14 Little Lessons from Russia

1) There is a lot of gray area between loving someone and trusting someone; best to steer clear of the gray...

2) There is a fine line between being honest and fair with others and being cruel and insensitive with others; its worth it to find that line...

3) The Russian words for cruelty and toughness are very similar. (жестокость / жёсткость )

4) Watching out for number one does not preclude watching out for my fellows; precious few are those who understand this...

5) Looking for the good and beautiful in everyone I meet is still a worthwhile way to live; perceiving the bad and the ugly in them is also very worthwhile; being able to see all of it and not judge them for it is hard...

6) Listening to those with whom I categorically disagree can be fun; trying to learn something from them is hard, but worth it...

8) When you speak a language more often than the one in which your character was formed, your character changes; be aware...

9) No matter what the conservative and moralists may say--moral and cultural relativism is a reality; it is impossible to understand and therefore judge others and other societies by your own personal and societal values; that said--some societies just don't get it...

10)It is nice--more than nice--to have people near you who have known you for many many years.

11) It is also nice--but not so nice--to live somewhere where no one knows who you are, where you came from, and why you are who you are...

12) It is easier to be kind in a society where kindness is valued and where that value is reflected in a society's history, art, business and government; where is that society?

13) Listening to Diana Ross and the Supremes (or anything Motown-ish) and letting the beat move you on the Moscow Metro can make tough and cruel Russians smile...

14) It is 100% true that everything depends on me; it is also true that everyday there are a million and one variables that are completely out of my control; the paradox has the power to paralyze a man; don't let it...

The Indigo Girls are heavy.....

The Girls--Amy and Emily

Because I know many of you wonder why I have not blogged in nearly 2 months:

Not to be entirely cryptic, but I'll simply say that m'life life here in Moscow for the past couple months has been....hmmm....tough. And it's all my fault. Not that "fault" is something I am really into--at least I like to think I am not into fault and blame, but I do look for reasons in the way life turns out--reasons for life's situations and....and...and....stuff 'n stuff. Not for "meaning" really, just for reasons--like cause and effect. And because of this general view--because I believe that much in life depends on our own actions, I can pretty conclusively state that it is my fault that life has been...what did I say? Yeah, tough...

Why, you ask? Well, I think I have this self-defeating drive that compels me to make my life as complicated and as...heavy as possible. I do this in many diverse and disturbing ways.

Here's one example: I spent three plus years in New York City at Columbia working on an MFA in playwriting, building a network of contacts and colleagues in the theatre, receiving that MFA (not without, of course, going into enormous debt for that MFA) and then I promptly up and went to Russia to teach business English for an indefinite amount of time...hehehehe (coy, nervous laugh)...ha ha (short simply nervous laugh)....(long pause)....WHAT?

Mind you, everyone--and I mean EVERYONE (even my friends in Moscow) was like: "Now....whyyyyyy are you doing this?"

I had some really awesome, not- even- very-convincing, bullS**** answers prepared for such confrontations. I made it sound like it was financially really...umm....smart. Which maybe in some way, may have been true, but probably it wasn't....At any rate, I think I did convinced myself---sorta. Not really...

The real question is not some cosmological, fateful, search for the deep, eternal, heavy meaning in my life's experiences, but how do I actually stop myself, as the--let's face it--only person ultimately responsible for my own life's experiences, from making such lame decisions--which, the best I can tell, are designed (by myself) to make my life as complicated, circuitous, cryptic, and as unsuccessfully heavy as friggidy liggidy possible. Hmmmmmm.

Yes, one can say that every crisis is also a possibility and that we assign our own meaning to life's experiences. Yes, indeed. I agree! True dat! But tell me, o ye existentialists, why not avoid the crisis to begin with?

Am I making any sense? No? ...I know.

So--let me get to the Indigo Girls then:

When I was 16 or 17 I became acquainted with the Indigo Girls. They were awesome and they still are. I really dig 'em.

My favorite song was "Ghost" from the Girls' "Rites of Passage" album. "Ghost" is ridiculously lyrical and romantic and melodic and poetically stunning in that naive early-twenty-something in-love-for-the-first-time-with irony, allusion, alliteration, assonance, and just the beauty of language-kind-of-way. So, for a barely 17 year old junior in high school, listening to that song made me feel smart, deep, forward thinking and...heavy.



(I also think the eruption of bottled-up gay yearning resonated with me in some way...ya think?)

I remember Kathy Aitchison let me borrow their copy of the CD and I listened to it all the time in my bedroom on my new Sony 3-Disc CD changer. One time I made my Dad sit with me and listen to it--I think I even made him follow along with the lyrics in the CD booklet. So, we sat on the floor in my room and listened to it and both really enjoyed it and then we talked for while...

I remember at one point my Dad saying something like: "You know, these are really beautiful lyrics. But," he continued, "I remember listening to Dylan and Joni Mitchell and all those folk artists when I was your age and thinking 'wow, these lyrics are so deep'. Now, I'll go back sometimes and listen and I think: What does that even mean?" And he chuckled.

And I remember, nodding 'yeah' but also being kinda miffed. More so, I think my mind was a little blown because I knew he was right in some way.

At the same time, though, over the years, as I go back and listen to "Ghost" and as I think about the lyrics, I realize its actually a pretty explicable piece of poetry--(have a listen and explicate away--its fun)

Truthfully, it's the "Indigo Girls" later stuff that really makes you go "Now...WHAT are they saying?"

Ten years later, my friend Gretchen burned me a copy of the Girls' "Become You" album.


It was the summer I turned 27--It was the summer I did my first three triathlons and the summer I spent just about every spare minute I had rock-climbing, bouldering, running, swimming, or biking.

A guy I really thought I was in love with (it is so funny now-- it always is, right?) had broken up with me in April and in July I still wasn't over it.

I jammed my fingers and my unrequited love into the cracks of the Wasatch and into the sandy red-rock ledges of Moab and Maple Canyon with my friend Heidi.



I sliced that sense of loss and loneliness through the gray-brown waters of Pine View and Jordanelle and Deer Creek Reservoirs training with my friend Jeff.

Alone, on 90 degree plus afternoons, I'd run that yearning into the blacktop of side-streets in Clearfield or onto the rocky trails above the Weber State campus.



Never completely able to cover the 'real me' with the hours spent on the rock or in the gym or in the water or on the bike or running, I sang that pain like crazy at the top of my lungs and sang the f-ing hell outta the Girls' "Become You" lyrics driving in my air-conditioner-less 1988 red 2-door Honda Accord.

I drove back and forth between Ogden and Orem and Salt Lake and Moab and Zion and Maple Canyon and Jordanelle and Park City and I sang and sang the Girls' beautifully cryptic lyrics and my pain was either met or assuaged or both while I sang and the wind whipped through the open windows and tugged at the straps on my red climbing pack in the back-seat.

My favorite song from that album is " She's Saving Me" which is really...heavy. Most of it is so painfully beautiful it doesn't make one friggin bit of sense whatsoever.

Here's the first verse:

We were sittin' 'round a dyin' fire
Somebody lit incense
Somebody lit a cigarette
and passed the bottle around

It was just strawberry season
back-breakin' pickers in the patches
every thing's burnin' down to ashes
and down to the ground

I mean its gorgeous, right? But...what...does...it mean? The first stanza is pretty straightforward--its setting the scene. Beautifully, of course--very rustic, very earthy, very....lesbian-y . I like it.

Before I get to the chorus, I want to go--sorta unfairly, I suppose--to the 2nd verse. That's where you are really like: WHAAAAT?

I try to put it aside
but its too much bigger than me
There's a big brown hawk in the tree
lightin' and leavin'

And there's tea leaves tossin'
Its the pennies in my pocket
Dead star like a rocket
The arc of my grievin'

Right? Like excruciatingly beautiful, but.....WHAAAAT??????

So, maybe if I throw you the chorus that "magic access-point" into the meaning of every poem will appear.

She's saving me
I don't even think she knows it
It's a strange way to show it
as distant as last night's dream unravels

She's saving me
I'm a very lost soul
I was born with a hole in my heart
the size of my land-locked travels

Did it appear for you--that" magic access-point" to the deep heavy meaning?

It hasn't for me either, but I will say this-- the final two lines of the last stanza:

"I was born with a hole in my heart the size of my land-lock travels"

...These lines just about capture in poetry the best excuse I can muster for this morbid drive I have to defeat myself at every turn.

My travels lead me nowhere except away from my last journey and though the distance I cover and the dust I kick up is vast it still has failed to fill what I see as this gaping awareness since birth that I am destined to yearn for the unfulfillable. And since I long ago became convinced that the only destiny I have is the one I create for myself through my own choices and actions, I can't seem to understand why I constantly perseverate on that damn hole in my heart!!!

O' Stupid Soulful, Beautiful, Heavy Lyrics, why do you pull at my soul so? When I hear you, why do my neurons fire and why do the adrenaline and dopamine rush through my brain making me feel full of life and purpose and connection? In the end, you mean nothing more than the sum of these chemical reactions in my body propelling me on and convincing me that living another day as brilliant me is a worthy endeavor...



Tonight, after a rather pointless evening--after a week filled with heavy drama and complications of my own making, I walked home from the Metro contemplating these tough past two months. Bemoaning where they have led me and trying to come up with some reason for it all, I actually thought of this lame excuse:

"I was born with a hole in my heart the size of my land-locked travels"

I pulled my ipod out of my pocket, popped in the earbuds, scrolled through the artist list to the Girls', clicked on "Become You", toggled down to "She's Saving Me", pushed play and let the dopamine flow.

I sang as I walked through the dirty Moscow snow-rain and I indulged my pain. Instead of using that brisk walk to constructively think about what the f*** I can do to get me off this tough journey and onto something productive, I had myself a little cryptic, complex, beautiful and meaningless HEAVY!

I am pretty sure that Heavy is bad. So why do I always go for the easy rush that heavy and deep and complex and beautiful give instead of actually doing something?

I like to think that I don't have a problem with substances--no drugs, no cigarettes, no alcohol really (wine like three times a year)--but complicated, circuitous, heavy situations to make me feel that my life is full of meaning. Well, let me tell you--I need my hit!

But no more. I don't wanna use the same excuse I've been using since I first heard that painfully beautiful heavy lyric to explain away the choices I've made and I am too tired tonight to assign my own meaning to these past 6 months in Moscow and so...like any addict, I light up and throw back a few of the Girls' songs to forget about life for a while--I let heavy take me in his arms and I sing along...



OKAY--If any of you can assign any meaning to anything I just wrote I'll give 1000 rubles.



NOTE: current exchange rate: 36.50 rubles to 1 US Dollar.

I think I might be posting again more regularly soon.

Sweet Sweet Fantasy Poetry Saturday

Another poem....

But, first I wanna take a quick moment and tell everyone thanks again for reading and sharing your responses. It really really means a great deal to me.

I want to say a particular thank you to those of you who I don't know personally (about whom I've recently become aware) but still read and comment.

THANK YOU!

So the poem for this week--its a little racy (to shatter the clean chaste image I know you've all held of me for so long)

Share your thoughts please and have a wonderful day!

Native tongue

A lot like the vowels in Finnish or Hebrew
None of them are mine
Not mine at all
But I try desperately
To form them
To remember one of you
To call the other to me
To find a little sound of one
On the lips of the other
To feel the touch of you
Escaping in the breath of the other
As if the meaning of a man
Is summoned by the way
His native tongue feels
Against my teeth…

© 2006, 2008

"Blown across the earth..."

the Tian Shan Mountains in Kyrgyzstan

Last night on the Metro coming home, I couldn't help watching a young man, clearly of Central Asian stock, holding a train ticket. The ticket was immediately recognizable--by its pale orange and white coloring and by the gold reflective seal in one of its corners --as a Russian National Railway ticket. I have held several of these types of tickets myself when I've traveled long distances within Russia and most often as I travel to Finland and back. So, I was rather sure that this young man was getting ready to travel somewhere rather far.

Both the young man with the train ticket and I were standing in the corner of the Metro car as all the seats were taken. I was tired from my long day of teaching and was holding the metal railing and listening to NPR or maybe just some music on my iPod. As I listened and tried to mind my own business, I kept glancing over at the young man as he pulled the ticket out of its plastic cover and examined it--as he held it close to his face and read the block lettering on it.

The Metro came to a stop at the station before my own and several seats opened up. I sat down and the young man with the ticket sat next to me. I sorta tried not to watch as he continued to read and re-read his ticket. He ran his fingers across the paper and turned it over and read the small print on the backside--all the terms and conditions. When he turned it over again, I stole a quick glance at the destination. Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.

Bishkek the capital of Kyrgyzstan

Before I continue maybe I should talk a little bit about Moscow and the people who make up a sizable portion of the city's various manual and labor-intensive workforces.

First of all, many Russians are fond of saying "Moscow is not Russia." What they mean is that Moscow is a different world--socially, culturally and most significantly economically--than the rest of Russia. In Moscow the average salary is really comparable--and in some instances better--than the average American salary. What you pay for lunch here is basically what you are gonna pay in New York--sometimes more. What you pay for an apartment here is basically what you are gonna pay in New York--sometimes more. Everywhere you look there are cranes and rising concrete and steel buildings. This just isn't true for the rest of Russia. In fact, the difference in salary and development between Moscow and the rest of Russia--and the rest of the former Soviet Union--is pretty staggering.

Moscow is booming (or was--we'll see what happens with this crisis) and there is work to be done and money to be made. So to Moscow from all of Russia and beyond flock those looking for work. Particularly visible-- among the construction workers, the street cleaners, the janitors and floor buffers at shopping centers, the restroom attendants, the buss boys and kitchen girls--are people from Central Asia--the former Soviet Republics of Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan.

Many Russians are quick to point out that there is no racial discrimination in Russia--the Soviet Union was a united nation of many peoples and ethnicities-- but those same people are equally quick to laugh at jokes that are less than kind in their portrayal of "Tajiki" or "Kazakhi" and to point out how much the influx of Central Asian laborers--legal and illegal--has lowered the average salary.

If I had to find an analogous phenomenon in the US, I would point to the many workers from Mexico and other countries of Latin America who provide so much of the labor that keeps America going. In fact, if you want a shorthand for understanding the way Central Asians are treated and seen here in Moscow, just take a moment and think of the views and opinions expressed concerning your Mexican American neighbors. Of course, there are many details and specifics which differ, but I find myself feeling similarly about the plight of the Central Asian Laborers here in Moscow as I do about the Mexican Immigrants back home.

New Years is the holiday in Russia. A big 10 day holiday is coming up and as I sat next to this young Central Asian fellow holding his ticket--presumably back home--I, maybe rather romantically, began to imagine his family meeting him at the station in Bishkek. I began to picture his mother-- who probably sent him off to Moscow from the same station--smiling and hugging him as he got off the train. I wondered if he was bringing his family back in Kyrgyzstan presents or money. Maybe he had a girlfriend or wife back in Kyrgyzstan. I wondered, was he going home just for the holiday or was he going home to stay? I looked at his hands holding the ticket and guessed at his own feelings about going home. Was he excited? Did he miss Kyrgyzstan? Maybe he was going home out of an obligation? Maybe he wanted to stay in Moscow? He held the ticket up to his face again and ran his finger across the gold seal and I decided that he was excited to be going home.

Of course, I could have been entirely wrong. I was clearly projecting onto this young man my own imaginings and fantasies. I was myself playing into racial and ethnic stereo-types. The whole narrative I'd created for this young man could have been utterly wrong. He could have very well been born and raised in Moscow, he could have been a young rising executive at a bank and was simply visiting Kyrgyzstan for pleasure. He could have bought the ticket for a friend...anything...who knows.

But, as I sat there next to him, I suddenly felt an unexpected kinship with him--or maybe just with the man I imagined he was. He and I were a like in many ways--that man. We were both working here in this big strange city hundred and hundreds of miles away from our families and loved ones. We were both foreigners who had come to another country for work that we somehow needed and now here--in Moscow--we were both subject to the opinions and perspectives of those we worked for and among. I considered how different our respective jobs might be and I also acknowledged that, perhaps, the opinions and perspectives which we daily encountered were also probably quite different.

Still....I thought and I remembered an incident that happened last week. There is some construction and remolding work being done in the building where my company's office is. One evening last week, as I was leaving the office, I was stopped in the dusky light by two police officers asking to see my documents. I showed them my Passport, Registration and Work Visa but they insisted that I needed an additional Work Permit ID Card. When I informed them that I didn't need a Work Permit ID Card because I was a teacher and by law my Work Permit was held by my employer and that I only needed to carry my Work Visa, the retorted that they didn't know of any such law and insisted that I needed a Work Permit ID Card. I said, well that's not my understating and I didn't have a Work Permit ID Card. One of the officers stomped over to group of young men standing a few feet off. I quickly noticed that this group was made up entirely of--what appeared to me to be--young Central Asian-looking men. The officer spoke to one of the young men and I saw the young man hand him a small card. The officer returned and in his hand he held a Work Permit ID Card and told me that I needed "one of these". At just this moment, my boss Yulia appeared and the problem was eventually solved--but not without a lot of huffing and puffing and posturing and squirming from the officers. They were quite disappointed. You see, they were hoping to get a little cash. That's how it works here. If you get stopped by a traffic officer--he doesn't want to give you a ticket--he wants 1000 rubles ($35). The construction happening in the building, no doubt, drew the officers to the site in hopes of finding some undocumented workers and some cash.

It made me mad--this incident--with the police officers. What right did they have to stand out there and wait for me and try to get a bribe off a poor American teacher? I was here legally and was providing a necessary service. I thought of the thousands of workers from Central Asia who were also here in Moscow working hard--building this city and cleaning its streets and washing its bathrooms and wiping clean its restaurant tables and buffing its shopping center floors all glossy and bright. I thought of all of these men and women from Central Asia who probably didn't have a boss like Yulia who would come rushing out to their aid when the police officers stopped them. I thought of their families back in Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan and Tajikistan--only a border away from Afghanistan--who most likely depended on the money they sent or brought home.

I thought of the millions of men and women in the United States from Mexico and from Latin America and from Asia and from Africa and from all over the world who were working hard and long days and nights to try to make a living and support their families.

I thought of my own ancestors--Irishmen on boats coming to New York and Boston--working in the slums of those 19th century American cities. I thought of them hungry and brave and strong and full of hope and struggle. I thought of them moving west to Michigan to work and work and marry and marry and bear children and more children and eventually me-- here in Moscow working next to a young man from Kyrgyzstan waiting with an orange and gold ticket back home for New Years...

The Metro came to a stop. Molodozhnaya. My station. I got up and exited and I noticed that the young man with the train ticket exited as well. I turned right to leave the station and he turned left and disappeared into the Moscow winter night and into the crowd. I was still thinking of his holiday train ride home and his waiting family as I walked the 10 minutes to my apartment building--wishing him well and wishing that I too was going to see my family back home.

Kyrgyzstan... pretty huh?

learn more about Kyrgyzstan here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyrgyzstan

Sweet Sweet Fantasy "Poetry" Friday

Train Tracks by Bob Dylan
(seriously...did you know he painted?)

So...I think I am going start posting some of my poems regularly....

Here is one I wrote like 4 years ago when I was on my way home to Utah from my Grad School interviews in New York City--going home on a train (which should be, from the home, pretty evident).

Anyway, I pulled it out a couple weeks ago and did some re-working. I like re-visiting poems and other things which I have written years ago. The old writing always makes me cringe and feel a little ashamed, naked and nauseated--which in turn makes me wanna fix it....

So, here it is....after some fixin' (in another few years it may get some more fixin')

please share your thoughts.



Ode to myself, reading on a train.


For fear of the luminous steel bird’s belly,
and bending to my tight-breathing tears,
I take the iron winding beast from Penn Station,
twenty two hundred miles across this country.

Through merging images on glass,
eagles on the Hudson and herons on the Colorado
fly away from the pages of my books,
always asking me who I am.

I am along the gray, green, windy waves of Michigan,
with the hazy, black towers of Chicago forward and beyond.
I am suspended on these rails above the fading grains,
rusting combines and turbines and dying cities falling away.

I am chasing silver foxes above Denver with my eyes
and mourning little metal bugs on nation-wide windows.
I am joining concrete and clay at Grand Junction,
touching bleeding earth and turning inking histories.

O Omaha, O Pioneers,
and Tennessee and Tony!
O Henry David, O Fyodor,
and Walt—the child of Joyce and Wilde!

I am not a real Irishman, Englishman, a Frenchman or American.
To be true, I am not, by generations, a good Mormon boy, either.
I am not a hunter-rider of the plains; a farmer of the Eastern forests
And I am not—yet—a willing member of that band marching forth from the Castro.

I am just along these amber green lands,
reading white and blustered skies.
A passenger for fear—and
counting every breath.

© 2005, 2008 Nathan T. Wright

Night Train by Kent Whitaker