I haven’t felt this happy in a long time.
Today was my mother’s 60th birthday.
She is the best person in my life and possibly the best person I have ever met. I’m so lucky destiny landed me into her arms.
I stumbled upon this text by Tolstoi about his aunt Toinette (who raised him) which sums her up:
“Tante Toinette a été la plus grande influence que j’aie reçu dans ma vie. Elle m’a enseigné le bonheur d’aimer. Elle ne l’a pas fait par des mots – les mots c’est si peu de choses – elle l’a fait par ce qu’elle était. Je l’ai vue près de moi pendant plus de trente ans – on peut dire que je l’ai vue vivre, et je ne connais pas de cas où elle ait offensé quelqu’un.
De la vie de Tante Toinette le mal était absent. C’est facile à dire mais difficile à faire. Je n’ai connu qu’un être de cette sorte: elle. Chère chère tante, pardonnez-moi, je pense au bien que je n’ai pas fait ou que je n’ai pas su faire, et au mal que j’ai fait à ceux qui ne sont plus, tandis que toi, ta vie n’a été que le bien, toujours, et la bonté, comme sans effort, naturellement, spontanément, sans cesse.”
Happy Birthday Mummy, I love you!
(and she’s born the same day as Nietzsche by the way)
Lately university has become increasingly fun with all the different nationalities mixing together and getting to know each other. In my class there are 4 japanese people, 3 coreans, 2 chinese, 1 german, 1 american and me. Makes out for some funny moments, especially when we are trying to communicate with each other in russian. You’d thought we’d all speak english but some of us don’t.
Last week we were working on these classic russian cartoons called “Ералаш”, and started to discuss pets and dogs in particular. Followed a surreal scene where everyone proceeded to show how to bark in their language. The russians say “gaf gaf”, the french “vouf vouf”, the chinese something else etc… It was hilarious, we just couldn’t stop laughing.
When I look at this group of young people I can’t help but feel great. Everyone’s spirit is very positive and open-minded. There is a healthy curiosity for each other’s culture and a desire to interact and connect. Kanako and I have some great conversation in russian for example, in which we burst into laughter every other word as it’s so tough to express yourself with so few words for now…
Anyway, I think this russian class would be an anthropologist’s delight.
In his 1985 song “Russians” (which melody comes from Prokofiev) Sting sang “there isn’t a monopoly of common sense / on either side of the political fence”.
Well, there is a number of things I have observed which goes to show that today, common sense might actually be on Russia’s side.
For example, they have a day here called “День учителя” – the day of teachers. A day during which children, students and parents pay tribute to teachers and professors all around the country by bringing them gifts and – as usual here – flowers. You can feel a profound respect for education; it’s a serious business.
There is something incredibly right, and relieving, about being in a country (city?) that isn’t (yet?) fanatically capitalistic and liberal, and where certain values are still sacred. Oh and I haven’t mentionned “День пожилых людей” – the day of old people!
In France, that type of deference has completely disappeared.
So what side of the fence again?
This poster says: “For them, it’s their future! 5th of october, Day of teachers”
This one says “Tell them thank you! 1st of october, Day of old people”
Putin is being cirticized left, right and center in the western world but I read that in order to restore Russia’s prosperity he had chosen to put order before freedom.
Considering the dreadful state in which Russia was when he inheritated it from Yeltsin: the financial mess, the creeping corruption, the transitional hardcore capitalism, it kind of makes sense. After chaos, you must install stability. And Russia has had its fair share of chaos, don’t you think?
What good is freedom when you don’t have a roof over your head, a job, medicines for your children or when your currency is being devaluated 100 fold every other month?
For some reason I’ve been thinking about my grand-father Bernard a lot recently. He’s the only one of my grand-parents who left behind tokens of affection for me.
He did a lot of super 8 films of me when I was 2-3 years old and I have a postcard he sent me when I was little. He died when I was three so I barely knew him but there is a general tenderness around my memories of him. His nickname was Big Boss, which makes me smile. I wonder what he would say if he knew that I was in Russia? And that I’m living this amazing life, thanks to my parents and also somewhat, him.
I’m trying to do them proud, by being fierce, free and also happy.
picture by my Dad
I don’t really understand why Russia has been getting such bad publicity. Whenever I said I was going to Russia, most people would kinda look at me funny, as if saying “Dude? Why??”
Of course, I’ve only been here a few days and I’ve only stayed in St Petersburg so far but… it’s just lovely! Oh and I haven’t even started to talk about the food here. It’s been surprisingly delicious (and cheap). They have a huge amount of choice in fish dishes, soups, meats. Dill is a big thing here and some of the selection in restaurants reminded me of what I ate in Norway. I was also surprised by the taste of vegetables and fruits: melons, strawberries, blueberries, tomatoes. They are so tasty compared to ours or the ones I ate in the US. Maybe it’s because they still have a policy of eating and consuming products made in Russia? Maybe because they use less pesticides/GMO/bullshit? I don’t know but apparently they try to restrict importations as much as possible.
Anyway… Maybe it’s the remains of the Cold War that has left a shadow on our perception of Russia but I feel very much in a normal European city – with a different but pretty looking alphabet.
(this is a selection of weird stuff I got from the supermarket. Every day is an adventure!)
It’s funny how, on the day I arrived in Saint Petersburg I kept having flashbacks of the day I moved to England.
It was back in 2003, all I had was my two suitcases and the address of a crappy hotel in Reading. I remember the train ride from Waterloo to Reading so vividly. The excitement of the unknown was tremendous and I felt extremely alive, humble and fired up. I was truly living my life, getting out of my comfort zone and already in awe of the learning experience I was about to get.
Also came back to me the very first times I travelled to England. I must have been 12 or 13 and only had a smattering of english. Having been speaking english for so long now I had forgotten how hard it was at first, how little I could understand back then and how stupid one can feel in such situation.
The feeling on the ride from Saint Petersburg’s airport to Vassilievski Ostrov, where I’m staying, was similarly exhilarating and I hadn’t felt that way in a long time, as I was soon to realize that in spite of good basics, my level of russian is really poor and that I will have to be extremely committed to make progress.
I remember how foreign and on the spot I felt, as a teenager, walking in shops not being able to articulate what I wanted to say, or even understand what people were saying.
So, here I am, 20 years later, in the same situation but in a different country. A situation that I both love and feel discomfort in, but where the drive to get better and overcome my weakness ignites me, full of the knowledge that, just like with english, if I keep doing what I do I will make it.
Why learn russian? Some have told me. To answer that, I can only begin to say that one cannot really learn about a culture without learning its language (since language is prior to thought etc…) Also I love learning languages. I feel like I’m in front of a secret code that I have to break. It stimulates me and I feel childlike excitement at the thought of communicating with people who are very different from me.
Why learn about another culture then? Well… First of all because curiosity and appetite for knowledge is part of my making. And facing a culture as huge and interesting as Russian’s makes you realize how ethnocentric you are and how little you actually know about the world. I think it makes you less of an asshole.
From the Monty Pythons to Oscar Wilde, from the dear friends Sarah in Brighton and Gemma in Australia to American TV shows Breaking Bad or Mad Men, from Rudyard Kipling to Morrissey, when I think about all things, people, fun and beauty* that have entered my world since learning english, I reel in the hope that such a world will open itself to me once I can break this other secret code.
So when are you starting to learn a new language?
(below pictures of the three places I lived in, in England between 2003-2006)
* and yes you know I really mean Ricky Gervais, Karl Pilkington and Louis CK!!
The night at the Hogan we got to talk to Herb quite a lot. His personal hero is Billy The Kid. His parents are both Navajos but from different clans. He has 6 sisters and 3 brothers. Apparently he doesn’t get on very well with his mother, and when asked where his father was he said “Oh! My father… Well, he went on his horse”, meaning his father left the family. Herb was married when he was 17 but divorced and now settled in Monument Valley, staying at his brother’s in a trailer. He has a 13 year old son, which he sees every couple of years.
We talked extensively about the Long Walk of the Navajo people which isn’t something many americans know of, and the suffering they went through. Not only deported, the Navajos were beat and killed arbitrarily for sport by Cavalry troops. A lot of these events are not very well documented or taught, so a lot of what happened is being transmitted generation after generation. For example, Herb explained that while being deported, the Navajos were fed rancid flour, which would expand in their belly and make them sick. Many of them died before even making it to Bosque Redondo where they were supposed to be relocated.
One man, Kit Carson, did some of the cruellest attacks on the Navajos, burning their homes, killing their sheep, starving them into submission. It was kinda sick to see that he is still a celebrated pioneer and that a forest (which we drove through) is named after him.
We also talked about nowadays navajo lifestyle and I was even more suprised to hear that according to Herb, 70% of Navajos do celebrate Thanksgiving. I could not believe it, but they just celebrate it as a family reunion, I guess.
He explained to us the basics of the political system of the Navajo Nation. The Nation is divided in 88 chapters. Each chapter has a delegate which votes at the parliament and elect a president every 4 years. They recently cut down the number of delegates to 24, each running several chapters in order to save money, but ended up paying them 3 or 4 times more, so the cut down was pointless. The government suffers from bad corruption problems which probably explains why recently casinos were finally allowed in the reservation. (No alcohol is allowed in the reservation, and neither was gambling up until recently).
The Navajo people have a very good demography, but are no longer the most populated native americans – it’s now the Cherokee, as they only require people to be 1/8th Cherokee to be part of the tribe, (it takes 1/4th to be a Navajo, i.e. at least one grandparent)
The Navajo made peace with their old time ennemies – The Hopis and allowed the creation of the Hopi reservation within the Navajo Nation, up until some coal was discovered in the Hopi territory and some tensions started again.
On that night Herb also mentioned the traditional Cleansing ceremony that young men go through and a few other things which I’m going to research (such as: why did the Anasazis disappear?)
All that we learnt about the Navajo traditions and history was very inspiring and humbling. We even learnt some navajo words.
Lastly, we got to know about the brave Navajo Code talkers who didn’t get any recognition until 1982, or even later.
Here is their beautiful seal.
