Community Property

In the hallway near the showers sits our community computer. It is a fine device; however, it is in a hallway. There is no privacy. Why am I on it? My lovely little laptop died last night. My little black plastic and metal box overheated and shut down. At the end of a long day, it was enough for me to tense, sigh, and then slam the lid shut in frustration.

My little black plastic and metal box has amnesia. It doesn't remember who it is, and I don't know how to reach it. I went to bed last night thinking that my world had, to a degree, ended. No internet access, no ability to write in my own space, no way to reach my papers locked inside of it, no peace of mind of being able to connect with friends and family.

I went to bed in a funk and woke up a little less funky. With a clearer head, I made my way to the community computer to alert friends and family that I could be less in touch with them as a result of my mishap. As I did this, I saw Jane rush past me with a worried look on her face and her phone in her hand. Moments later, I found out why.

Through the door to my left, near the showers and our community computer, I heard someone's heart wripped from their chest. I heard a girl, Jane's friend, to whom I had never been introduced (but who probably overheard my "hallway tantrum" yesterday as a means of introduction to me) find out that her sister was torn from this world and into another.

My little black plastic and metal box didn't seem so important.

As I sit here tonight and hear other people's little plastic and metal boxes of various colors musically come to life in rooms down the hall from the showers, I am sad and angry with myself. I pushed my little black plastic and metal box too hard. I broke it. I am ashamed of my actions and of my reactions. I viewed my loss as a tragedy, but really it is an inconvenience.

Today reminded me, again (always again, because it is so easy to forget) how lucky I am. How terribly priviledged me and my perspective are, and how terribly close to me awful things orbit -- but rarely collide.

Conniptions and Consternations - or, GET ME HOME NOW!

Today I had a moment in the hall. An inglorious embarrassing moment of tantrumming over the large sums of money I am bleeding away.

I was partly justified, I was mostly over-tired. Like any three year-old, I needed a nap. Alas, I'm too grown up for one - I have homework instead of naptime. The tantrum, though, was a long time comin'.

Last Thursday I noticed how few megabytes I had left on my computer. It was my own fault -- a couple of days before, I SKYPEd with my father. I video SKYPEd because he could not get his microphone to work and I know dad -- he wants to see my face (for all of our disagreements and hurtful things said to one another, we love each other). Talking to dad wiped out almost one-half of my megabytes.

I knew I'd take a hit, so I monitored my megabytes. When Thursday rolled around, I gave 100 rubles more to Nastia knowing that it should be enough megabytes to carry me over to May -- though I probably wouldn't see those megabytes until Monday.

Friday: No miracles happen (my Internet is still "nyet dyeneg") and at 10:20pm we board a somewhat ancient train for our fly-by weekend in St. Petersberg.

Saturday: 6:45am we arrive in St. Pete (the train was so old and uncomfortable that almost everyone was unable to sleep on it -- nodding on and off we each got about an hour's rest).

7:10am we arrive at Coffee House for a pre-paid breakfast.

9:00am our tourbus arrives for our three hour tour of St. Petersberg. It was a blustery, clooudy day, but still thrilling to see so many sights in so short an amount of time.

1:00pm we go to lunch

1:30pm we check-in to our hostel (which had a power outage, downing the computers and delaying us somewhat as Nastia and Tanya deal with the management).

2:30pm we go to the Hermitage

5:30pm we finish the Hermitage, drop stuff at the hostel

6:00pm we shop at the souvenir martket near St. Savior on Spilled Blood

7:00pm(ish) we meet others for Georgian food

9:30pm(ish) we finish dinner

10:00pm(ish) some of us head to a British pub for a pint.

11:00pm(ish) shower and bed

7:20am wake up and get ready to leave

7:30am(ish) we move to leave the Hostel for breakfast

8:00am Breakfast

8:50(ish) we board the tour bus to go to Tsarskoe Selo

10:00(ish) - 2pm we tour Tsarskoe Selo

2:30(ish) - 5:45 Rachel, Faith, and I go to the Bronze Horseman, St. Isaac's, do eat, do some souvenir shopping, walk around St. Pete

5:45 - 7:00pm we all tour the Alexandrinsky Theatre museum and then see MAN=MAN

10:00pm (ish) Faith and I grab some pizza, do some more souvenir shopping, walk back to Hostel

11:00pm (ish) we depart the Hostel, on foot, to the train station

12:10am(ish) our train leaves for Moscow. By 1:00am I am asleep.

9:00am(ish) our train arrives at Moscow. We head to the dorm, shower, unpack, change clothes.

12:30(ish) we dramaturgs leave for the Pushkin to see the Picasso exhibit.

1:00 - 2:30(ish) Picasso at the Pushkin

2:30 - 4:30 I walk around Moscow, grab lunch

4:30 - 6:00pm we dramaturgs have Art & Architecture history.

6:00pm - 6:45 a small break

7:00pm - Cafe Socrate at the Moscow Musical Theater in the memory of Stanislavski and Nemerovich-Danchenko.

8:30-9:30 - Rachel and I walk back to dorm, do some small shopping.

9:30 - I discover my internet still isn't working.

I discover my internet still isn't working.

I discover my internet still isn't working.

Typing the above sentence over and over releaves some of the stress the situation brings. It is not a lot of stress, but when the weight of researching for assignments, writing your assigned blog, trying to find a subletter for the summer months, wanting to order rail tickets for your upcoming trip and other matters that are unimportant to others (but important to me) cannot be done - these small stresses add up.

I reached my breaking point this afternoon. My classmates got an earful of sqwakings that a 3 year old would normally make, only these sqwaks were augmented by the bellow of a 31 year old voice.

I'm tired. I have not fully recovered from a weekend so busy that I don't know if I enjoyed it or not. I saw a lot, it was beautiful, but it was exhausting.

Three days -- it should have been done in three days (I'm told in years past it was done in three days, but recently people have complained about the length and being bored -- which is nonsense).

You need at the very minimum three days to tour St. Pete.

Whatever. I'm tired. My jade is growing thick and the world is an ugly place through my eyes right now. Everything is pointless and dull. Everything.

Tired ....

can't you see she's exhausted?

The Second Epilogue of War and Peace

is tiresome.

Other than that, I am tired. Had a sleepless night last night. My sleep schedule was off from the weekend, so I tossed and turned until about 3am. But I kept my vow: I went to the gym this morning.

I am exhausted, but if all goes well, I should begin reigning my waistline's manifest destiny before I leave Moscow.

Otherwise, no play tonight -- ticket mix up. I tried to be a good 'turg this weekend and see a show on a night off, but tickets weren't available. Since I have reading due for tomorrow and made an valiant attempt this weekend, I decided to use this off night to read the required epilogues of War and Peace.

Hopefully I will be lucid enough to discuss them.

Surviving the Surviveable

The volcano is still doing bad things in Iceland. Invisible smoke has engulfed Moscow and most of Europe. Some say it's the beginning of the end of days -- I think it's just been a rough couple of months.

The beginning of my classmates' and my sojourn here in Russia was marked by terrorist attacks in the metro system (and smaller attacks in the provinces). That was March. April brought us a volcano that holds many tourists hostage here in Europe. Who knows what May will bring -- hopefully just some sun and fun.

We venture to St. Pete this coming weekend -- I'm very curious about that excursion! St. Pete is supposed to be beautiful and perfectly manicured, and Tolya would like us to just enjoy ourselves -- though, my curiostiry may have provoked Tolya into getting me and my fellow 'turgs tickets to Hamlet at the Alexandrinsky Theatre. That would be pretty damn amazing -- but we'll see.

Until then, like with volcanos and everything else going on in the world, we wait.

For Dad

I just finished SKYPEing with my father. It was a clumsy conversation, one that ate up one-half of my internet usage -- but it was worth it. I got to look at Dad.

My father is notoriously cheap, and a hoarder. We have a garage full of old bicycles, rearview mirrors that have been detached from various automobiles, cans of paint, doors, doorknobs ... it is an unfathomable and endless list. I am embarrassed to bring friends home, knowing what piles lurk in our humble suburban house. But, now that I'm on the other side of the earth, those frustrations are silly.

It was a clumsy conversation not in what my father and I discussed, but how we discussed it. You see, the microphone on his computer didn't work, so it ended up being a video call where he would gesticulate wildly and mouth hugely while I tried to guess the topic. Being a Ph.D. and all, the idea to bust out a red pen and scrawl topics on a piece of paper burst into his head. It was ridiculous, but, in many ways, it is the epitome of my family: clumsy, but filled with love.

I think what I loved most about our conversation was its silence. Of course, there is the juvenile aspect of FINALLY being able to hold my father hostage and make him listen to me -- but that lasted for only about 10 (OK, maybe 15) minutes. Towards the end of the call, as the conversation began to tire bit and my megabytes of internet became fewer and fewer, I started to wrap things up. My father wrote more furiously. I watched him write.

I haven't watch my father really do anything since I was, oh, 4? I remember when he was writing his dissertation. We would go to Grandma Julie's (his mom's). I would sit at the white porcelain topped kitchen table in the lime-green kitchen, sketching (as my Grandma always encouraged me to do). In the bedroom just off of the kitchen was Grandma, typing -- my father would write or dictate and grandma, who was a secretary, would type. Cioci Stephie was cooking at the stove. Grandpa Ted was proofreading. I believe my mother was there proofing with Grandpa or watching my little sister. I can't remember.

What I do remember was the hive of activity. The instant coffee warming on the stove, the kilbasa and rice pudding that Cioci would make to fortify the efforts. I remember watching my dad, reading. Framed by the doorframe, he would stand in the bedroom, reading and thinking. All the activity swirling around me -- I remember being fascinated by watching my father. His face, his posture, everything.

My father and I, now, are growing more close; however, childhood and adolescence ... not so great years for me and dad. He's good with toddlers and adults. Everything in between - not so much. But today, like when I was 4, I got to watch my father. Perhaps it is the excess of champagne and white wine from the fabulous lunch I had that is making me so nostalgic, but I felt (for a moment) like I was 4 again.

In many ways, the whole reason I was a bit tipsy has everything to do with my father. His firmness with me, his expectations, his brutality (at times -- and I know I was equally brutal in return. Childhood, in my house, was psychological warfare, but in the most nurturing sense) have led me to Moscow. Maybe not led, but influenced.

At the fabulous lunch, we talked about a series in Britain where they interviewed a group of 7 years olds years ago, and every 7 years re-interview them. The children who went private schools tended to acheive exactly what they had in mind when they were 7 years old. Have I done the same? Maybe -- I wanted to be an actor, and I am (though, perhaps, embarking on an alternate theater career) and ... did I know about Harvard?

No, probably not. I barely knew about Northewestern, my father's alma mater; however, I knew about failure. I knew about drive and passion and those things I learned from my parents. As I sat in the very stylish apartment of my British chums this afternoon, a member of a party of fabulously international fabulous men, and we talked about this television show, I thought about my parents. Tonight, talking to my dad, again this memory of watching him popped into my head. When I was born, we were on welfare. My father would get odd jobs driving diaper delivery trucks and city buses so he could pay for school and for our growing family. His parents, the children of immigrants, helped as they could -- but we were lower middle class. We were not wealthy.

Today at the luxurious lunch, and tonight in the dorm, I realized how good I have it and how hard it was fought for. I look forward to going home and being frustrated by dad (and probably looking forward to getting the hell outta' Chicago come the end of my three months there this summer). For right now, though, absence is making the heart grow fonder; right now -- thanks to the presence of wonderful friends and opportunities -- this absent son wants to go home.

Outrage

Yes, outrage. Dear reader(s? Is there more than one?), last night the American program was caught up in a petty tete a tete. The former administrator of our program, reduced to English tutoring hausfrau, vs. our current Queen of Angels.

Notes, and sides, have been taken.

Let it be known: I do not appreciate lectures by the hausfrau about how we're not allowed to socialize (we are -- I have a copy of the sheet I signed and parties are not forbidden, only loud music after 11pm). I do not appreciate being guilted for using community property. I do not appreciate being manipulated.

Last night, I and my classmates were manipulated. An e-mail was sent to our headmaster complaining of happiness. We were making friends with the Russians, and the hausfrau didn't like it - nevermind the fact that at pervious parties (even more rowdy) she was seen taking shots and carrying on with us. So, she e-mails Anatoly Smeliansky complaining of ... what? The noise? - the party was on the 3rd floor and you couldn't hear it on the 5th.

Ok, so then not the noise. What was she complaining about? Ah, yes -- I took the speakers from our 5th floor community computer so they could be used on the 3rd floor at a party that the entire dorm was invited to. Ah, yes, that must be it. The hausfrau couldn't blare her indy Russian folk tunes, performed by her tone-deaf friend and former pupil Paulina (who spends way too many nights, illegally, in the dorm), at 1am. That must be it.

Yes.

We interrupted her schedule. And then she interruped mine: she felt it necessary to lecture me -- as I invited her to come and join us -- about how "American's are not allowed to have parties in the dorm." Wow. I mean, we may be Americans, but we're not second class Russians, are we? No. We're not second class anything.

We're students at the American Repertory Theater, affiliated with Harvard. Don't lecture me about your petty beefs. Don't treat me, a 31 year old man, like some undergrad who's drinking his way through Moscow. Do not involve me or my classmates in your trivial power plays. You don't know me. Anyone who does know me knows that I take this experience seriously -- no matter how mundane or difficult I may find it. These same anyones also know how I react to this kind of diminutive treatment.

And you don't want to meet that Joe. No, may dear hausfrau -- you may be a bitch, but, when provoked, I'm one queen you don't want to tangle with.