Jetting out of Boston

We lived at home in Boston for just three weeks, and now we are already on a plane and headed for California. Three weeks wasn’t really long enough. We had dinners with our favorite neighbors and another friend or two, we had the fence painted around our roof deck, I was briefly re-integrated with my duties as an active member of a local church congregation, and we saw a lot of Nika.

We really HAD to see a lot of Nika because she was living in our house when we arrived and had no easy means of escape for the first week. We all slept on airbeds on our roof deck until rains swept in and Nika swept out, to share an apartment with a good friend nearby. Pleasantly, the momentum stayed with us and Nika continued to live out of the same closets she first occupied seven months ago when Alla and I left for Belarus.

It’s been a real pleasure to have her around. Just as I enjoy the perspectives of the twenty-something college students I know at the Minsk State Linguistic University, I really enjoy sharing my life with a quasi daughter. She asks questions I wouldn’t have thought to ask, offers opinions I wouldn’t have expected, and reveals a humanity I wouldn’t otherwise know. She’s a good cook, too. We’ve shared numerous meals, some better planned than others, all warm and friendly.

So, why did we rush off to California? We ask ourselves the same question. It seemed like a good idea at the time we planned it, not realizing we’d have this nearly-perfect ready-made slice of family life in Boston. We were rushing toward family, not understanding that we’d have such a sweet opportunity right where we were. I have long advocated the importance of framing any life changes on a move toward something positive rather than a simple escape from something negative, and this illustrates the point. It’s a good thing we’re headed towards people we are eager to see, because we find ourselves heading away from people we are eager to see at the same time.

May life ever be so. May our homes be centers for affections that radiate outward to the larger world.

From long ago

I don’t seem to have changed much, except perhaps by clarification of intentions.

I just came across a tattered yellow scroll I’ve kept with me since the summer after my first or second year of college. It’s a poem of sorts, written by a girl my age whom I met in the park near my grandmother’s house. We started to get to know each other over two or three afternoons, sitting and talking in the park. I don’t remember her name, nor do I remember much about what we discussed. I’m pretty sure we shared some common frustrations about restrictive parents, because I remember telling her parents that she loved them and that they’d all be happier if they trusted her more. I told them this about two or three days after we met, as they picked her up to leave together on a family vacation.

The girl gave me the scroll just before they left. I don’t think we ever knew each other’s addresses nor expected to see each other again. I’m not sure I even knew she liked me in any particular way. We were both idealists, and we just talked a lot, about the way we’d like to live our lives. This was during a time of national idealism, particularly among the youth, and we were reading mystical books and talking freely about what ought to be.

I can't recommend this poem as literature, but I am still touched to read about the impact I apparently had on a person’s life. I’ve been trying ever since to have that sort of impact someplace else.

Lying naked in the dewy grass
alone – with the whole world
everything shimmering
    with sprouts of spring growth
smiling trees and smiling me
flowers and foolishness
bees, birds, butterflies and being –
    Being is beautiful;
leaves and limbs, lonely woods
    and lazy love
¼ and ¼ are only ½
    and nothing at all!
½ and ½ are 1
    and 1 is everything.
But 1 and 1 are 2
    and 2 is forever,
because 2 is sharing
and life demands sharing.
So Spring is where it all begins.
The wind whispers – life, thru the
trees and the grass and me!
and the sun rolls across the sky.
Life is green and yellow, and blue
and all the colors in a rainbow,
it’s a pot of gold.

But living in other days
    is grey
like walking around with a fog bank
    always 1 step ahead and ½ step behind.
And no light comes from above
where only plastic flowers grow.
¼ and ¼ are only ½, and nothing at all…
½ and ½ are 1
    and 1 is everything
but 1 and 1 are 2
    and 2 is a forever
because 2 is sharing
and you have shared – yourself with me.
A touch and a warm glance
    needed ever so much
    and you don’t even know me.
Spring is where all begins
    life is sharing
Thank you for your warmth.

First impressions of Boston

We returned a week ago, but I've been so busy reading six months' worth of mail, catching up with friends and family, riding my bike and putting stuff away that I haven't managed to write a word all week long.

My first bike ride here proved to be a bit of an eye-opener. As I rode through Boston and Cambridge, I saw people of all colors and styles; Asian, Indian, African, Russian and who-knows-whatian. In Belarus the great preponderance of faces all look pretty similar to each other. Here, variety is pretty much the norm, and I really enjoy that.

I rushed off to the local gourmet grocery store to load up on vegetables I hadn't seen in a few months. In particular, I wanted to eat asparagus and artichokes. I also enjoyed chard, Hass avocados, peas in the pod, lots of fresh corn, shallots, and numerous sights and smells. Yes, we can buy everything here; but it's breathtakingly expensive unless we go downtown on the weekend to buy poor-quality stuff at the open-air market.

I reflected on my willingness to buy expensive produce here in Boston. If you want vegetables, high prices are pretty much just the way it is. In Minsk, as I've already complained, almost everybody sells the same small selection of vegetables, at prices far below the norm for Boston. I am aware of at least one stand at the central market place that features exotic imported produce, and I've never shopped there because I considered their prices outrageous in comparison to "normal" Belarusian prices. Then I complained about my inability to find the variety I wanted. I guess I'd better check out the folks at the fancy stall next time I'm there. I know they have exotic fruits, and if they have exotic vegetables as well I think I'm finally willing to consider paying their prices.

What I really miss

Asparagus. I dreamed about asparagus the other night, and I can't even remember when I last ate it. I can taste it in my memory; pungent, slightly crisp, juicy, aromatic, flamboyantly green, and just-plain delicious. Thinking about it makes me salivate.

It's not just asparagus that I miss. I miss artichokes too. A lot. At home, I would buy artichokes about once a week. Here, they don't exist even though Italy isn't all that far away and I'm quite sure they would spare us some artichokes if we were to ask nicely. And avocados. I have seen avocados at the market, but they're the smooth-skin variety so I haven't bothered. I want nice Hass avocadoes with their creamy-tasty flesh. Lots of them.

The fact that we don't have avocados is probably my own damn fault. I should have bought those shiny avocados when I saw them in the market so the vendors would have known to order more. The only green vegetables we can buy here are salad fixings and one variety of summer squash. We can buy frozen broccoli in the winter, so I assume it will show up fresh in the market later in the summer. But where in the world is the asparagus? It grows in Massachusetts, so certainly it could grow here. Apparently, however, it just isn't done

If we ever get a dacha of our own, I will definitely try to raise some asparagus. Meanwhile, I am getting ready to fly home to Boston on Monday and start buying all the weird green stuff I can find. No more pork for a month, and no meal without a huge helping of green vegetables not available in Belarus. Count on it!

Suddenly I have a lot of readers

About a month ago, I installed a stat counter on my blog because I wanted to know if anybody beside my dad, my aunt, and my neighbors read it. I saw that I do have more than three unique readers, and congratulated myself on some small measure of success.

Today I discovered that the stat counter people can generate a map of where my readers live. I do indeed have a reader in Carmichael, California, another reader in The Dalles, Oregon, and a reader or two in Boston. (Thank you Dad, Sis, and Peter.) Surprisingly, however, I have numerous readers scattered throughout Europe and the Middle East. Looking deeper, I found out that a lot of them arrived as a result of Google searches, usually on "Russian padej." Amazingly I come up first on that particular search, and I really hope the article these folks find helps them in some way because the padej is a really murky business with which I am still grappling.

Unfortunately, I know that the article isn't so gripping that they read any more of my stuff. Uniformly, their exit point is the same as their entry point and they don't appear to be staying long.

Nevertheless, I am not entirely anonymous. I am assured of that by the fact that I have just posted my most popular picture ever. It's the picture of me between two women in bathing suits from my last article. Already 52 people have looked at that picture long enough for Picasa to count it as a view, and I didn't even link to it from Facebook. Apparently one route to success includes scantily-clad women.

Boat trip

Every year, Sergey takes his employees on a boat trip. This year, he and Irina invited us to come along. Unfortunately, Alla was unable to come because her shoulder was bothering her, but I really enjoyed the chance to paddle a boat down a really beautiful river. Maybe I'll be able to show you some pictures of the river later, but I didn't get out my camera while I was in the boat because everything was wet. Irina had an underwater camera and she took photos yesterday, so I hope to get copies of them later.

We got off to an inauspicious start, as the bus got stuck in the mud at the launch point. We tried to free it ourselves with the troop transporter that brought the boats, but we were not successful. Instead we ate lunch.

After lunch, the guide told us that there would be no more drinking for the rest of the day because being on the river is serious stuff. Five minutes later, he poured a giant goblet of champagne and invited everybody to have a drink or to load extra bottles into their boats. This pretty much indicated the sobriety level of the day.

We had a great time floating and paddling down the Islich river. The territory is beautifully comprised of forests, florid meadows, and some dramatic cliffs.

After dinner, I had my first Russian banya. Even more unusual, the banya was outdoors in a tent. They built a bonfire in a pile of rocks, smothered the fire, and set up a big tent over the pile of hot rocks. Throwing water on the rocks created a very effective steam room. Then we flogged ourselves and each other with bundles of aromatic boughs and jumped into the river.

The boating and the scenery couldn't have been better. I'd love to do more trips like this, though if I organized my own it would be somewhat more sober. At least everybody was good-natured about my unwillingness to drink. They worried the first day about how they'd relate to me, but after a few toasts, campfire chats, and dancing into the night nobody seemed concerned about what I was or wasn't drinking. It was a special privilege for me to be at leisure with people doing and sharing what they like to do.

If you're curious about other details of this trip, I've posted more pictures here.

Alla asked me to add this picture of myself with Irina, the captain of our boat.

Foreigners in the city

For illustrative purposes only. These are last month's tomatoes.

I had fun at the market today. I was asking about some really-nice-looking tomatoes. I wanted to know if they were grown in the ground or in a greenhouse, but I didn't know the word for greenhouse. (Apparently the word is парниковых, which also happens to be the name of a street I know with greenhouses on it. Isn't that handy?) 

Anyway, not knowing the word I wanted, I tried to talk around it. The woman I spoke with didn't really know what I was getting at, but she assured me that the tomatoes were from Uzbekistan and that they were really good. As we had this little conversation, a lady from another stall came out to my side of the stand and announced that she wanted to know who in the world I am and what I'm doing here. When I told her that I was learning Russian, she started asking me questions and complimenting me on my ability to answer intelligibly. We attracted a little crowd before the interview was over.

As usual, one of the questions was about which city is a better place to live, Boston or Minsk. Unable to answer directly, I replied that Minsk feels like home and I enjoy my life here. 

On the way home, I stopped at the big TSUM department store to buy a fresh filter for our water pitcher. Entering, I noticed a little cluster of Americans standing outside the front door. Since they were still there when I exited, I stopped to forward the favor to them. Were they tourists? Yes, after a fashion. They are trustees of a new Baptist retirement home in the southern part of the country, and they are on their way to dedicate the building. They stayed for a little tour of Minsk before going on to see the facility. I thanked them for taking good care of Belarusians and expressed my hope that the Belarusians were taking good care of them. Oh yeah, they replied, beaming. They were very touched by the level of kindness they received from the people they met everywhere. I was pretty sure of their answer before I even asked the question.