Gather Round, Children, and I'll Tell You a Story

It all started with snow. This is Tuesday, November 25. We are walking around Chistye Prudy.

There they are behind our Canadian friend.

Basically, people went crazy for a little while. The rolling of snowboules for snowmen began immediately, and the launching of snowballs. The next day, most of the snow was gone, and it was like nothing at all had happened.

The next evening, we boarded an overnight train to St. Petersburg. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of the kupe in which Josh is not chewing a sandwich and Venus and Rachel are not moving around. I do, however, have my next myspace profile picture at the ready! Should I ever be in need of such a thing.

The Leningrad trains station had an amazing bronze schematic covering one of its ginormous walls illustrating all the places its trains go. Think a big metro map in bronze up on the wall with places like Omsk and Ufa connected by spidery bronze phalanges with inflamed joints. Who wants to take the Trans-Siberian in June?


Next was a trip to Anna Akhmatova's apartment at the Fountain House, where she lived from the 20s to the 50s. Though the courtyard is romantic, it was actually more of a communal apartment inside an old palace. A young Isaiah Berlin apparently visited her there, when everyone thought she was dead.

We found this hanging between two trees in Akhmatova's courtyard. Who is Andersen, I wonder?

And this is Venus, harmonizing perfectly with this amazing wall. Who was I just telling about how there are walls that feel as rich as paintings to me? I guess Aaron Siskind showed us this already...and he used a camera. Sneaky devil.

Next, I spent several more days eating art. And though sensibly, both the Hermitage and the Russian Museum allow photography of their collections, the only things I wanted to take pictures of were the views from the windows. (These museums are in palaces, remember? Beautiful birdcages with beautiful views.) There's that old stiletto of the Admiralty off in the distance. This view reminded me of the last shot of Russian Arc, where it's just the sea stretching out forever from the window of the Winter Palace.

And speaking of the Winter Palace...people, the Bolsheviks totally did some taking over here.

But more interestingly for me, they had a pretty amazing exhibit of Timur Novikov's paintings. I wouldn't even call them that, though. At some point, he decided to just sew two sheets together, making a horizon line and adding a few little ships or buildings to it. Like a strange hybrid of aerial photographs and views of the overwhelming sky and sea. They are sublime and (oh, cliche) impossible to photograph. The above photo (the exhibit was on the 3rd floor of the building to the left) kind of captures his scale of huge world/tiny buildings. But his language is totally minimalist, like little legos scattered on a blanket. You can kind of see it in the slideshow here. Also, I guess his present champions (he died in 2002) are kind of uncomfortable with the queer content. That's Oscar Wilde & Bosie.

Here's another one under his influence.

Oh, and look, Buster opened a cafe in St. Petersburg. Right next door to an emergency massage parlor that also sells flowers.

By the way, getting pictures all up and arranged on blogger is a pain in my tuchus. The rest of the trip took place in Novgorod, and is going to have minimal commentary, cause I'm tired.

Rest of that 9 am view.

Monastery in Yurievo.

Ditto.

River's edge by the monastery walls.

Ditto plus Josh.

Russians are good at wooden architecture.

Also trees.


More pinholes from the bridge:

And this is the point on the bridge where I imagine I'm this guy:

Архипушка! Летю! Летю!

I wonder if Novikov saw Rublev?