking in the sounds and smells and stillness of this lake one last time. And it is, I think, exactly what I needed—time and space to breathe, to reflect, to take stock of where we’ve been, what we’ve seen and learned, to let it all wink in before a winding adventure home.

May 12, 2008

Words usually come more easily to me in settings like this, spurred on by the higher awareness of both my physical and mental being, encouraged by the gentle lapping of waves on rock and the fluttering of campfire smoke to the heavens. So too, in these settings, is strengthened an impulse towards romance—strangely so, as there’s little romantic about the blisters on my feet, the soot and dirt coating my hands, the rips in my pants and the aching of my back and feet. Indeed, it is a test o will to sit up long enough to write these words. But they are words that must be written.

We’ve walked close to 50km since yesterday, confirming in my a long expected hunch—I am a canoeist at heart, who will venture of land with a canoe overhead when portages so require, but will never enjoy backpacking in quite the same way. I’ve found myself too lost watching my next step—over railway tie and gravel—to enjoy the stunning scenery, whereas in a canoe one is required to look far ahead to guide the boat in the appropriate direction. Nevertheless, I will try and soak in as much of this place before the day slips into night. Indeed, I just read a passage of Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, when the main character, Prince Myshkin, is recounting the description of a man sentenced to be killed, only to be pardoned a minute before the guillotine dropped. In the 5 minutes before his death, the man sets aside 2 for thinking, and his thoughts lead back to fantasizing about life, about how he would count every minute, appreciate every moment, if only he were spared. It was this very passage that motivated me to move my aching body from the campfire to the shore of the lake, to put into words a few final meandering thoughts.

Yet still I know not where or how to begin—or end. This year has been, I suppose, a lot like the last three days trekking along the railway. It has, in many ways, revolved around train travel, and everything that such travel in Russia brings with it—snowy landscapes, heavy drinking, an unspoken camaraderie with fellow passengers, connected to each other in their transience. As my constant concentration on my next step, the year has also involved a lot of similar getting on, moving along one day at a time, at what sometimes felt like a snail’s pace, yet nevertheless one step ahead. There have ben many a long, dark, cold tunnel, as in this journey, though each with a light of sorts at the end. And then there have been the moments where my breath is caught in the back of my throat at the stunning landscapes and beauty in which I find myself—standing a top a mounting in the Caucuses, or the bell tower of St. Isaac’s Cathedral, watching the sun set behind shamanka on Olkhon Island, trekking along a mountain stream in the Sayan, stumbling across Buryatian lamas making a mandala, watching the sunset (even if at 4pm) in downtown Yekaterinburg, sitting atop a snowy hill with Mark and Guzial, taking in the monstrosity that is MMK on the eve of the New Year. These images, like that o the water of Lake Baikal—the heart of Siberia—are the ones that will stick for a lifetime, while the darkness of the tunnels will slowly fade from view. And, in the romance of such times and places, I think they will be enough—enough to sustain an infatuation with this enormous, mysterious country,a country that Churchill once described as “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma,” a love for exploring the unknown, for wandering just for the sake of doing so, and, above all, and immaculate sense of this wonder for this fragile, wondrous earth which we call home.

Thoughts on the (De)Feats of Soviet Architecture

May 8, 2008

To give credit where credit is due, the Soviets were good at something: building things quickly. Well, maybe not so much quickly as cheaply. Actually, I don’t really know about their time or cost efficiency, but at least they were good at building things uniformly. True, it is possible to distinguish the imposing, gargantuan neo-classical buildings built by Stalin from the 5-storey apartments built by Khrushchev and the 8+-storey ones built by Brezhnev (who sprung for elevators). But, for the most part, apartment buildings, much like street names—from Petersburg to Vladivostok—left to us by the Soviets look the same.

This sometimes quirky aspect of life in the USSR was perhaps best parodied by the 1970s film Ironiya Sudbi (The Irony of Fate), where an unfortunate intoxicated young man ends up in an apartment that is identical to his own in all features but one: the city in which it’s located. While he lives at dom 23, ulitsa Stroitelyey in Moscow, the fates have it that he awake in a drunken stupor in dom 23, ulitsa Stroitelyey in Leningrad. As everything about the apartment, from layout to furniture to wallpaper looks like his, he does not realize he is not at home until the pretty blonde resident of the apartment returns, a prolonged and comical argument ensues, she finally realizes what’s going on and convinces him that he is, in fact, in Leningrad.

While much could be written about the feats of Soviet architecture in general, I wish to focus on one particular type of dwelling, the one with which I am the most familiar: the obschezhitiye. While this word is most often translated as a “student residence/dormitory,” it does not really resemble in the least the residences of most North American campuses. Most basically, they are most often even located anywhere near the universities where their students study. Secondly, not only students live in these buildings; they are also home to grad students, teachers, and their families (I shared a kitchen in Yekaterinburg with 3 international students, a young couple and their baby, a middle-aged woman and son, and always-the-lady’s-man Artyom). Indeed, a recent Russki Reporter map reported that 1% of the total Russian population currently lives in an obschezhitiye. That works out to something like 1.5 million people. By the end of this reflection, perhaps you will understand why I find this a worrisome figure.

Obshchezhitiye (from the words obshche, meaning “general/common/mutual” and zhitiye “life/existence”) look pretty much like most other Russian apartment buildings. That is, they generally come in 5-story/no elevator (as here in Irktusk) or 8+ storey with elevator form (as the building I lived in in Yekaterinburg). The corridors and common rooms are most often painted white on top and green/blue on the bottom. Anyone who’s lived in one knows that leaning against such walls leaves a coat of white powder on whatever you may be wearing. (Mark and I figured out the cause for this while trying to do some painting on Olkhon Island—the basic white wash used in this country is a limestone based chalk-water substance that sticks to clothes better than walls.)

What’s wrong with a little white paint on your clothes, you may ask? If this were the worst of the structural problems of most obshags (as they are colloquially known), an entry such as this would not be warranted. You see, these buildings were never meant to be permanent. Built after the Great Patriotic War, these buildings were supposed to last twenty years until the Soviets could come up with a better solution to their housing crisis. Half a century later, these buildings are still kicking, though often crumbling, literally, beneath the feet of their occupants. In the first week after we moved to Irkutsk, we saw two segments on the news about this particular problem. The first showed the wall of an obschezhitiye that, based on outward appearance, could have been our own. There were large gaping holes in the side of the building where bricks had fallen or crumbled away. The second report showed the tragic story of an elderly woman who had fallen to her death after her balcony fell out beneath her. The next shot was off the landlord’s solution to the problem—he was shown nailing closed the balcony doors of another apartment, reprimanding the tenants for even harbouring ideas of stepping outside (why try and fix the problem when a bolt through a door will stave off certain death?).

Structural challenges aside, in Russia modern plumbing seems to have been put on the backburner in favour of launching satellites into space. While I eventually got used to the machine-gun like sound of water going through the hot water pipes in Yekaterinburg, having any water at all, let alone hot water, in our 5^th floor kitchen and bathroom in Irkutsk is no more than a weekly occurrence. We were told that this is due to the face that the water gets used up by the people on the floors below us before it can reach us way up on the 5^th floor, though I have my doubts. Our neighbour Anastasia has told us that the repair man has come on numerous occasions to assess our situation, always noting “trudno, ochen trudno” (difficult, very difficult). In other words, we’re not going to put in the time to fix this problem, it can’t be solved by nailing a bolt through a door. A Belgian student once got fed up with this answer, exclaiming “it’s not difficult in Belgium, it’s not difficult in France, in not difficult anywhere else in Europe, why is it difficult here?” The answer to this seems to lie not in a lack of technical knowledge, but in a lack of will to fix things for other people, especially in buildings whose life expectancy has long passed.

Some time has passed since I began this entry, I have survived an alternating hot-and-cold (but never at the right time) year of central heating, I am not longer phased by the mold in the stairwell, and the pieces of ceiling that fall from our recently renovated ceiling. You probably get the idea anyway. All I have left to say is this. Putin (or Medvedev), the state of housing in your country is appalling. It’s time to use some of your oil revenue, get out the wrecking ball, and build your country some new homes. If uniformity is efficient, be my guest, but quality should not be sacrificed for quantity: this time build some houses that are meant to be lived in. While you may not have created this problem, this is the country you’ve inherited, and it is your job to make it a better place for the citizens who live in it, despite your new market economy. Food, water, shelter. This is where you need to begin.

У земли есть музыка для тех, кто ее слышит

April 23, 2008

(On the earth there is music for those who listen to her)

the sounds of a village waking:
clucking hens
barking dogs
the occasional car roaring to life
my stomach calling for food
gulls, ravens, crows,
singing to the morning.

intermittent silence. stillness.
or, music of another sort.

underneath, a pulse. a steady percussion.
drum beat, heart beat.
the island breathing
ice shifting with the earth’s exhalation.

the rise of a conductor’s baton
sky a soft blush fading into pale blue.
enter violins
crimson, scarlet, then firey orange
as the sun crests the distant mountain line
patches of open water turn
a reddish-gold in the finally-daybreak light
orange begins to fade to yellow,
crimson to blush to baby blue to sky
as that firey ball that gives us life makes her ascent
through wispy dawn clouds

a symphony of colour, sounds, stillness
capitulates towards its close—not
a grand finale
but rather calm as it began.
measured.
steady.
contemplative.

fading now into a chorus
alive
gulls and barking dogs
cars and other early morning risers

a village—an island waking
morning

life to a new day

Of Tortoise Shells and the Russian Soul

April 18-25, 2008

There is a story I know. Or, at least, thanks to Native American story teller, writer and scholar Thomas King, it is a story I’ve heard (see Thomas King, The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative).. It’s a story about how the earth came to be. The story begins with a woman—King names her Charm—who lives on another planet. She is having strange cravings, but doesn’t know for what. Another animal on this other planet tells her she must be pregnant, and recommends a certain fern for her to eat. The woman digs and digs around a tree to find this fern, and, as you may be able to predict, ends up digging right through the planet and falls into space—or, rather, towards what is to be the earth. At this time, however, there is no earth, only water. In the waver live animals and creatures one expects to find in water—otters, ducks, dolphins, turtles and the like. Somehow they notice that there is a woman hurtling towards them and, to avoid one massive tidal wave, they decide they better do something about it. A group of birds fly up to meet her and break her fall, but, when they ease her down into their water world, they don’t know what to do with her. In the end, they decide to put her on the back of the turtle.

Charm lives happily on the back of the turtle for awhile, until it becomes clear that she is in fact going to have a baby. As the turtle shell isn’t big enough for two, the animals begin to worry. Charm suggests a game. The animals readily oblige, as she challenges them to dive down to the bottom of the water and bring back some made. While not really knowing what “mud” is, they each successively try—and fail—to reach the bottom and bring back this mystery substance. Just when they’ve almost given up, it’s otter’s turn. She dives down and down and down, and the animals wait and wait and wait, and nothing. The animals begin to fear they’ve lost otter when they see her body bobbing in the water. In her tiny paw is a lump of mud. Luckily, it turns out that otter is just really tired. Charm takes the mud, and, placing it on the back of the turtle, creates earth, a lumpy muddy earth.

There’s not enough room for the animals to stay in the water, so some of them decide to live on the land. Then, before too long, Charm has her baby. Babies, in fact, twins. One boy, one girl. Ond dark, one ligh. One left-handed, one right. The right handed-twin flattens the mud into prairies, just in time for the left-handed on to come by and turn it into mountains. The right handed-one makes straight flowing rivers. The left-handed one makes them crooked, and throws in some rapids and waterfalls and unpredictable currents. One creates sunshine, the other shadow. One roses, the other thorns. One fruit and nuts, the other dense forests. One creates summer, the other winter. The animals suggest creating some more humans, and the twins oblige. When all is said and done, the animals and the humans look around and admire the beautiful world they’ve created. And so the earth and its inhabitants come to be.

And what remains at the core is a turtle. What’ under this turtle, you may wonder? Another turtle. And under this turtle? Well, another turtle of course. And under that? It’s turtles all the way down.

* * * * *

I tell this story for a few reasons. First, because Thomas King gives this story to his audience, challenge them (us) to do with it what we will. More importantly, however, I tell it because it is this images of turtles, earth, lumpy muddy worlds and the beginnings of the earth that was one of the first coherent thoughts—probably even the first—that came to mind when I first stepped foot onto this island. And it’s the story and the image that’s grown in intensity and relevance the more I explore and get to know this place. Let me tell you about Olkhon Island.

To begin, Olkhon is a Buryat name meaning something along the lines of “dry wind.” An apt name for a place of toitoise-shell like landscapes, of rounded treeless sandy hills and tortoise-shell groove valleys—Charm’s mud-lump world perhaps dried out and worn down with the passing of time. The rocky outposts are perhaps remnants of turtle claws, the northern peninsula, Khoboy, his head. There are other historical facts to support this hypothesis. Baikal is, after all, the oldest and deepest lake in the world, making Olkhon one of the oldest islands. Who’s to say it’s not turtles all the way down? Perhaps the Angara—the only river that flows out of the lake—is the very handy-work of the right-handed twin, and the 333 meandering inflowing rivers the doing of the left-handed one. The island certainly knows both winter and summer, sunshine and shadows, forests and deep plains. Standing in the stunning silence and grandour of these banks, overlooking the “earth palace” Shamanka, it is hard to believe one is anywhere but exactly where the earth began.

view from Khoboy

sBut beyond turtles, the longer I am here, the more fitting this story seems, the more plausible this creation tale (and I use “tale” not the least in a diminutive fashion). For here live dark faces and light—Buryats and Slavs (mind you, the former have been here for a lot longer). The original inhabitants of this place, Western Buryats, understand the world in quite a similar way to the early tellers of Charm’s story: they recognize that the trees and hills and foxes and ravens have spirits of their own, and that survival depends on cooperation and communication. Outside my window is one of the holiest sites of shamanism in the world. Beyond the nearest hill is a tiny, new, Orthodox church. Though it is not imposing as such a church could be. It simply is, sitting on a hill overlooking Lake Baikal. Sergei, who is fulfilling a dream by building a house behind this church, a house with a spectacular view, says not many people come, this is not their custom, but some come when they choose. And here, while the water may be clean and deep (or perhaps precisely because of this), it doesn’t run from taps, but is instead a precious resource. As is the wood which makes up these walls and heats the room. And, if further proof is needed, this village is a village that survives not through hierarchy, competition, bureaucracy, the acquisition of wealth and the rapacious use of resources, but through cooperation, mutuality, a measured pace of life, and respect for the land, this turtle world on which we stand.

* * * * *

I came to Russia captivated by the idea of the “Russian Soul.” I have, by and large, been extremely disappointed with what I have found. There is, in my somewhat embittered and hardened opinion, little soul to be found in the clinking of stilettos down asphalt, in the rat race to the top of a new capitalist economy, in billboards blatantly proclaiming “schastye mojno kupit” (“happiness can be bought”… looking an awful lot like a frying pan), in the layers upon layers of irrelevant bureaucracy, fear to walk the streets at night, imitation instant coffee and poorly dubbed Hollywood blockbusters. If I had left Russia a week ago, it would have been a cold leaving, void of much fondness or longing.

Drying off after one of many banya sessions this week, I had a revelation. Everything that is normally associated with “Russian culture” largely comes from the Russian village. Today, in fact, I have eaten kasha, blini, borscht, shashlik, and Omul (a very tasty fish found only in lake Baikal). On Saturday night I enjoyed the music of local voices and a garmon (a Russian accordion) singing traditional folk songs—songs about valenki (felt boots), winter, birch trees, and the like. I have come to appreciate the cleansing function of the banya (and, in lieu of running water, her necessity). I’ve drinken vodka with the same man who played the garmon, spent a day in a root cellar among potatoes, beets, cabbages and potatoes, swerved around cows on the road, walked in a birch and pine forest, sat in an Orthodox Church and shared numerous conversations that have gone beyond the weather. The only thing I’ve missed is drinking from a samovar, though they do decorate the courtyard outside our wooden home. While such experience reek of tourist trappings, the strangest thing about them has been that they have been completely natural, every-day occurrences of life in the village.

And these encounters have, just in time, perhaps, re-oriented my feelings towards this great big country. Being in this place has warmed them, like the breaking ice of Lake Baikal. Let in a little light, a little genuine spirit, a little hope. For, if ever there was, or is, or will be a “Russian soul,” then surely this is her home. These people are her keeper, their songs her memory. The meetings of east and west her reality. The foundations of labour camps in her midst a reminder of the sorrow she has known, a promise of her resilience. The contours of the rocks and the brilliance of these waters her reflection, the steady wind her breath. This tortoise shell on which we stand her everlasting foundation.

shamanka

A Podushka Crossing

April 18, 2008

We depart Irkutsk at 11am sharp, and head north towards Ust-Ordinski Autonomous region before heading east towards the lake. The first leg of our journey takes us through rolling farm fields—a rarity in Siberia—but, beyond Ust-Ordinski, the road begins to rise and wind as the landscape opens into mountains, trees, skies. It is somewhere along this road, which alternates between gravel and asphalt, that our driver and fellow passengers begin making plans to cross the ice. Two or three to a car is best, they say, not too much weight. No way we’re crossing in this marshrutka. But, oh, we have foreigners today. No cars for them, they need something safer (or, perhaps, no one wants to responsible for plunging a foreigner into an icy Lake Baikal…though I doubt we are even meant to understand anything they are saying). Maybe they should go by foot? We—Mark, I, and two Polish students—look from one to the next, fearing we may be left to our own devices to cross the straight between the shore and our destination: Olkhon Island. After an extended bumpy period, during which the rattling of the vehicle on gravel that barely qualifies as road prevents any negotiations, we round the corner, crest a hill, and the lake comes into view. With this gland the decision is made quickly; the ice in on the straight has already broken, open water whips through the narrow channel between hilly shores. No one will be driving across anymore this spring. Instead, we await the podushka (literally, a “pillow”) which ferries us across in two shifts to meet another vehicle on the far shore. In later conversation with a local villager, we learn that the hovercraft has only been working for the last two years. Before that, for a month in the spring in the fall, the island was almost completely inaccessible, except for those with the will to drag a fishing boat across the ice, row it across the open water, and drag it once more the remainder of the way. In any case, evidenced by the fact that I’m alive to document this account, we’ve made it from the mainland to the shore, to the sand and skies and mountains and views of Olkhon Island.

A Buryatian Buddhist Encounter

April 12, 2008

Thursday evening Mark and I jumped on a quick overnight train to Ulan-Ude, to spend Friday wandering the capital of the Republic of Buryatia. After a short and uncomfortable street, we stepped out into the (very cold) early morning, took a stroll through the mostly still deserted streets, made a brief stop to admire the immensity of Lenin’s head (Ulan-Ude is the proud home of the largest Lenin-head in the world), and waited for a café to open so we could get out of the cold. The opening working hours of the earliest opening café we could find (8am) came and went, and went some more, and still we were wandering the cold streets. We finally found a place to get a bit to eat and briefly warm up, took a stroll down the sandy/concrete shore of the Selanga and Uda rivers to the bus station. We hopped into a marshrutka that took us north of the city to an Ethnographic Museum. The Museum spanned a couple of kilometers, and featured re-creations or relocated dwellings of the various inhabitants of the region, from Buryats to Decembrists to Old Believers, camels, bears and tigers. After spending a few hours wandering the grounds of the museum, we set out down the road, following a Lonely Planet tip (and our noses) to a strange yurt-palace complex serving Buryat food. We had a smaller yurt dining room to ourselves, and Mark decided to order a traditional drink made of sour milk of an unknown animal. After taking one sip, Mark, who has problems with regular cow’s milk, lost his curiosity for new flavours and enlisted me with the task of finishing this strange brew. After a quiet and generally pleasant (even if overpoweringly sour) meal, we set out hiking down the road to a Buddhist temple we’d past earlier in the morning.

After a couple of kilometers through rolling hills and greening forests (and, thankfully, warmer weather), we arrived at our destination. We had noticed this place in the morning for the colourful flags tied to nearly every upright object on the property, including a large wooded area behind the main temples. We have happened upon a datsan, of Buddhist temple complex. While Buryats west of Lake Baikal practice various shamanistic traditions, those east of the lake practice Vajrayana Buddhism, the same form of Buddhism as practiced in Tibet. The complex consists of three temples, a dozen or so smaller wooden buildings, and a forest more wooden buildings are being constructed. Not sure of the protocol for entering the temples, Mark and I wander towards the forest, a forest where prayer flags grow on trees more frequently then leaves. Mark remarks that he feels a little uncomfortable, not sure what we should be doing here, until we stumble into the middle of a soccer game, between a dozen or so young boys. A monk in amber robes, coat and toque watches from the sidelines. We sit down and relax a moment in the forest, tired from the walking of the day, while the wishes of thousands of flutter in the breeze.

Restored, we decide to venture into one of the temples. As we climb the stairs, an elderly woman and 3-year old in a pink snow suit exit, setting us at ease. We quietly push the door open and slip inside. A group of four monks are sitting under a raised canopied area to our left. One of them glances up from his work, gives me a gentle look, then returns to what he is doing. I notice then that they are all wearing face masks. They are sitting in a square, or a circle of four, two facing each other, hunched over something we can not yet see. The music of their instruments draws me in closer. It isn’t a music I’ve heard before, and the closer I get, the sooner I realize that it is not an intentional music. The music, instead, is being produced by the sound of metal rods rubbing on long metal cone-like tubes, the pitch of each varying with the size of the instrument. I realize, then, what they are doing—creating a mandala! I’ve heard of this practice, seen pictures or images in films, but never thought I’d witness it first hand. Briefly, a mandala is a circular, geometric creation of spiritual symbol and meaning that is created by Vajrayana monks entirely out of grains of sand. The creation takes months to complete and then is ceremoniously destroyed, sent to the wind as a reminder of the impermanent nature of things. This particular mandala is about a third completed. The cone-tube instruments the monks are using are for sand of varying fineness and colour. As they rub the rod up and down the grated outside of these instruments, the brightly coloured sand slowly drops into place. The face masks, I guess, are to protect the infinitely fragile creation from their own breathing. I am astounded by the patience and commitment that such work must take, mesmerized simultaneously by the rhythmic sound, minuteness of the sand, and steady hands and breathe of those at work. I walk with the rhythm of their work around the perimeter of the temple’s interior. A number of statues of the Buddha, gold and blue, sit at the front, while a framed picture of a smiling Dalai Lama sits off to the right. In the centre of the temple are two rows of padded seats facing each other, cymbals and sacred texts sitting on cushioned tables in front awaiting use. In the next temple we find a similar set-up, though at the front, behind a large Buddha statue, sit 450 smaller statues (Mark counted), organized into a dozen or so rows. We are instructed by a woman on our way out to walk clockwise through the interior, and never to turn our back to the Buddha. We do this carefully, then make our way quietly to the nearby stolovaya. We sit down to digest our experience (and some tasty blini and noodle soup). In conversation with the girls working in side, we find out that this is one of the smaller complexes of its kind in the area. The largest one is an hour to the northwest, set in a river valley, and home to the body of a famous lama who corpse remains in the same condition as when he died.

We get back into a marshrutka to head back into town, humming and hawing about whether or not to change our train tickets and stay an extra day to go to this larger datsan. In the end, we decide it’s probably cheaper to come home and come back another day. Exhausted from the walking of the day, I fall asleep almost instantaneously to dreams of yurts and prayer flags, and don’t wake up until the sun is rising over the Angara River out the train window. We’ve made it home, home to Irkutsk.