Signs of Spring

I think it is spring here now. You can tell because everyone in Irktusk has come out of winter hibernation and is walking around near the river with beer bottles in their hands. Like, every single person in Irkutsk. If they were all drinking the same brand of beer, it would look like a beer commercial: these hordes of young people, dressed like they’re going to a club, stream down the streets from different directions toward some common point, the sun streaming through the glass of the bottles in their hands and making the beer inside shine golden and translucent. The mangy old men are also out drinking beer, of course, but they are huddled on the same benches they always were, further from the main street down to the river; spring does not seem to have affected them much.

This all happened at once, as far as I can tell, Friday afternoon, the first truly warm day of the year. When I went into the movie theater at 4:00 or so, the world was as it always was, and when I left the theater around 5:00 or so, in disgust at the dumbness and ugliness of the movie, all had been transformed. The area around the theater seems to be the new place to be; in a two-hundred yard radius of that historic building, dozens of groups of drinkers are milling about, soaking in the sunlight like I hope the trees are doing, preparing to put out some dang leaves already.