Notes as I think of them

Today I was in the Central Shopping Center on my way home, because I thought I’d look for a Zemfira cd to buy – she’s playing here soon (I have as yet not figured out how to buy tickets but I’m working on it) and I want to know as many songs as possible if I go to the concert. The store I though I remembered being a music store, however, actually sold dvds, and there was a very large collection of probably-pirated (though maybe not- there weren’t prices, and there was only one movie per disk, so it could have been the only legitimate movie store in Irkutsk, who knows) films, divided into the categories “Russian” and “foreign.” I was very happy, for some reason, to see low-quality American movies a foreign-film section of a store, alongside some classics of Mexican film and artsy French movies and such. I think this (my happiness, not the movie arrangement, which was fairly logical) is a result of an odd cultural-inferiority complex, probably created by the fact that most of my experience of Russian culture, pre-Russia, was classical music and artsy or classic movies and famous literature, while the majority of American artistic output that I have seen in my lifetime, in terms of quantity, is awful music and trashy movies and general mediocrity. Of course, actually Russian culture contains fully as much trashiness and mediocrity as American culture, they just aren’t very anxious to export this segment of culture across national borders. And then probably my impression of cultural inferiority was not helped by the reminders of various Russian professors of how much more Russians read than Americans, and how I can probably name many more 18-th century Russian writers than American, and how Russians really taught Americans how to dance ballet and act, and so forth.

I went running this morning, and took a different turn after the creepy graveyard in the woods- instead of going up the hill to the ugly Catholic Church I came out of the woods along the train tracks, on a dirt path that included interesting gangway over huge hot-water pipes and that eventually ended in an iron door in a wall across the tracks from a little train platform. Upon further examination of this door I found that 1) it led to the University Botanical Gardens and that 2) it was unlocked. So I ran in the botanical gardens for a while, sure I was going to be chased out by Mr. MacGregor at any moment. Mr. MacGreggor must have been engrossed in some indoor activity, however, because while there were a couple of parked cars at what looked like the main building, I didn’t see anyone. What I did see were lots of frost-covered grassy paths along some garden patches and some woodsy patches, and lot of identifying plaques, and lots of fog on the ground, and my own breath, and the first live squirrels I’ve seen in Irkutsk. I think I already described the stuffed squirrel we saw in the Baikal museum, but I was not prepared for the complete ridiculousness of these animals in real life. Their ears look like they belong to a rabbit, due to the huge tufts of black hair on them, and their tails are black too, which makes them look like they were just stuck on there by accident- this sort of increases their rabbit-resemblance as well. Their movements are oddly jerky and frantic and demented- these things seriously look like little aliens. At one point my eyes were drawn by unearthly squeaks one was making up in a tree. I looked at him; he, a little runty thing, stopped working on the nut he was cracking for a moment and looked at me. We considered each other. Then he went back to his demented nut cracking. I briefly entertained the notion that I had in that moment come to some sort of terms with the squirrel, that we had accepted each other’s existence in the world (for those of you fortunate enough never to have come across a squirrel in my presence in America- I am not fond of squirrels). Then I remembered his weird little squeaks and his crazed little eyes, and I knew that such a thing was never to be. I may leave the botanical garden to the squirrels for a few months – in the fall, most of the plants just look like bare sticks, though the signs beside them assured me that these were dried sticks found only in the Baikal region and Mongolia. It was pretty in the fog this morning though, and I like the look of long furrowed plots with frost on them.

I like the way no one likes to take the last chocolate in a box. There’s currently a box of chocolate on the kitchen table, given to Valentina Petrovna for “National Day of the Teacher,” with very good hazelnut centers. This chocolate went very fast until we got down to the last one - it’s been several days now, and no one has eaten it.

OH MAN I JUST FOUND A SONG CALLED ‘FACE CONTROL’ THIS IS SO AWESOME. It’s on an album of Katya’s called ‘New Years Superhits,’ which is much funnier in Russian. Anyway, this song is so amazing. Face Control is what they call bouncers in Russia- just say “face control” with a Russian accent and you will know how amazing this is. The lyrics are basically:

Hello. My name is Pasha. Face Control! You are not getting into the club today. Pa-pa-pa-pa-pasha. Hello everyone. I am Pasha, Face Control! Face control-trol-trol.
“Pasha! Let me into the club! Do you want to have sex?”
“No! Do not offer sex! I love Nastya! Do not offer sex”
Face control!

Repeat this many times.


Um. I am in Cafe Fiesta. And they now say that you have to spend $100 rubles for them to give you the internet password. I highly disapprove. This may be the end of my Fiesta days.