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.

Requiem for a Russian Babushka

April 3, 2008

I came home today to find Mark with a butcher knife in hand, hunched over a pile of fish heads and gallbladders, the fruit of his labour a plateful of 2cm x 2cm fish fillets. “I bought them for 20 roubles from a babushka on the street!” he explains, as if his elderly merchant justifies this seemingly ridiculous purchase. But I can picture him walking down the streets, lured in by the eccentric wares peddled by this elderly woman. He eyes the fish from a few feet away, and then is called in closer. A grandmotherly voice assures him that they are “horoshaya riba” (good fish). He asks the price and is then unable to turn away, and, before he knows it, is walking home with a plastic bag full of fish that look more like bait than dinner. What struck me enough to begin this piece, however, was not the fish but the idea of the woman who sold it to him. And so I begin a long-overdo exposition on a subject that is at times tender or quirky, at times hostile, and at other times still a strange mix of all of these: the Russian babushka.

One of the first words I learned in Russian, probably without even knowing it was Russian, was the word “babushka.” I vaguely recall a schoolmate or two who referred to their grandmothers by this name. I remember one friend, I think her name was Kristen, who also told me the word simultaneously meant “head kerchief.” I’ve found no basis for this alleged second meaning in my Russian endeavours since, but the story is fitting, as you usually don’t find the former without the latter. The wrinkled old women, kerchief tied neatly under her chin, dressed in an ankle-length dress, wool vest, and either rubber boots or valenki (one-size-fits-all knee-high felt boots), depending on the season, is a familiar and at times endearing character in Russia, both past in present. From heroines of ancient literature, to red-kerchief clad women of Soviet propaganda posters, and finally to the woman who sold Mark his fishy dinner, babushki are everywhere, a symbol of Russia through the ages. Everyone has or knows a babushka (a word that literally means “old woman,” but throw a possessive pronoun out front and then you’ve got somebody’s grandmother), and, if not, you don’t have to look far to find out. She is the keeper of raspberry jam and hand-knit wear, moral guardian of the streets (if you do something wrong, you are sure to hear about it quickly from an always-present babushka’s eye), and, in many ways, she is the memory of the nation. She holds the past in a way that is distinct among their fellow Russians, for they have lived through multiple wars, famines, regime changes and pension plans. What’s more, unlike most of her male cohorts, she has survived. She has made it beyond the age of 55 and is still kicking (though it is a distinct possibility that she is 15 year younger than her face suggests).

Perhaps I paint an inaccurate picture in my use of a singular pronoun. Russian babushkas are, after all, a varied lot. While kerchiefs may be almost universal, their livelihoods are not. Some distribute free copies of Pravda in front of Communist demonstrations, still active promoters of KPRF, despite tiring faces. Others have returned to churches, where they can be found selling candles behind musky desks, or feebly prostrating before dimly lit icons of Mary, the suffering Mother of God. Some work as dejournayas, keeping a moral eye and a strict hand on the nation’s student population. They are often spotted labouriously boarding public transit, sometimes to be given a seat, but often not. Some, however, prefer the warmth of metro stations, and are known to belt out their lungs with various instruments in hand, a hat for loose change laid out for passers-by. Others still peddle their wares street side, hand-knit mittens and scarves in winter, raspberry and strawberry jam, underwear, nuts, seeds, cabbage, house plants, potatoes, home-made pickles, fish etc. year round. These sales are illegal; they have no commercial licenses, but take this risk as an alternative to begging. Many of their kind are found doing just that: begging. I have the image of one particular woman seared deeply into my mind, as she sat in the same spot outside of Ural State University every day, come rain, hail, sleet, or snow, constantly rocking back and forth and crossing herself. Tin cans and plastic cups are, sadly, not uncommon accessories, as government pensions (currently around 1000roubles/month, I’m told) are not nearly enough to cover one’s living expenses. When begging doesn’t bring in the necessary funds, garbage bins are a last resort. Some have, luckily, married well, married husbands who’ve lived past 50 by some minor miracle, and who’ve benefited from Russia’s experiments with capitalism. These women often still ride public transit, though in fur coats, with painted lips tightly pursed and leather purses are similarly clutched. A married woman at this age is about as frequent an occurrence as a compassionate Russian politician (she’s probably married to a politician of some sorts anyway).

As this description hints, being a Russian babushka is not an enviable position. Though most Russians may smile with fondness at thoughts of their own babushki, it’s hard to say that being a babushka is a position that is even respected. More often than not, it is a position that is viewed with sadness, pity tinged with a small sense of guilt, or at least bitterness towards the government’s inability to care for this forgotten generation. While in better times she may have been looked upon as a source of wisdom, guidance, support, today she is more often a reminder of yesteryear in a country all too eager to forget about its past (unless, of course, to remember its glory). She, in all her forms, is a symbol of the many transitions Russia has undergone, and continues to undergo. She, in her frequent poverty, is a reminder of everything that’s gone wrong, of what has most definitely NOT worked in Russia’s experiments with “democracy” and capitalism, as she becomes the mascot of the under-classes, the forgotten classes of the New Russia. While her existence seems to be daily threatened with extinction, for now she refuses to let go, to let the country forget and move on. If she were to disappear, what would happen? Would the economy suffer? Except for a drop in the country’s raspberry jam supply, no. Would children everywhere lose their sources of wisdom and guidance? Some may, but many would be to busy looking elsewhere to notice. Would anyone really notice? Or, perhaps the more pertinent question, would anyone even care? I hope my lived-in-Russia-for-seven-months pessimism hunch on this one is wrong. I hope these are superfluous, redundant question, born of a naïve foreign view of this country. For the sake of these old women, I hope this is the case. For the extinction of this cohort would mean much more than a dried-up jam and sunflower seed market. It would mean the extinction of the soul of this country. Without her babushki, Russia would simply not be, for a nation without its memory ceases to exist.

Siberian Spring has Sprung!

April 3, 2008

April. The first real warm day of the year—the kind of warm in which you can finally walk outside, with a little courage, without a coat. The streets are crowded with people doing just that, walking here and there in jeans and dress shirts, or in even shorter skirts and slightly lighter leather boots (let’s not forget we are in Russia), kicking around soccer balls and hackey sacks, or sipping beer and licking ice cream cones (those these happens all year round). I decided to walk to school today, taking a roundabout sort of route to have a better view of the river. I ended up on a dirt road lined by quaint—though often dilapidated—wooden houses, dogs sunning themselves, and babushkas stripped down to wool vests sitting on stools by the side of the road. Though still criss-crossed by streams of melted snow, the dirt was relatively dry, baked by a few days of sunny skies. The river, too, is changing. The border of ice on its edges is shrinking, breaking off and floating downstream with the rapid spring current, mini icebergs finally set free. The recently thawed water is a cols, clear turquoise-emerald, like the water that flows under metres of Baikal ice, and is visible at this depths for its purity. Though Russians like to congratulate each other with the beginning of spring on the first of March (I don’t know how by any calculations, especially in Russia, the first of March marks the beginning of spring), I feel for the first time as if, at long last, it has finally arrived. Goodbye wool coat! So long long johns and extra socks! Siberian spring has sprung!

This is Where I Live: Irkutsk Edition

March 31, 2008

It’s 8am Sunday morning and I am awake of my own volition, my body finally adapted to the routine of early morning classes. Sun illuminates the far bank of the Angara, still visible though slightly obscured by streaks of water condensation dancing down the window. I turn on my computer, which tells that it is in fact 9am. I’m slightly disheartened, as this means it will be dark once again when I awake for my 8am class tomorrow (now more like 7am). On the bright side (literally), our daylight hours will stretch even farther into the evening, extending the already lengthening hours of evening light. A sure sign that spring has indeed arrived.

Although we arrived in Irkutsk two and a half weeks ago, for some reason I haven’t had the time or energy to sit down and write. Perhaps because much of my energy has been focused towards thinking about what lies beyond this city—we bought plane tickets home last week (from Beijing to Vancouver on June 8, and from Calgary to K-W on June 17), we’ve investigated Mongolian and Chinese visas and train tickets, and I think I have almost come to a conclusion about grad school. As this little adventure, which has somehow turned into a circumnavigation of the globe, now has a definite end, it has become harder and harder to sit and remember where I am right now. And so, this is just what I will attempt to do here.

Komnata 500, Obshezhitiye No. 6 (again!), 136 ulitsa Baikalskaya, Irkutsk, Siberia, Russia. This is where I’m sitting as I tap out these words. Smells of Chinese cooking drift down the corridor from the kitchen we share with 8 young Chinese girls. 300m out my 5th floor window is the Angara River, one of Russia’s major waterways. In between here and there is a lovely (read ‘covered in garbage and graffiti’), home to frequent dog fights and nighttime tom-foolery to which we have a front row seat from our balcony. Upstream is the GES damn, and beyond it the Baikal water basin. Travel 65km down this water basin and you will end up in Lake Baikal. Downstream you will float through downtown Irkutsk, a quaint little downtown full of parks, minimal Stalinist architecture and a whole lot of wooden houses. Our new university—Irkutskskii Gosudarstveni Lingvisticheskii Universitet (Irkutsk State Linguistic University, or IGLU for short)—is located on one corner or Skver Kirova, the main city square. It’s a building that looks and feels more like a high school than a university, but we have so far generally been pleased with our classes. From the university it’s a 20 walk to one of the craziest markets I’ve been to in my life—what begins as a typical looking produce market quickly turns into an unending labyrinth of jeans, shoes, thermoses, cookware, brooms, electronics, etc., a maze in which you’re more likely to hear Chinese than Russian, haggled to buy things in a strange blend of Russian and English. See below for a picture of what can be purchased with 500 roubles (about $20).

Well, it’s been a few days since I started this entry and although my body has not even begun to adjust to waking an hour earlier, it is enjoying the extra hour of sunlight in the evening. This enjoyment is currently being dampened by the music blaring out of our neighbours windows, from speakers he has so thoughtfully turned to face OUTWARDS into the courtyard (why wouldn’t the 300 people and pack of dogs who share a view of this courtyard want to listen to his music?!?!?!). Mark is talking about demonstrative pronouns in subordinating clauses and I am about ready to sleep after a frustrating day (we bought bus passes for the month of April the other day, only to find out when trying to ride the bus that they are only valid on municipal buses, which comprise about 20% of the buses on the street—I guess it was too much to assume that public transit was indeed public and not commercially organized). The internet in the library, however, has started working and tomorrow I hope to take advantage of it tomorrow and finally post this entry. The following are some shots from our trip last week to Listvyanka (a little town on the coast of Lake Baikal).