Fishing for the Right Words

Circling the lake on my morning walk through the Moscow park, I pass by his spot.  By 7:30, he's re-created his space just like it was yesterday and the day before, in such a perfect way that I wonder if he ever goes home.  His two-legged folding stool, with shiny silver legs and green canvas seat is situated at a comfortable distance from the water, so that the pole stretches out to the precise location where fish gather for a quick bite before heading off to work.  Similar to Starbucks, but with a catch.
A white plastic, recycled grocery sack sits to his right, flanked by a stainless steel thermos - his breakfast, I presume.  An identical bag sits to his left - his bait, I presume; hopefully, never the two shall be confused.

The fisherman is not alone.  Every few feet along the bank is another, sitting on or standing beside a similar, if not identical stool, plastic bags and knapsacks at his feet, pole precisely postioned, staring at the water's surface.  One morning, I counted 14 members of the community ringing the perimeter of the lake  watching, waiting.  Paying closer attention during a week's worth of walking, I noticed that the same fishermen occupied the same territories.  Could it be that there is an unspoken agreement, much like with church pews?  Heaven help the first-time church goer or weekend fisherman who stumbles upon a presumed vacancy, later to discover an invisible "Reserved" sign as he's nudged further along by its rightful occupant.

So, what's different about "my" fisherman?  He speaks to me, or did for the first time this week.  He happened to turn in my direction as I was fast-walking past.  His eyes met mine from under the brim on his gray, floppy hat.  He said something in Russian; I shrugged indicately that sadly, after being in his country for going-on seven years, I can count my Russian vocabulary on the combined fingers of my hands plus a couple of toes.  Not giving up, he moved his right index finger in a circle over his left palm, and I understood. 

"How many times do you circle the lake?" he wanted to know.

"Dva," I answered, at least trying to say something, anything in Russian.

"Two," he replied, trying to do the same in English.  

He nodded and smiled.  I nodded and smiled.   I walked on.

Early the next morning, there he sat on his stool, reading glasses perched half-way down his nose, opening a ziploc bag.  His bushy gray beard reminded me of Santa Claus (or Ded Moroz, in Russian), along with his round cheeks and bowl-full-of-jelly belly, camoflauged under his fishing vest.  

"Dobraye utra" (Good morning), I said.

"Hello," he answered.

"Two," he continued, holding up two fingers, smiling, remembering our conversation from the day before.

I nodded and smiled, which I've gotten quite proficient at, I might add.

Walking on, I waved and offered my farewell in Russian, "Dasvidaniya."

Hesitating slightly, as if to make sure he was formulating the correct response, he replied in a resounding, baritone voice, "Good af-ter-noon!"

I smiled and nodded.  Yes, it was indeed "good," no matter what the time of day.   




     

Haikus Written in Russia but not in Russian (Autumn)

If you live in a part of the world where autumn is still weeks away or where it's not even a season in your vocabulary, let me share with you the first hints of Russian fall, growing more evident every day.  In May I posted an entry called Natural Magic in which I described the world under the treetops at Pokrovskyoye-Streshnevo Park in Moscow, a one minute walk from our apartment door. As I walked its paths this week taking pictures, words bubbled to the surface so quickly I hardly had time to get out my notebook and pencil. (If you read last week's posting, I'm happy to report that I had both.) As the words jockeyed for positions, some dropping out altogether to make room for their "just right" cousins, haikus formed.
So. . . take a walk with me and share the beauty of the season.

Lives forever linked
One arm supports the other
Walking towards the light

Leafy locks aflame

Coiffured in stylish brilliance

A bear to keep clean

Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! I go

Across a bridge to somewhere

Greener pastures call

Quiet reflection

Cloaked in secret solitude

Mindful of no one 

Autumn’s red berries

Remind a passer-by of

Russian caviar

If you have photos or haikus about autumn to share, leave a link to them in the comments section so we can continue to enjoy the season.

Haikus © Twylla Alexander 2010

Tolstoy's Pocket and Oliver's Pencils

What do you keep in your pocket?  Your cell phone, pair of glasses, breath mints, wadded up receipts from Starbucks?  Go ahead, check it out.  What did you find?


I didn't give it much thought until I discovered what Leo Tolstoy kept in his pocket.  Maybe not every day, but at least on the day when Ilya Repin painted his portrait, "Tolstoy Barefoot," as the author walked in the woods near his home at Yasnaya Polyana. A red notebook, tucked snugly in one of the front pockets of his peasant shirt, just in case.  Perhaps he's taking a break on page 1000 or so of War and Peace, or beginning his day in solitude; he doesn't leave the house without his notebook.  What if a thought, a word, a phrase, pops into his mind, and it's the perfect way to say what he's been trying to say for days.  Or what if a squirrel catches his attention, a Russian squirrel with pointed, hairy ears, greedily nibbling on a nut it has just discovered in an almost-forgotten mound of dirt?  The intensity with which the animal focuses on his meal, the way he holds it with both hands, body curved forward to protect the precious nut from jealous relatives, reminds Tolstoy of a character he's developing. He reaches for his notebook.

"Tolstoy Barefoot" by Ilya Repin (Russian Museum St. Petersburg)

Curious. . . I wonder if one of the world's greatest writers remembered to bring along a pencil. I don't see the outline of one showing through the thin, white material.  Is it hiding behind the notebook or perhaps between the pages, holding a spot for the next entry?  Following in Tolstoy's footsteps with my own notebook (pink rather than red) crammed into the pocket of my exercise pants, I remember this morning's walk through the park.  No pencil.  "How can I remember the witty line, the 'just right' words to describe the duck diving head first under the water to nab his breakfast?" I wonder.  Repeating it at least 50 times as I round the lake, dash through the woods, across the busy street, up the elevator to our apartment, I snatch the renegade pencil off the table and scribble the line as it gushes out of my mouth. 
   
Vowing that this will never happen again, the picture of another writer begins to surface, this portrait unpainted, but as clear in my thoughts as if it were brushed across a canvas.  The woman is in a wooded area, moving intentionally from tree to tree hiding pencils among the branches.  Were she not a Pulitzer Prize winning poet and one of my favorite writers, I might wonder what the heck she's doing. But it's Mary Oliver, who can be found most days walking in the woods around Blackwater Pond in Provincetown, Massachusetts, writing about the nature she encounters. She shared in a rare interview* in 1991 that she carried a "3-by-5-inch hand-sewn notebook" to record her lyrical observations.  But remembering a pencil?. . .  So she stashed a few.  Brilliant!  Should she leave her pencil on the table back home, she only needs to recall in which of the trees she's hidden one, so she can jot down those "just right" words before they have a chance to escape.  


I visualize each writer grabbing both notebook and pencil and heading out the door for a walk. One of them stops in a grove of trees, the other pauses beside a pond.  They pull out their notebooks and write words which I have recently read, words which inspire me to continue writing, to keep paper in my pocket and to stash a pencil or two.


"I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one’s neighbor — such is my idea of happiness."
-Tolstoy, Family Happiness and Other Stories


"Hello, sun in my face. Hello you who made the morning and spread it over the fields and into the faces of the tulips...Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness."  - Oliver, Why I Wake Early

* cited in The Land and Words of Mary Oliver, the Bard of Provincetown, Mary Duenwald, New York Times, July 5, 2009

Touched by Russian Art

Before we moved to Moscow seven years ago, I knew nothing, NOTHING, about Russian art.  I did not know the name of a single artist, was not familiar with any artistic style or period and could only pick out a Russian painting from a line-up of international suspects, if the scene on the canvas featured a church topped by an "onion dome."

Now. . . I have a group of favorite artists. It was as if they were waiting for me the first time I walked into the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, which houses a vast collection of Russian art dating back to 12th century icons.  I bought my ticket, rented an audio guide, picked up a brochure of the floor plan with captions in English, then wondered where to begin. "Come to the second floor," I seemed to hear, as I opened the brochure and my eyes gravitated to the outline of rooms 16-31, one flight up. Wondering how the chorus of male voices knew I spoke English, I decided to follow.

I spent the next three hours, punching in numbers on the audio guide's keypad as I walked from room to room, listening to the speaker describe the paintings and recount the lives of the men who created them.  I was entranced.  Standing in front of. . . . .

Nikolai Ge's "Portrait of Lev Tolstoy"

Ilya Repin's "Autumn Bouquet"

Ivan Sishkin's "Pine Trees in Sunlight"

Nikolai Yaroshenko's "Life is Everywhere"

Vasily Maximov's "All in the Past"

Isaak Levitan's "Golden Autumn"

. . . . I began to understand why these artists had invited me to wander among them.  They were "Wanderers" themselves or Peredvizhniki, members of the Association of Travelling Art Exhibitions during the second half of the 19th century.   Their work rejected the academic restrictions of the day; they were "progressives."  Whatever they had to express could not be expressed within the confines of a traditional frame.  True life, or realistic life, was what they saw and what they were compelled to paint.

Last week when I was in St. Petersburg, I visited them again, this time in the Russian Museum.  They were waiting in rooms at the top of the grand staircase, wall after wall of them, summoning me to look closely, to learn.  I listened, wrote notes, sat on cushioned seats in the middle of high-ceilinged rooms, and looked deeply into eyes, nature, and history.   From the pale, solitary face of a young woman in Yaroshenko's "Warmer Lands,"

to the eighty-one animated faces in Repin's massive "Ceremonial Meeting of the State Council". . . .  

I felt Russia touching me, like the hand of a wandering painter proudly asking, "Please, come, look at my work."  

More than a Common Space

I romanticize one-room schoolhouses. I picture Laura Ingalls Wilder ringing the morning bell, the children rushing to the front door, eager to enter and warm themselves by the black pot belly stove, then settle into their desks, ready to greet their teacher with a lilting, "Good morning, Miss Wilder." Laura’s desk sits in the front of the room with her back to the blackboard. Students face her in rows of desks separated by an aisle, boys on one side, girls on the other. The stove occupies the place of honor in the center of the room, inviting the children to gather beside it on winter mornings. Laura juggles the solo teaching duties, dividing her time between the younger students’ ABC and counting lessons and the older ones’ social studies and recitations. Brothers, sisters, neighbors and friends walk miles to join their teacher. . .  in their common space.

As I shared in my last blog entry (August archives), I've been substitute teaching at the Anglo American School of Moscow’s St. Petersburg branch for the last week. There’s no Miss Wilder at the front gate; however, if Mr. Gleason, the principal, were to dress up in bonnet and prairie attire, he might pass for a fair imitation, as he shakes each student’s hand and says “Great to see you!” each morning. 

The three-story, multi-room, multi-teacher school bears no outward resemblance to the 19^th century American frontier version.  As far as schools go, though, AASSP is on the smaller side, with 145 students in grades k-12.  And it is bursting at its concrete seams. Watching the students, teachers and staff enter in the morning, I can almost see the walls puffing out like a marshmallow, expanding to let the last one in.  Rooms, which should be one, are divided into two. The principal's office doubles as a classroom.  Areas the size of walk-in closets have been transformed into the library, foreign language and ESL (English as a Second Language) domains.  

To get from point A to point B in almost any spot in the building requires going through points C, D and sometimes E.  Navigating from the office to the 5^th grade classroom, for example, a traveler must enter and exit the middle/high school social studies classroom, climb a flight of steps, and walk across the 4^th grade room, before opening the door to his destination. Students and teachers, accustomed to the routine, shuttle seamlessly from place to place, greeting each other and offering an “excuse me,” for the occasional bump or traffic jam on the steps. Brothers and sisters speak, friends socialize, adults and students mingle . . .  in their common space.   

Therein lies the connection between the Little School on Penkovaya Street in St. Petersburg, Russia and the Little House on the Prairie school in rural America.  Whether the inhabitants occupy one large room or several smaller ones under the same roof, they are a community.  Whether it’s one teacher or more, they care, interact personally, and are dedicated to their students’ learning.  Whether it’s 15 students or 145, they work and grow in a safe, nurturing environment.

Miss Wilder may ring the bell to signal the start of the day in one school, and Mr. Gleason may shake students’ hands in the other, but in both, children and adults enter a building in which they feel like a family.